The Promise: Absolute Because of the Savior

Series: Acts
March 18, 2018
Acts 7:44-8:1
George Robertson

In this portion of Acts, Stephen has been taken into custody by the religious leaders. Stephen was a new deacon in the early church and had refused to stop spreading the good news about Jesus Christ. Eventually, he is tried and killed tragically by the end of this passage. By slowing down and focusing on this passage more deeply, we've reminded ourselves that the whole Bible is about Christ. God is fulfilling his promise to be our God and to make us his people despite our location (site), despite our sufferings, and despite our sin. Here, Luke makes this point very clearly that God fulfills all of his promises through this savior - Jesus Christ. 

 

The whole Bible can only be understood through Christ. In fact, this also shows us that all of history can only be understood through Christ. The whole creation is held together by Christ. Your life only makes sense in Christ. You may understand very well that something's missing in your life. You're feeling the absence of something, a longing that can't be satisfied. You vacillate between shear boredom and a few moments of ecstasy, but there is something missing in your life. The reason is because Jesus Christ is not the center of your life. 

 

The great historian, Kenneth Scott Latourette, was elected to be the president of the American Historical in 1940 and in his inaugural address, he said to all of these historians, believers and non-believers alike, "the whole course of history is about God's pursuit of man...the whole course of history is about God's search for man to save him and to make his life flourish." We see part of that story here in Acts 7. 

 

We have a problem that is as old as humanity itself. It's called sin, and it has estranged us from God. If we're going to be saved, we need a savior who has been in the saving business at least as long as we have been in trouble. The Bible reveals that God, in his heart, has slain Christ, the lamb of God, from the foundation of the world. Christ has been redeeming for as long as there has been humankind. That is the savior you need. It's the savior that is revealed in this passage. You need him not only initially. You need him every day. Jesus has proven to be exactly the savior we need. 


Fulfills (44-50)

First of all, he shows us that he is the savior we need because he fulfills our need, and he also fulfills everything that was prophesied of him in the Old Testament. The reason the Bible is so long and the reason it took so long for Jesus to come is that God had to reveal to us over that long a period of time all that was wrong with us. It took him hundreds and hundreds of years to unfold just how many things are wrong with us, because we have rebelled against him. So, when Christ finally appears, we're able to say, "that is exactly the savior I need!" He has fulfilled every need that we have. 

 

Stephen makes that point in several places in this long sermon. He begins in the early verses of Acts 7 with the story of Abraham. Then he shows us that Abraham was far away in a pagan place and God called to him and God made him righteous. The Bible says, "he believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness" (Gen. 15:6). He just received it. The only way he could become righteous was to receive it as a gift. It does not say that he answered God's call and God made him righteous. It does not say that because he obeyed, God made him righteous. It does not even say that because he put Isaac on the altar that God made him righteous. It says simply that he "believed." He gave up on his own efforts to make himself righteous. He effectively said to God, "unless you do it for me, I can't become righteous." 

 

God also taught through Joseph, one who would come later, that it would be one man who save the world. It would be one man who would stand in the gap and save the world from eternal famine, just like Joseph did in the days of Egypt. Jesus has done this for us in a spiritual sense. 

 

He also describes Moses, the giver of the law. He gave us the Ten Commandments of how we're to live if life is to go well with us. By giving the sacrifices, God shows us that we can’t live that way because we would continue to disobey his commands. The sacrifices would never be enough, because we would keep on sinning. He drives us to the end of ourselves with this passage and others that we needed someone like Moses, someone to be a mediator and make a sacrifice for us and emancipate us from our slavery to sin. 

 

In this portion of our text, Stephen describes the tabernacle, or the temple, the Old Testament place of worship. The tabernacle was just a tent that traveled around with the people of God. And they had a high priest there that would offer special sacrifices for them. Other priests would offer sacrifices on a daily basis. Once a year they would offer a very special sacrifice on the day of atonement. There's a lot of things we could say about the tabernacle. But for the purposes of this study, I want to talk about the very center of the tabernacle called the Holy of Holies. There's a golden box there called the Ark of the Covenant, which is a representation of the perfect holiness of God - his presence. Outside of that, there's an altar. 

 

By the architecture of that temple, God taught his people something. If you try to come to the Holy of Holies, you ran into an altar. You had to offer a sacrifice and the blood symbolized what your sin costs. But you couldn't go any farther. Not just because of that altar, but because in between you and that holy place where God dwelt was a thick curtain. Only the high priest could go there once a year if he offered the proper sacrifice, first for himself and then for others. There was always a risk that he would do something wrong and God would kill him and they'd have to drag him out with a rope. Through this, God was teaching the people that God is holy and we can't dwell in his presence in our own righteousness. 

 

He was also teaching them this through the tabernacle: that he was in pursuit of them. He was always present. He was pursuing them when they were running from him. He was pursuing them when they were sinning. He was pursuing them when they didn't want to worship. He was pursuing them when they did want to worship. God was in their midst, and someday he would come visibly in their midst in the person of Jesus Christ. 

 

Ernest Gordon was a chaplain for Princeton College for 50 years. Before that, he was an officer in the Scottish military in World War II. He was captured by the Japanese, who took him to a concentration camp and he was forced to build "The Death Railway," or the Burmese Railway. His particular responsibility was to work with the crew that was building the bridge over the River Kwai. His autobiography is called Miracle on the River Kwai, or To End All Wars later. 

Ernest went into that camp an agnostic. After he'd experienced the evil of that camp, he became an even more hardened atheist. Eventually, his body broke down and he was put into what they called the "death house" to die. There were two Christians in the camp, one named Dusty, one named Dinty. One was a Methodist and the other was a Roman Catholic. They both went to him in the name of Jesus and built a lean-to over him to shelter him from the sun. They made his bed as comfortable as possible. They bathed his sores and treated them with whatever ointment they had. They did this every day in the name of Jesus.

 

He could not believe their kindness.  He wondered what lay behind it.  When he developed the strength, he decided to test them. Reflecting on the death and hopelessness of the camp, he said to one, “When you look at the facts, isn’t it hard to see any point in living?” His friend, Dusty, said he disagreed, “I don’t think there is anything accidental about our creation. God knows us.  He knows about the sparrow and each hair of our heads. He has a purpose for us.”  Gordon challenged, “Then why doesn’t he do something, instead of sitting quiescently on a great big white throne in the no-place called heaven?” Dusty, wisely answered, “Maybe he does . . . maybe he does. . . but we can’t see everything he is doing now. Maybe our vision isn’t very good at this point, ‘for here we see as in a glass darkly.’ I suppose eventually we shall see and when we see we shall understand.”[1]

 

Ernest Gordon ultimately could not reject the gospel any longer, not just because of the words spoken to him but because Christ had shown up in his midst. Christ's presence was with him through those men. Just like the tabernacle in the wilderness and just like the incarnation of Christ, Christ brought those men into his life and they led him to Christ. Eventually, a revival broke out in the whole concentration camp. They developed a defiant hope. They started worshipping, developing various churches. They started a library. They started university classes. They made prostheses for amputee victims. They even started an orchestra. It drove their captors crazy and eventually, they crucified Dusty. Even so, they could not extinguish these men because Christ had come into their camp.  

 

Offends (51-53)

Jesus is willing to offend you, if it means your salvation. That's what Stephen tells his hearers in the rest of his sermon. He tells them what they don't want to hear. He begins not exactly making friends: “You stiff-necked people, uncircumcised in heart and ears, you always resist the Holy Spirit" (51). Stephen enumerates three things that they were doing that you might be doing yourself. 

 

First, he says "you reject the Holy Spirit." Every person born in this world is born into a covenant relationship with God - we bear his image. And when you were born, God stamped on your conscience that you are created in his image and that you live in his creation. He also stamps on your conscience the Ten Commandments. Now you may say you don't believe in the Ten Commandments. You might believe that everyone should seek their own way. You might even say that all truth is acceptable. But what if somebody steals your car? Would you get upset about that? Of course! Because you know that stealing is wrong. You can't shake the witness of the Holy Spirit. 

 

This is why you get so angry when somebody shares the gospel with you. The Holy Spirit is bearing witness on the outside with the witness he's bearing on the inside. That's why you make fun of that kid in your locker room who's sharing the gospel with you or that kid on the basketball team or that person at work. You shun that person because you want to get them away from you. You're rejecting the Holy Spirit. 

 

Secondly, you may try to shut people down just like these religious leaders did. Stephen says, "you, like your fathers, killed them because they tell you what you don't want to hear." They're telling you that there's something wrong with you - that you're a broken sinner who needs to be redeemed and reconciled to your heavenly father. You don't want to hear that. You prefer the message that tells you that everything you do is just fine. You have a loving God who comes and tells you you're not fine. You're estranged from him and as long as you are, you'll never be fulfilled. 

 

Thirdly, you can't deny this law that's imprinted on your conscience either. Stephen, in effect, says, "you rejected the law of Moses. You select what you like and judge other people with it" (35). Those parts of the law that are convicting to you, you reject because you recognize you can't keep them, and when you recognize you can't keep the law it drives you to the end of yourself. To be driven to the end of yourself forces you to accept that you need a savior. You must confess that you are as desperate and needy as the Bible says you are. 

 

Forgives (54-60)

The final thing we must see in this passage is that Jesus forgives. Jesus forgives every sin, even the sin of murder. First of all, notice this very endearing thing that happens for Stephen from Christ. When Christ made the final sacrifice, he sat down at the right hand of God. It's called the "session of Christ." He sat down because there is no other sacrifice to be made. But here, the curtain of Heaven is opened and Stephen sees Jesus standing. Why? Because Jesus was fulfilling the promise that he makes in Matthew 10: "He who acknowledges me before the world, I will acknowledge before my father" (32). Jesus was standing up, looking down from Heaven to Stephen his son to say, "I am proud of you. You've almost made it. Hang on to the very end."

 

With that vision of a loving Christ, Stephen not only boldly proclaims the gospel, he also audaciously prays that God would forgive the sins of his murderers. One of those murderers was named Saul. He was the one at whose feet they laid their robes. He was the one who approved of the execution. This is the Saul who goes on to become Paul. 

 

If you doubt that Jesus can forgive your sins, look at Paul. How many Christians have you killed just this week? You could never equal what Paul had done to the church: dragging people from their houses, executing them and putting them in prison. "Forgive them," Stephen said. Because he could see Jesus, it didn't matter what was happening to him. He could say, "forgive them." Jesus answered his prayer. This is a gospel worth dying for. 

 

In 1986, when my wife, Jackie, and I were still dating and in college, we were able to work at Billy Graham's International Conference for Itinerant Evangelists. Graham brought 8,500 evangelists in from all over the world in order to train them to do their work better. There were 2,500 evangelists in one dormitory. They were mostly from African countries. One group especially caught my attention when I had duties there - the Masai Warriors. They were tall, elegant, handsome men with beautiful voices. They still had scars from their initiation rites as well as their battles. 

 

One of those members of the Masai tribe asked to meet with Billy Graham, as many people were. So, one of the executives for the Billy Graham Association was responsible for vetting those who really needed to meet with Billy Graham for particular encouragement. This executive surmised that Joseph, this member of the Masai Warriors, had a story that Dr. Graham really needed to hear. 

 

One day Joseph, who was walking along one of these hot, dirty African roads, met someone who shared the gospel of Jesus Christ with him. Then and there he accepted Jesus as his Lord and Saviour. The power of the Spirit began transforming his life; he was filled with such excitement and joy that the first thing he wanted to do was return to his own village and share that same Good News with the members of his local tribe.

Joseph began going from door-to-door, telling everyone he met about the Cross of Jesus and the salvation it offered, expecting to see their faces light up the way his had. To his amazement the villagers not only didn’t care, they became violent. The men of the village seized him and held him to the ground while the women beat him with strands of barbed wire. He was dragged from the village and left to die alone in the bush.

 

Joseph somehow managed to crawl to a waterhole, and there, after days of passing in and out of consciousness, found the strength to get up. He wondered about the hostile reception he had received from people he had known all his life. He decided he must have left something out or told the story of Jesus incorrectly. After rehearsing the message he had first heard, he decided to go back and share his faith once more.

 

Joseph limped into the circle of huts and began to proclaim Jesus. 'He died for you, so that you might find forgiveness and come to know the living God,' he pleaded. Again he was grabbed by the men of the village and held while the women beat him reopening wounds that had just begun to heal. Once more they dragged him unconscious from the village and left him to die.

 

To have survived the first beating was truly remarkable. To live through the second was a miracle. Again, days later, Joseph awoke in the wilderness, bruised, scarred—and determined to go back.

 

He returned to the small village and this time, they attacked him before he had a chance to open his mouth. As they flogged him for the third and probably the last time, he again spoke to them of Jesus Christ, the Lord. Before he passed out, the last thing he saw was that the women who were beating him began to weep.

 

This time he awoke in his own bed. The ones who had so severely beaten him were now trying to save his life and nurse him back to health. The entire village had come to Christ.[2]

 

Joseph was saying something that was just too good to be true. They couldn't believe that Jesus could forgive you of all your sins until they had seen him come back in forgiveness of their sins and preach the same message. 

 

This is the same gospel you have been given. The gospel that Jesus has fulfilled all of your needs. Even if it offends your sensibilities, you must trust it. 

 

 

 

 

 

[1] Ernest Gordon, To End All Wars (Grand Rapids:  Zondervan, 2002), 107-08.

[2] Michael Card, "Wounded in the House of Friends," Virtue [March/April 1991], pp. 28-29, 69.

 

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