Stephen's Speech, Abraham

Morning.

If you would please turn with me in your Bibles or your phones, we're going to read Acts chapter 7, verses 1 through 16.

Acts 7:1–16

And the high priest said, Are these things so?

And Stephen said, Brothers and fathers, hear me.

The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia before he lived in Haran, and said to him, Go out from your land and your kindred and go into the land that I will show you.

Then he went out from the land of the Chaldeans and lived in Haran.

And after his father died, God removed him from there into this land in which you are now living.

Yet he gave him no inheritance in it, not even a foot's length, but promised to give it to him as p a possession, and to his offspring after him, though he had no child.

And God spoke to this effect, that his offspring would be sojourners in a land belonging to others, who would enslave them and afflict them four hundred years.

But I will judge the nation that they serve, said God, and after that they shall come out and worship me in this place.

And he gave them the covenant of circumcision.

And so Abraham became the father of Isaac, and circumcircumcised him on the eighth day, and Isaac became the father of Jacob, and Jacob of the twelve patriarchs.

And the patriarchs, jealous of Joseph, sold him into Egypt, but God was with him, and rescued him out of all of his afflictions, and gave him favor and wisdom before Pharaoh, king of Egypt, and made him ruler over Egypt and over all his household.

Now there came a famine throughout all Egypt and Canaan, and great affliction, and our fathers could find no food.

But when Jacob heard that there was grain in Egypt, he sent out our fathers on their first visit, and on the second visit Joseph made himself known to his brothers, and Joseph's family became known to Pharaoh.

And Joseph sent and summoned Jacob his father and all his kindred, seventy-five persons in all.

And Jacob went down into Egypt and he died.

He and our fathers, and they were carried back to Shechem and laid in the tomb that Abraham had bought for a sum of silver from the sons of Hamor in Shechem.

This is the word of the Lord.

Good morning.

Thanks for joining us this morning.

My name is James Rathman.

I'm the pastor here at Redemption Church Denver.

Thanks again for uh joining us.

It's great to gather together with you.

You know, you've uh already faced an incredible trial this morning because you're here at church.

I can tell from here, I can see you from here.

And this morning is cozy.

So that's one obstacle overcome.

Uh congratulations.

Let's pray and then we'll move into our texts for the day.

Lord, you tell us by Peter's hand in 1 Peter, you instruct us to humble ourselves under the mighty hand of God, so that he may exalt you at the proper time, casting all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.

Lord, how often we neglect this particular reality that you teach us so clearly that you care for us.

Lord, that you see us, that you know us, that you understand our trials, that you consider us in our afflictions, and Lord, you care for us.

Lord, we repent before you this morning of all the ways that we've lived and all the fears that we've entertained.

Lord, while we've neglected the reality that you care for us.

Lord, what what obstacle could possibly stand in the way of that fundamental truth?

Of all the things that we face and all the difficulties that are before us that we must endure in this life, Lord, beneath them all is this reality that you care for us.

Father, I pray that you would work in our hearts a humility before your word.

That we would be humble before you.

We would not think more highly of ourselves than we ought.

We would not think that we deserve more than we are getting, Lord.

But that we might be humble before you, and in our humility, we would not hold fast to our fears ourselves, that we would not cultivate our anxieties, but instead we would cast them upon you.

And in casting them upon you, Lord, that we would experience the peace which surpasses all understanding.

Because we know we are able to cast them upon you because you care for us.

Lord, let us hold fast to that truth.

We lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Where we are in our text is you're listening and following along with the scripture reading this morning, you might think, okay, so I remember last week Stephen was arrested and put on trial, and then I feel like I just heard just a history of Abraham and Joseph.

Well, what you're hearing is Stephen's speech before the Sanhedrin.

Stephen was one of the first seven deacons, and he was one of the great early debaters and apologists for the Christian faith, and because of that, he ends up in a lot of trouble as he faces plainly the accusations that are coming from the Jews against the early Christians.

And he is brought to trial and he's facing two charges.

The two charges that he's facing are explained in Acts 6, 14.

They say, 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.

Two accusations.

That Jesus will destroy the temple, that's this place that they're referring to, the temple in Jerusalem.

And they are saying that Stephen is proclaiming that they will change the customs that have been given to them by Moses.

Now we begin looking at the speech that Stephen is giving, and we notice that the speech is not really directly facing these accusations.

At least that's the way it appears at a first read.

Maybe you've read through Acts before, and you get to Stephen's speech, and it's the longest speech in Acts, and you think, okay, I gotta settle in for chapter seven, and I'm just gonna hear a story that I kind of already know, the story of the Old Testament told to me.

And then I remember that randomly at the end of Stephen telling the story, for some reason it seems like everyone gets very mad at him after telling this story that it seems like they would already know, and then they stone him.

Why is it?

I think on our first reading of this, we think, why does Stephen take so long at this trial with these two particular accusations that the temple will be destroyed and that the customs of Moses will be changed, when his life is on the line?

Why is it that he just tells the history?

Why does he give a history lesson about the Jewish people?

Why does he give a history lesson that the Sanhedrin, these keepers of the temple and these keepers of the law, they certainly would know?

And then why after giving that history lesson is Stephen stoned?

Why is he killed after just giving a history lesson?

Well, it's important to recognize, and what we'll learn, and we'll as we follow this speech slowly, moving through it section by section over the next couple of weeks, we're going to see that by addressing the history, he is perfectly addressing the accusations.

And that we can't tell the story of Christianity, we can't make an argument for Christianity without telling history.

The argument of Christianity is fundamentally an argument about historical events.

This is something that Jay Gresham Machin puts his finger on in his classic work, Christianity and Liberalism.

He says all the ideas of Christianity might be discovered in some other religion.

All the ideas of Christianity might be discovered in some other religion.

Yet there would be in that other religion no Christianity.

For Christianity depends not upon a complex of ideas, but upon the narration of an event.

Do you hear that?

Christianity is not a mere complex of ideas, it is the narration of an event, something that took place in history.

And so fundamentally, the argument of Christianity is an argument over a historical event.

And in order to understand that historical event, we must understand the historical events which led up to it.

This is why the church in the United States and all over the world really fell so completely over the last century.

It fell into a type of death because it embraced a liberal Christianity.

And I mean that technically, it embraced a Christianity of liberalism, which sought to remove any of the quote-unquote supernatural claims of Christianity, and assess it on a plain historical reading to mine for it the universal principles that are true of Christianity and are likely true of all other religions.

These were a denial of miracles, a denial of the virgin birth, a denial of the creation itself, a denial of the resurrection, but the mining out of Christianity a moral framework.

And then a reducing of Christianity to merely a moral framework of ideas.

And perhaps they got the ethics of Christianity right.

They didn't.

But we could imagine that they got the ethics of Christianity right.

But if you have a religion that is the ethics of Christianity, you have no Christianity.

Because at the heart of Christianity is fundamentally news.

It is an announcement of a historical event.

And so if you are going to argue for Christianity, you must be prepared to argue history.

The charges that Stephen is facing are the destruction of the temple, saying that he's going to destroy the temple, and changing the customs of Moses.

Now, the question that's beneath those, that Stephen will address, is what does the temple mean?

What is the temple?

Why would it matter that this building would be destroyed?

Why would that be a charge of blasphemy?

Why would it matter that the customs handed down by Moses would be changed?

Why would that be a charge of blasphemy which would which would require a sentence of death?

Well, Stephen addresses that question.

What do these things mean by placing them in their historical context, by placing them, by showing what these mean in the story of redemptive history.

That's why he has to tell the whole story.

The assumption in the room is we know what the temple means and we know what the laws of Moses are.

This doesn't have to be explained, they would think.

And if you say that those will be changed or destroyed, then you deserve death.

Defend yourself.

And what Stephen is saying is, I do not think those words mean what you think they mean.

That's what Stephen is saying.

And so he will explain those more plainly.

And the only way to explain them is to place them in the history that they have received and how it has changed in the more recent historical event of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Stephen will reveal to the keepers of the temple and the supposed upholders of the law of Moses that they do not understand what the temple means, and they do not understand what the law of Moses means.

And because of that, they do not understand the characters that they are in the history of Israel.

They don't understand who they are in the story as they're reading it.

And so he's going to tell the story.

And as he tells the story, we it's hard for us to hear, but we have to imagine ourselves back in that frame where we think we know what the temple means, we think we know what the law of Moses means, we think we know who we are in the story.

We're the good guys who are upholding the temple and upholding the law of Moses.

But there's this other framework that Stephen will be presenting.

And as he tells this story, it's difficult for us to hear, but I'm going to try and draw it out this morning.

You know, when somebody is walks into a room and is and they they bring up something that is controversial in the room, but they don't know that it's controversial in the room.

This is like the story of my life.

I am the king of walking into conversations, making jokes about something, and then finding out on the back end that I really offended the person that I was talking to.

You can ask my wife.

And what you're feeling when you hear me talk in that environment, sometimes it's this room.

When you hear me talk in in that environment, you are you are registering all the little parts that I'm that I'm hitting and that you're thinking, I wish he wasn't saying that.

And you can feel it happening in the room.

That's what this room felt like.

Because each of the details that he's laying out, the room can feel, ah man, I've kind of heard something like that.

I wish he wasn't putting it like that.

I wish he wasn't saying it like that.

I wish he wasn't telling that part of the story.

That's the part that we're kind of glossing over.

I wish he wasn't emphasizing this aspect.

That's what the room felt like.

It's hard for us to hear in the story.

That's why it's going to take a bit of work together, but I think you'll be able to see it this morning, the clarity of the argument that he's making by relaying the history.

So let's go ahead and jump into it.

They uh he is asked, defend yourself, Stephen.

Here are the two accusations.

Two accusations are destroy the temple, change the customs of Moses.

In the name of Jesus of Nazareth, that these things will take place.

Those are the two accusations.

Here's what here's where Stephen begins.

Acts 7, verses 2 through 3.

Acts 7:2–3

And Stephen said to them, Stephen said, Brothers and fathers, hear me.

The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia, before he lived in Haran, and said to him, Go out from your land and from your kindred, and go into the land that I will show you.

First of all, we have to recognize Stephen's disposition in the room.

He's in front of the Sanhedrin.

It's a multi-tiered, you know, room.

There would have been sort of two levels of people that are looking down on him.

He's standing alone in the middle of the room.

It's a very intense situation.

But he addresses them as brothers and fathers.

He is seeking to make known that he views them as the same people.

That they are his brothers and fathers.

At Presbytery meetings, whenever you stand up and you make an announcement, whenever you're addressing the room, you address one another as brothers and fathers.

It's a show of the camaraderie that we have as the people that we know we are.

And he's demonstrating that deference to them.

He cannot, in his disposition alone, he cannot be described as a rogue revolutionary.

He takes that off the table.

And he even says, the God of glory appeared to our father, Abraham.

You can see he's saying, we are the same people.

You are hearing this, you are placing on trial one of your own.

And I identify with you.

Our father Abraham.

There are two points in this first in this first thing that he says, and these are the two the two aspects of the way that he's telling the story that would make the room feel uncomfortable.

The first is this the God of glory appeared to our father Abraham.

What is it that elicited God to choose Abraham among all the men of all the nations of the world?

Do you know what the Bible says it was, why God chose Abraham?

That's the perfect answer.

It's the perfect answer.

It doesn't say.

Do you know why God chose Abraham out of all the men in the world?

No, you don't.

You don't know.

The reason that God chose Abraham was of his own good pleasure.

What he is placing at the background of this whole story that we must understand in order to interpret it rightly is the work of God in the people of Israel has always been only God's sovereign choice.

That is what it rests upon.

It is from God to them.

That is it.

It is God's choice.

That means that it rests upon his grace alone.

There was nothing within Abraham that drew out of God his election and the mercy and grace that he would place upon him.

It was only from God to Abraham.

This was one direction.

Which reminds me of that band.

It was one direction.

Secondly, what we see in this is that Abraham was called when he was in Mesopotamia.

He's called out of a pagan nation in a pagan land where they were worshiping other gods.

He is called out of his father's house, so he is not worshiping his father's gods.

He has no inheritance that can give him a claim on the one true God.

There is no geographical reason why he would be chosen out of the land.

He's called from from where from Mesopotamia before he lived in Haran.

He's called just out of a random place, from no people.

And that's why he will be made a people.

This is the origin of the faith that they have.

The origin of the faith that they all share in the room, theoretically, the origin of the faith that they ought to share before the Sanhedrin is one of being no people from no place and being called only by the grace of God.

That's fundamentally at the basis, at the beginning of the story, who they are.

Now, verses four through five, it says, Stephen says, God removed him from there into this land in which you are now living.

Yet he gave him no inheritance in it, not even a foot's length, but promised to give it to him as a possession and to his offspring after him, though he had no child.

The land that they are now in, Jerusalem, he was promised by God.

Abraham was promised this land by God, he says.

But look, what did he receive?

What is it that Abraham finally received from the Lord?

Not even a foot's length of the land did he ever own in his lifetime.

He didn't even own a foot's length.

That's very that's small.

Small piece of land.

You'd have to build vertically on a plot of land like that.

I remember one time I and when I was a kid, I heard my um parents like talking about like with my uncle, who was a stockbroker, about like stocks.

They were like buying Disney stock.

And I was like, what does that mean?

Like, what like what does that mean?

They're like, oh, it's kind of like you like own a piece of Disney World.

And I was like, well, which piece?

We should build on it.

We didn't, and I said, and I always I have this like image in my mind of like, there's this little part, you know, of fantasy land.

There's not.

There's not.

He didn't even own a foot's length, not even a little part that he could, even uh however useless it would be.

What did Abraham have?

He had a promise.

That's what Abraham had.

He just had the promise from God.

Look at the narrative that Stephen is developing.

What are we fundamentally as a people?

We are the people who are chosen by God out of no place, and we are given the promise of God, and by our faith in the promise of God, that's what makes us distinct as a people.

That's what Stephen is describing.

And you can feel the room saying, That's that's I know that's not, but that's not really what makes us distinct as a people anymore.

As they look at the temple and they consider the customs of Moses.

And Abraham has this promise and he and he has very little to show for it.

For most of the narrative of Abraham is him waiting for his son to be born, for Isaac to be born.

And he is born miraculously in his old age.

But when he receives the promise, he doesn't have a son, and he doesn't have even a foot's length of the promised land.

Then in verse 6, Stephen highlights how all Abraham has is the promise.

And in verse 6 it says, And God spoke to this effect that his offspring would be sojourners in a land belonging to others who Would enslave them and afflict them 400 years.

So, Stephen describes that all he has is the promise.

And then he reminds them that even the promise that he was given is placed very far away.

That where will this promise begin to be realized?

On the other side of 400 years of enslavement.

So we consider Abraham our father.

And we think, well, what is, and Stephen is saying, well, what does Abraham have?

He's our father.

We are the people of Abraham.

What does he have?

He's got a promise.

And the promise is on the other side of 400 years of slavery.

He doesn't, what does he have to show for this?

Like that, that's great.

You know, I've got a promise for you and your family.

The promise is God's blessing upon your family.

And on the other side of 400 years of enslavement, you will receive a glorious home.

And you think, well, that's great, but they don't really take promises at King Supers.

And that's where a lot of my problems are right now.

It's how expensive food is.

What Abraham had was just a promise.

But the promise becomes attended.

They're made the people of the promise, and the promise is attended by this covenant sign.

The sign of the covenant, which is given to Abraham.

And in Acts 7, 8, it says, And he gave him the covenant of circumcision.

And so Abraham became the father of Isaac and circumcised him on the eighth day.

And Isaac became the father of Jacob, and Jacob of the twelve patriarchs.

They are made the people of the promise.

What is distinct about them?

Is the land that they own distinct about them fundamentally?

No.

They don't even have it.

What's distinct about them is that they are the ones who have been given by God's good pleasure his promises.

How will they remain a people?

It must be by faith alone in the promises of God.

What else do they have?

All that makes them distinct as a people is the grace of God which is given to them in the form of a promise, and faith alone in the grace of God.

One of the wonderful things to think about with regards to Stephen's speech is that Stephen and Paul are from the same hometown.

Pretty wild, huh?

Like, I think I played, you know, soccer against you in high school.

They would say things like that, hometown sort of conversations.

Like that.

They, of course, at this point, the relationship was not so hot because Stephen is being uh on trial before Paul, and when he is stoned, Paul will be in the back of the room watching over the coats of the men who would come in to oversee the stoning of Stephen.

But that means that Paul hears this speech.

Paul hears this speech.

And he hears it as a speech from a man who grew up just like him as a Jew, educated in the same way that he was.

He knows the story.

What Stephen is, is the beginning of Paul's ministry.

That's what we're witnessing here.

We're witnessing Paul's ministry, which is raised up and then cut off and then resurrected in Paul.

That's the way that I think of it.

And I would like all of us to think of it too, as your pastor.

My hope is that we don't all leave and think, oh, James thinks stuff.

I want all of us to think this stuff.

And so I think we ought to interpret these seeds of Stephen's speech as taken up by Paul and made explicit by him in his ministry.

Because look at what put, you can hear this in the background of Stephen's speech.

That they fundamentally, from the beginning, have always been the people of faith in the promises of God.

That's who they've always been.

Listen to how Paul makes this explicit in Romans 4, 11 through 12, also talking about Abraham.

I wonder where he learned this.

He, being Abraham, received the sign of circumcision as a seal of the righteousness that he had by faith while he was still uncircumcised.

The purpose was to make him the father of all who believe without being circumcised, so that righteousness would be counted to them as well.

In verse twelve, and to make him the father of the of the circumcised, who are not merely circumcised, but who also walk in the footsteps of the faith that our father Abraham had before he was circumcised.

Make a connection.

Circumcision is the first sign of the covenant.

You can think of it as the first work associated with covenantal participation.

And what Paul is arguing here is that the reason that Abraham was counted righteous by faith alone before he was circumcised was so that we would all, for all time, fundamentally understand that circumcision does not produce righteousness.

Now circumcision becomes a type of the law and it gets taken up and expanded throughout the history of the people of Israel, so that in the Mosaic covenant, those who are circumcised are able to participate in the God-ordained cultic practices of the Hebrew religion, which are shown in temple worship and the customs of Moses.

So you can hear circumcision is like a stand-in.

It's like you take a part of it to represent the whole.

Circumcision is a stand-in for the temple and for the laws of Moses.

It refers to all of those things.

But what we know because of the story of Abraham is that they are not made the people of God because of circumcision.

They are not made the people of God because of temple worship or because of upholding the customs of the law.

They are made the people of God because of faith alone in the promises of God alone.

Faith alone by the grace of God alone.

That is what makes them the people of God.

So you can imagine how this moved through the room as they considered what makes us the people of God.

It is the temple and the customs of Moses.

If those are threatened, then they are threatening our very status as the people of God.

What Stephen is saying is, those don't make you the people of God.

There is something more fundamental that makes you the people of God.

And it's true, it's evident from the very beginning, because what made Abraham the people of God?

It was the grace alone of God who sought him and chose him out from the nations.

And it was Abraham's faith in that grace alone that made them the people of God.

The temple and the law of Moses, which mark out a distinct people, are not the culmination of the story.

There is a righteousness prior to the temple rites, which has superseded the temple rites in Christ.

So if we're talking about the destruction of the temple and changing the customs of Moses, this is not straying from the covenant promises of God.

This is what Stephen is saying.

He's saying, perhaps I am describing the destruction of the temple, which he is, and the changing of the customs of Moses, not eliminating, but seeing that they are fulfilled in Christ.

Different from the changing that they expected, but a changing, a changing.

What he's saying is, yes, that's true.

But this is no threat to who we are as a people.

This is no threat to the fundamental reality of who we are as God's people, because what's fundamental about us is that we are chosen by God's grace alone, and we receive that by faith alone.

These others can change with no threat to those.

Then he moves in to the story of Joseph.

He moves from the story of Abraham to the story of Joseph.

And what I what I hope you see, what's set up in the story of Abraham, is by grace alone through faith alone.

This is what marks us as the people of God.

And in the story of Joseph, we see he is revealing to the keepers of the law and the keepers of the temple who they are in the story.

As he shows us a type of Christ in Joseph.

So he moves on in chapter 7, verses 9 through 10.

And the patriarchs, jealous of Joseph, sold him into Egypt.

But God was with him.

You remember the Joseph story?

Coat of many colors, technicolor dream coat, depending on your translation.

And the patriarchs, who are his twelve, the twelve sons of eleven, you know, the twelve sons of uh Jacob, Israel, the patriarchs are jealous of Joseph, the child of promise, and they sell him into Egypt.

But God was with him and rescued him out of all his afflictions, and gave him favor and wisdom before Pharaoh, king of Egypt, who made him ruler over Egypt and over all his household.

So the twelve patriarchs turn on Joseph because of jealousy.

They turn on the promised son.

And they turn on him and they sell him into slavery into Egypt, so that he might as well be dead.

But God was with the son that was turned on by his brothers.

And because God was with him, he sees to it that when he was sold into what might as well have been death, he is raised to the status of a king.

Although he was humiliated by his brothers, he is exalted to the status of a king.

And from that place of a status of the king, we can see in verses 14 and 15, and Joseph sent and summoned Jacob his brothers, Jacob his father, and all his kindred, seventy-five persons and all.

And Jacob went down into Egypt, and he died, he and our fathers, but he summoned them so that he might give them food during a famine, so that he might extend to them grace.

Here is the story that we have that Stephen is developing.

It is the very story that Jesus had been proclaiming about this Jesus of Nazareth, who would destroy the temple, rebuild it in three days, and who would fulfill the customs of Moses.

That's the story that Stephen is on trial for telling.

And he is telling it here.

He's saying, look at your own history.

Do you not understand this is the very story that you are in now?

This is the story of Jesus, who is the chosen son, just like Joseph was.

Do you know who you are in the story?

You're the patriarchs.

You're the Israelites, the sons of Israel.

And what did they do to the chosen son?

They sold him out.

Joseph is sold to the Egyptians.

Jesus is sold to the Gentiles.

So that he might be murdered.

But it is the final Joseph's story.

It is the maximal version of Joseph's story that we find in Jesus Christ.

Because he is not merely sold into slavery, he is sold into death.

And he is really killed.

He is really buried.

Joseph finds himself in a pit in prison.

Jesus finds himself in a grave.

This is the maximal Joseph story.

And he is really exalted, not to the place of a king of one great empire, but he is raised to King of Kings, Lord of Lords.

All authority in heaven and on earth is given to Jesus Christ.

And what does he do with that authority?

He extends grace and mercy to the very people who killed him.

That is the story that Stephen has been telling.

And when he tells the story of Joseph, with the backdrop of his preaching in the name of Jesus of Nazareth, what he is saying is, you think you are Joseph in that story.

The reality is you are the brothers of Joseph.

And what you have here, Sanhedrin, is an opportunity to come to the Son who might save you, who you killed.

But the one you killed is your only hope of grace.

Just like Joseph, the one that they sold into slavery, was their only hope of food, of surviving the famine, is the one that they killed, so to speak.

Such is the case for them now.

Now, this is a long history, and you can tell he's just told a history.

And you might expect the Sanhedrin to step in and say, Stephen, we know.

We know this history.

We know the story that you're telling us.

Defend yourself against this accusation.

Defend your life is on the line, Stephen.

Defend yourself against the accusation that you that Jesus will destroy the temple and that the customs of Moses will be changed.

But can't you hear it?

This is exactly what Stephen has been doing.

Stephen is showing them that the customs of Moses, that the temple itself, that there is something more fundamental than these.

There is something broader than these, more all-encompassing that has taken place in the historical event of Jesus' death and resurrection.

He is showing them that there is a deeper magic.

One that they had forgotten.

What they had forgotten is that the temple and the customs of Moses mean nothing apart from faith in the promise of God.

They mean nothing apart from faith in the promise of God.

What they had mistaken, the mistake that they had made, is that they looked at the practices of the temple and they considered these are sufficient to save us.

They looked at the customs of Moses and they considered these are sufficient for us to be marked as the people of God and to receive salvation from Him.

But they were not sufficient.

How do we know that they were not sufficient?

Because they weren't even, we we know they weren't even necessary.

Because Abraham was counted righteous by faith before they were even there.

So that if these if these practices of temple worship, if this distinction as being the people of God is what your hope of salvation is in, you are already cursed, you are already doomed.

You've missed what your true hope of salvation is, which is in faith in the promise of God, which is given to you by grace alone.

They had forgotten that the distinctions which they had held as so important were not distinctions which are fundamentally there.

Yes, they are chosen as the people of God, but what were they chosen out of?

They were chosen out of nothing, out of being no people, out of being ordinary Mesopotamian pagans, which if you've met one, you'd forget 20 minutes later.

Because you'd think that's just an ordinary Mesopotamian pagan, another one of those.

That's who they are.

What does this mean?

Why is this such a threat?

What is the what is the argument?

What is the dangerous argument that Stephen is asserting here?

All that was promised in the temple has been satisfied in Jesus Christ, the true promised son.

All that was required in the law of Moses has been fulfilled in Jesus Christ.

Now he is calling people from all nations to himself.

And if he is calling people from all nations to himself, then this is a complete reorganization of what it means to be the people of God.

But if you heard Stephen's story, you might think, is it a complete reorganization of what it means to be the people of God?

Hasn't God from the beginning been calling people from no nation out of obscurity into the kingdom of God?

If you heard Stephen's story, you would think this is exactly the way that God would do it.

This is exactly what Stephen has said is precisely the way that God has been doing it, and he has merely fulfilled what these promises are.

The temple served as a temporary tutor for us.

And what have we learned from the temple?

That from uh from seeking to adhere to the customs of Moses, from seeking to cleanse ourselves by temple worship, we have learned we can't.

We can't.

We need a greater sacrifice.

And Stephen is saying the greater sacrifice has come in Jesus Christ.

There is nothing that you can do to make yourself righteous before God.

You must understand this.

There is nothing that you can do to make yourself righteous before God.

Nothing.

The very things which God commanded his people to do, the very law of God which he gave them was insufficient to make his people righteous before God.

What hope then do you have?

What hope do you have?

Here is your only hope in life and in death.

Your only hope is that Jesus' sacrifice was sufficient for you.

That by his grace alone, he would come into the world to atone for your sins, to choose you out of obscurity.

Now, how might you receive that?

How might you receive this grand promise of God that's been shown to us in Jesus Christ?

It is by faith alone.

By faith alone, by trust in his promises.

That's the way it always has been.

It's that free.

And then by that faith alone, you are enlivened so that you might adhere to the life-giving law of God.

But if you use the law of God to justify yourself before him in any way, you will find that you are dead in your trespasses and sins.

That's why Stephen gives a history lesson.

That's why you cannot tell the story of Christianity.

You cannot reduce Christianity to its moral or ethical claims, stripping it of its historical reality.

If you do, you have no Christianity.

If you do, you are dead in your trespasses and sins before God.

But here's the good news: Jesus really came.

He really sits in the heavens now, ruling and reigning.

He really offers this hope to you.

That you can come to him and kiss the Son and be saved.

And if you don't, you will perish.

But your hope is only in him.

That he, on your behalf, historically, it re it happened, paid the penalty for your sin.

So that by faith in him you might be saved.

That's why it's news.

That's why we tell the history.

This is our hope.

This is our hope.

Why?

So why us, this church, why are we a people?

By faith in the promise of the Son.

We come to the Son that we might be saved.

We are made a people by that.

This is Stephen's argument.

And there's more to come.

There's more to come as his speech continues, but this is the center of the glorious argument of Stephen, that we are saved by faith alone, in the grace of God alone, and we have news of its accomplishment in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Let's pray.

Father, we pray that you would help us grasp the historical reality of our forgiveness of sins.

Lord, that when we seek to reduce Christianity to its moral code, to a moral code or to an alternative lifestyle, Lord, and we neglect the center of our faith, being faith in your promises.

Hope that you care for us.

Trust in the generosity that you have shown to us by forgiving us of our sins, although at great cost to yourself, in the sacrifice of your son towards us.

Lord, let us consider our life before you, that he who did not spare his own son, but delivered him up for us all, how will he not also with him freely give us all things?

How could we have a hope to receive all things, Lord, if we don't fundamentally trust and know and believe in our hearts that you really did give your son, that that really happened.

Lord, this is our only hope.

Because our sins we know really happen.

And we understand that our righteousness is insufficient.

Lord, give us faith in you.

Strengthen our faith in you.

I pray that we would hear and understand the grace of God in truth.

That when our minds and hearts wander elsewhere to anything else that might justify us in your sight, that is not the blood of Jesus, that you, by your spirit, would correct us in our hearts to turn to the blood of Jesus, that we might be cleansed in your presence once again.

We lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.