Stephen's Powerful Sermon, Part 1

Acts 7:1-16

     Turn in your Bibles to the seventh chapter of the Book of Acts.  This morning, I have a rather difficult duty, and that is that the sermon in chapter 7 is 53 verses long.  And I am in no way going to attempt to go through it all.  And yet it is extremely hard to break it up, and I say that because it is meant to be a unit.  It is total.  Stephen was starting somewhere, going somewhere, and he got there, with a fantastic impact.  In fact, so dynamic was his sermon that when he had come to the conclusion, before he could even speak the conclusion, they had killed them, they were in such a frenzy.

     And so the sermon is a powerful thing, and, really, to do justice to this, I feel that we should just have really had a three-hour sermon today and just brought your lunch and just made a day of it.  Because this is a total thing.  And it's going to be very difficult for me to begin to really bring you some concrete conclusions, just by virtue of the fact that we're not going to get past verse 16, which, as you know, is quite an achievement in itself, even, starting in verse 1.

     But we do want you to consider carefully, and this morning is not so much preaching as it is teaching.  I want you to learn what it is that he's saying in this passage.  And it may be three weeks before we can pull it together.  But I know God will enrich our hearts, because it is His truth, and every verse within it is meat and food for our soul.

     So we come to chapter 7, and the classic and great, powerful sermon of the man Stephen, as he defends his faith before the council of Israel.  Peter said, "Be ready always to give an answer to every man that asks you regarding the hope that is within you."  Peter was right.  The effective Christian, the Christian who really meets the world with the gospel and really communicates and really makes an impression is the one who can give to every man who asks reasons for what he believes.  And I dare say there are many Christians who believe but haven't got the faintest idea why they believe.  And they find themselves wandering in and out of great periods of doubt.

     There is a subject with which all Christian students are familiar, and that is the subject of apologetics.  Apologetics is the subject of information that defends the faith.  It is a study of defending the faith.  In Acts 25:16, the word "apologia," from which we get apologetic and which has deteriorated to an apology, which is an excuse for something, but the word from which we get apologetics or a defense of the faith is the word apologia, which means a speech in defense of it, is used on several occasions in the New Testament.

     In Acts, chapter 25, verse 16, Paul, before Agrippa, says that "I have the right to give an apologia."  In other words, "I have a right to defend myself, to defend my faith."  In Acts 22:1, Paul stands before the unruly mob at Jerusalem and he gives an apologia of his faith.  He defends what he believes. 

     In Philippians, chapter 1, in verse 7, hear what he says.  "Even as it is right for me to think of you, because I have you in my heart, inasmuch as both in my bonds and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel, ye all are partakers of my grace."  Paul viewed his ministry as an offensive confirmation of the gospel and a defensive defense of the gospel.  He saw himself as on the offense and on the defense, defending what he believed and being aggressive in its propagation. 

     But there was a great defender of the faith even before Paul.  We always think of Paul as the great contender for the faith, but there was another, and his name was Stephen.  And his defense was so scintillating, and his defense was so apt, and his defense was so dynamic, that the people who heard him were swept along in the emotion of it all until they lost control of themselves and stoned him.

     Stephen had been charged with four kinds of blasphemy.  He had been charged with blasphemy against God, Moses, the law and the Temple, the most sacred things in the mind of any Jew.  And he had to answer the charge.  But he knew what he believed, and he knew why he believed it.  And he answered it.  And I think it's important to notice that he answered the charge with Scripture.  He defended the faith not in vagaries of philosophy, not in logic, but in verbal testimony to the Scripture.  And he even quotes it repeatedly verbatim, which shows something of what he must've known about Scripture.

     The apostle Paul, in Acts 17:2, regarding him, it says this.  "And Paul, as his manner was, went in unto them and three Sabbath Days reasoned with them out of the Scriptures."  Defending the faith involves being able to sit down, communicate your faith and defend it.  Jude 3 says, "Don't only defend the faith.  Contend for the faith."  After you've defended it, fight for it.  There's nothing worse than defending the faith and then, when somebody starts shooting at you, take it apart again and back down.  First we defend it and then we contend for it.

     Stephen was that kind of man.  He knew what he believed.  He knew why he believed it.  He defended it.  And then he staked his life on it, and he died for it. 

     Now, as we come to chapter 7, let's get a little background before we jump into this sermon.  The early church has accomplished the initial goal that our Lord gave to it, which was the goal of reaching Jerusalem.  The Lord said in Acts 1:8 that "You are to be my witnesses in Jerusalem." 

     By the end of chapter 5, they had already...or at the end of chapter 4, really, they had already begun to accomplish this.  In chapter 5, verse 28, it simply says, "And behold they have...you have filled Jerusalem with your doctrine and intend to bring this man's blood on us."  And the Jewish leaders had said, "Your doctrine fills Jerusalem."  They had accomplished phase one of the evangelization of the world with the gospel.

     It was now time for operation number two, which was Judea and Samaria, moving out from Jerusalem.  Now, Stephen became the key to this thrust, for many reasons.  In the first place, they needed to get better organized in order to step out.  The church was falling into some internal problems because they weren't structured right, so in chapter 6 they got organized.  They chose seven spirit-filled men to handle the business of the church so the apostles could be free to preach and to pray.  One of those seven, the first one listed in Acts, chapter 6, in verse 5, was a man named Stephen, full of faith, full of the Holy Spirit, full of grace, full of power.  Quite a man.

     And so Stephen was important to the progress of the church because he was taking over responsibility that freed the church to go.  Secondly, he was important because he was a preacher, a New Testament prophet, and he preached to foreign Jews.  So he began to extend this from the Palestine Jews to the Hellenist, or Grecian, Jews, who would come into Jerusalem.  He went to their synagogues, as it's indicated in verse 9 of chapter 6, "the synagogue of the Libertines, Cyrenians, Alexandrians, them of Cilicia and Asia."  So Philip began...Stephen began to move out to these various kinds of foreign Jewish assemblies.  And in this sense he was stretching the gospel past just Jerusalem.

     There was another reason that he was a catalyst to the extension of the gospel, and that was because of his execution.  When he died, immediately following his death, chapter 8, verse 1 says, "And Saul was consenting unto his death.  And at that time there was a great persecution against the church which was at Jerusalem."  The death of Stephen precipitated the persecution of the church.  And, as you know, when the church gets persecuted, the church gets going. 

     And so the persecution came, and immediately they were all scattered abroad throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria, which is right on target, right on schedule, exactly where God wanted them to go.  Phase two begins to move.  And it isn't because God sent them out there directly.  It's because the people in Jerusalem started persecuting them and they fled to those places.

     Then verse 4 of 8 says this.  "Therefore they that were scattered abroad went everywhere preaching the Word."  So the catalyst to get the church rolling was Stephen, from several viewpoints.  He was also very important, as we saw last time, as a transition into the ministry of Paul, for he was the first one who went to minister in Jewish synagogues that were foreign synagogues.  Even though they were still in Jerusalem, they belonged to Jews who were foreign in where they lived, but they migrated to Jerusalem from time to time, met in their own synagogues. 

     Now, you'll know that the apostle Paul, as we just read in Acts 17:2, as was his custom, always went to the synagogue.  So Stephen is also in that same kind of pattern, a forerunner to the apostle Paul.  So he's a very important man, and he is definitely a catalyst for the extension of the church.

     Now, because of his irresistible wisdom and the spirit of the man, just the way he handled himself and the way he proclaimed what he believed, he was unanswerable.  In a debate, he came out on top, even though he was probably up against some of the finest minds in that part of the world, maybe even including a man named Saul, who later became the apostle Paul.  But he was struggling with these minds, and he came out on top.  And verse 10 of chapter 6 says, "They were not able to resist the wisdom and the spirit," small s, "by which he spoke."  In other words, the man, in terms of knowledge and delivery, was too much to handle.  He could defend himself.

     Now, when you can't win the argument, then you slander the opponent.  Right?  And so immediately they started slandering, and they got some false witnesses to accuse him of blasphemy.  And they said, "He has blasphemed in four areas.  He blasphemed God, Moses, the law and the Temple."  And those are the big four in Israel.  You don't fool around with any of those. 

     Stephen had blasphemed none of them.  He had merely shown that Jesus Christ was the fulfillment of all of the things that those...that the law and Moses and the Temple had looked forward to, that Christ was the fulfillment of what they had been looking for and waiting for.  But they twisted it around, turned it into a kind of an insurrectionist attitude, a revolutionary attitude, and accused him of these four things.

     So in chapter 7, Stephen begins and concludes a great speech in defense of what he said.  And he answers the accusations of blasphemy.  Now, I want you to watch this, because I can't really preach this to you.  I'm just going to have to teach it to you, because it's just a lot of interesting and exciting facts as we go through.  So hang in there, get your brain in gear and don't wander off.  It'll be painless, I assure you.

     All right, so Stephen is in this, dominantly defending himself against the charges of blasphemy.  You've got that.  File that one away somewhere in your frontal lobe, because that's probably where it's stored.  Not that I know, but I'm guessing.  But, anyway, store that thought.  He is defending himself against the charges of blasphemy. 

     Now, at the same time that he's doing that, he's doing some other things, and we must see these things.  This is a masterpiece of a sermon, because he accomplishes four things at the same time.  First of all, as I just said, he is defending himself against the charges of blasphemy, and he does this in a dynamic way.  He makes direct reference to the fact that he believes in God, Moses, he sees the significance of the law and the Temple.  He agrees with all of that in Jewish history. 

     He establishes the fact that he is an Israelite, that he believes all of this, that he is not blaspheming.  That's important, and that's the main thing that he is doing, is defending himself against their charges.  And he really gives a defense that all Christians can use for all time against the charges of Israel that we are not true to the true God and to His economy, as established in Israel.

     But he does three other things.  Watch this.  Second thing he does is he knows that if he is going to be defending himself, he's got to maintain their interest.  In other words, he's got to make his speech exciting, and he's got to make it so that he can capture their attention and not lose it.  And so he knows what to do. 

     The Jews had a favorite subject.  It was their very favorite subject over every other subject.  You know what it was?  Themselves.  They loved it.  And they loved the recitation, not their personal selves, but they loved the recitation of their own history, and Jews do today.  And I think, because, you see, the Jew believed that his salvation was in his inheritance.  That's Romans 2.  That's the whole argument.  They believed that it was because of their ancestry that they were saved.  You see?  They believed they were saved just because they were from Abraham's loins. 

     And so the Jewish history was the whole game, boy, that was everything.  And they were forever and ever going back to Moses and Abraham and Jacob and Isaac and the greats of the Old Testament.  See?  They attached themselves constantly to all of these figures.  These were sacred people.  And their whole life was based upon what Moses said, or what some great rabbi said in qualification or explanation of Moses.  And it was a constant cycle of identifying with history. 

     And, you see, they lived after all the traditions.  All along, they maintained a very little change.  Hundreds of years went by, and there were very few changes, because they were locked to a system that was based on historical revelation.  So the recitation of Jewish history was just really ringing their chimes.

     But he not only wanted to hold their attention and defend himself, he wanted to do a third thing, and every good preacher wants to do this.  He wanted to indict them for being sinful.  And he does that at the same time, too.  It's a masterpiece.  At the very same time, he builds one of the most fantastic indictments that you'll ever read anywhere in Scripture.  And he does it very deftly and very subtly, almost without notice, until when it finally climaxes they get the message so loud and clear that they kill him. 

     And that's why I say, since we'll never get to that today, you're going to be left somewhat hanging.  But maybe you'll know you'll want to come back and find out how it all turns out.  No fair reading ahead.  No, I can't say that, either, because you're supposed to read the Bible.  Well, anyway, I hope you don't understand what you read.  Okay?

     The third thing, then, what he wants to do is he wants to indict the people for sin.  And he does it, as I say, very, very subtly.  There's a fourth thing he wants to do, and every effective sermon must do this.  He wants to present Messiah.  Now, if you were to sit down...if I, as a preacher, were to sit down and say, "I want to do four things:  keep their attention, defend myself against the charges, then I want to be sure that I indict them for sin and also present the Messiah," that would be very difficult to do in one fell swoop, frankly.  But Stephen does it absolutely masterfully.

     Now, you'll watch as we go through this, and you'll see how all of these things are woven together so beautifully by Stephen.  And it doesn't really fully focus.  It's like a...it's like looking through the binoculars when they're a little bit out of focus, and all of a sudden you come to verses 51, 52 and 53, and it's sharp.  And he gets the reaction.  But he's building.

     Now, let's view this thing from the standpoint of his defense, which is the dominating theme.  He is going to defend himself, you want to look at that little outline you have, against God, Moses, the law and the Temple, against being accused of blaspheming those four areas.  Now, of course, the first thing to defend himself against is blasphemy against God.  In verse 11 of chapter 6, they had hired men to perjure themselves and give false testimony against him, and they said that he has been blaspheming Moses and God.

     Now, so Stephen must then begin by establishing the fact that he believes in God, and that he's no blasphemer of God.  And he does it.  This is the severest accusation.  He must prove that he believes in God.  Now, watch this.  He must also prove that the God in whom he believes is the God of Israel.  Right?  He must establish that Christianity is not heresy, it is fulfillment.  It is not something new that destroys something old.  It is something new that fulfills something old.  And so he must believe in the same God, and he must define God in the same terms.  So there's only one God.

     But, you know, it's been a historic problem with Judaism that they have really always felt that Christians never believe in the same God they believe in.  They've always felt that we have tried to destroy the true God. 

     I don't know if you saw that little article in the Times a week ago, "Rabb