Stephen’s Address Before the Sanhedrin (Acts 7)

Prepared and preached by Pastor Steve Rhodes for and at Bethel Friends Church in Poland, OH on Sunday, June 23, 2024

We are now in Acts chapter 7.

Remember that in the previous chapter of Acts, Stephen, the new deacon, was arrested. Stephen had been witnessing in his sphere of influence, and the people made up lies about him. They dragged him before the Jewish high court and put him on trial. In one way, Stephen is on trial. In another way, God is putting the Sanhedrin on trial. God is at work, even when we do not realize it.

How many of you have been affected by Christianity? Raise your hands if you have been affected or influenced by Christianity. Everyone, really everyone, whether you are a Christian or not, should have their hand raised. This all happened because of the martyr of Stephen. We are going to look at that today. We, as a church made up mostly of non-Jewish descendants, as far as we know, are here because of the aftermath of Stephen’s death. Sometimes we must wonder what God is doing, right? But sometimes we cannot know until a long time afterward. We live in the moment. This is true whether we plan or not, it has to be true. We must ask God to let us see the big picture and know that only God knows the big picture. Only God knows all and is not limited by time. We must think deeply and ask God to help us with a heavenly, spiritual, vision of reality. Swindoll gives a good illustration:

We are running shy of eagles, and we’re running over with parrots.

Content to sit safely on our evangelical perches and repeat in rapid-fire falsetto our religious words, we are fast becoming overpopulated with bright-colored birds having soft bellies, big beaks, and little heads. What would help to balance things out would be a lot more keen-eyed, wide-winged creatures willing to soar out and up, exploring the illimitable ranges of the kingdom of God . . . willing to return with a brief report on their findings before they leave the nest again for another fascinating adventure.

Parrot people are much different than eagle thinkers. They like to stay in the same cage, pick over the same pan full of seeds, and listen to the same words over and over again until they can say them with ease. They like company too. Lots of attention, a scratch here, a snuggle there, and they’ll stay for years right on the same perch. You and I can’t remember the last time we saw one fly. Parrots like the predictable, the secure, the strokes they get from their mutual admiration society.

Not eagles. There’s not a predictable pinion in their wings! They think. They love to think. They are driven with this inner urge to search, to discover, to learn. And that means they’re courageous, tough-minded, willing to ask the hard questions as they bypass the routine in vigorous pursuit of the truth. The whole truth. “The deep things of God”—fresh from the Himalayan heights, where the thin air makes thoughts pure and clear—rather than the tired, worn distillations of humanity. And unlike the intellectually impoverished parrot, eagles take risks getting their food because they hate anything that comes from a small dish of picked-over seeds . . . it’s boring, dull, repetitious, and dry.

Although rare, eagles are not completely extinct in the historic skies of the church. Thomas Aquinas was one, as were Augustine and Bunyan, Wycliffe and Huss. So were G. K. Chesterton, C. S. Lewis, Robert Dick Wilson, J. Gresham Machen, W. R. Nicoll, and A. W. Tozer.

Many of the reformers qualify, as do John Newton, George Whitefield, and a long line of nonconformists—original thinkers whose lives were interwoven through the treasured tapestry of the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries.

And in our day? We could name some . . . but they are increasingly rarer, as the “Entertain Me” philosophy of the public outshouts those who plead, “Make me think!”

Have you fallen prey to a similar mind-set? Do you find yourself contentedly sitting on your perch, pecking at dry morsels rather than longing for the skies? Think about it.[1]

1. Summary of Stephen’s message:
   1. I am now going to briefly summarize Acts chapter 7:1-8:4 and then highlight a few applications from the overall passage. I want you to notice the boldness of Stephen. I wish to show you the wisdom, insight, and spiritual leading of Stephen. I wish to challenge all of us to be prepared to speak as Stephen was prepared. I wish to encourage you that God is at work.
   2. Acts 7:1-8: High Priest confirms the crime; the beginning of Stephen’s defense; the promise to Abraham
   3. Acts 7:9-10: Joseph is exalted over Egypt
   4. Acts 7:11-16: The Patriarchs end up in Egypt
   5. Acts 7:17-29: Moses is introduced
   6. Acts 7:30-34: Moses encounters God
   7. Acts 7:35- 43: Moses leading the people; prophesy and transition to Jesus
   8. Acts 7:44-50: Transition to David and Solomon and the dwelling place of God
   9. Acts 7:51-53: Transition to the people of Stephen’s day; Stephen now directs attention to them; Stephen is assertive
   10. Acts 7:54-60: Stephen is stoned
   11. Acts 8:1-3: Stephen is buried; Saul is introduced

I want to read Acts 7:54-60. We are picking up after Stephen’s sermon to the Jewish High Court:

Acts 7:54–60 (ESV)

⁵⁴ Now when they heard these things they were enraged, and they ground their teeth at him. ⁵⁵ But he, full of the Holy Spirit, gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. ⁵⁶ And he said, “Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.” ⁵⁷ But they cried out with a loud voice and stopped their ears and rushed together at him. ⁵⁸ Then they cast him out of the city and stoned him. And the witnesses laid down their garments at the feet of a young man named Saul. ⁵⁹ And as they were stoning Stephen, he called out, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.” ⁶⁰ And falling to his knees he cried out with a loud voice, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.” And when he had said this, he fell asleep.

• Notice Stephen’s wisdom, insight, and boldness.
  1. We do not need boldness or courage, not from God, if we are not being a witness. If you are persecuted, it is for living for Christ. Otherwise, it is not Christian persecution. Know that God has called us to be witnesses.
  2. Sometimes, we do not have great boldness or great courage because we are not diligently seeking the Lord to begin with, and because of that, we are not in the least ready to be a witness.
  3. We will look at that more in a moment. But think about this:
  4. The church is called the bride of Christ. Each of you, who are followers of Christ, you are married to Christ. He is the groom. Suppose that you get married to a man or a woman and you are happily married for a while!!! After a few years, you decide you do not wish to be that committed to your spouse. However, you do wish to remain married, but you do not want to get into all that marriage stuff. You wish to have intimacy occasionally; how about twice a year, at Christmas and Easter? And that is on your terms. Your terms only. Other times throughout the year, you wish to see your spouse if you are well-rested and feel like it. You never want to talk about your spouse, you might get made fun of! This goes on for a long time. You may even seek out some other men and women. Maybe, off and on, you will see your spouse every week, but only on Sundays. How do you think your spouse feels about this? Are you still married to your spouse? I guess only in a legal way. You consider yourself married, though all logic would say that you shouldn’t be identified with him or her. But this is exactly how many treat Christianity. We commit on Christmas and Easter or only on Sundays.
  5. Someone recently told me that people go through phases, so it is normal to stray from our faith off and on. I think, really, what if we treat our spouse that way? We are the bride of Christ. Commit to the groom. You will not be ready, or eager to be a bold witness if you treat Jesus that way. We are married to Jesus; we must be committed.
  6. If we are witnesses, we must pray that God gives us wisdom.
  7. Wisdom comes from God. Stephen had great wisdom, and we can see this in this message (Acts 6:10). We must seek the Lord for this wisdom.
  8. I will not receive the wisdom if I am not committed to Jesus, the one I am married to, more than once a week.
  9. If we are witnesses, we will need to pray that we are diligent to study to be prepared to be a witness (1 Peter 3:15).
  10. This does take preparation on our part. We must be committed to the groom. We must study the Scriptures and other things as well. Think about Daniel 1:17 and 20, which show that God gave wisdom and understanding.
  11. Listen to this from a wonderful pastor from the 20th Century.
  12. “My strong advice to you is to soak, soak, soak in philosophy and psychology, until you know more of these subjects than you ever need consciously think. It is ignorance of these subjects on the part of ministers and workers that has brought our evangelical theology to such a sorry plight. When people refer to a man as ‘a man of one book,’ meaning  the Bible, he is generally a man of multitudinous books, which simply isolates the one Book to its proper grandeur. The man who reads only the Bible does not, as a rule, know it or human life.”                                  -Oswald Chambers

Close:

So, study and be ready to answer boldly, as Stephen did. Plant seeds of the Gospel everywhere. Lastly, be encouraged as God is at work.

Stephen was martyred. Death, is it the end? No not at all.

“Held” Natalie Grant

Two months is too little
They let him go
They had no sudden healing
To think that providence
Would take a child from his mother
While she prays, is appalling
Who told us we’d be rescued
What has changed and
Why should we be saved from nightmares
Were asking why this happens to us
Who have died to live, it’s unfair
This is what it means to be held
How it feels, when the sacred is torn from your life
And you survive
This is what it is to be loved and to know
That the promise was that when everything fell
We’d be held
This hand is bitterness
We want to taste it and
Let the hatred numb our sorrows
The wise hand opens slowly
To lilies of the valley and tomorrow
This is what it means to be held
How it feels, when the sacred is torn from your life
And you survive
This is what it is to be loved and to know
That the promise was that when everything fell
We’d be held
If hope if born of suffering
If this is only the beginning
Can we not wait, for one hour
Watching for our savior
This is what it means to be held
How it feels, when the sacred is torn from your life
And you survive
This is what it is to be loved and to know
That the promise was that when everything fell
We’d be held
[Repeat Chorus]

No, NO, NO, death is not the end. Stephen was a martyr, and God used that to spread the Gospel around the known world. God was at work, and God is at work. I know of people who get sick, and through that sickness, a family member comes to know Christ. Never underestimate what God is doing.

We have a future in glory, which is what this book we call the Bible is all about. When we die as believers we meet Jesus in paradise. When we live, we are held by Jesus constantly.

I strongly believe the following: Sometimes we are thinking, “Why did you take this person from life? Why God?” Sometimes, we are even angry at God over death, and that is sometimes part of grief. That can be okay. But turn it around, our loved one is in paradise thinking, “Jesus, why do you leave them in suffering on earth for so long.” They are in paradise, and you can be as well.

Do you know Jesus?

God created us to be with Him (Gen. 1-2).

Our sins separate us from God (Gen 3).

Sins cannot be removed by good deeds (Gen. 4-Mal. 4).

Paying the price for sin, Jesus died and rose again (Matt.-Luke).

Everyone who trusts in Him alone has eternal life (John- Jude).

Life that is eternal means being in paradise forever (Rev. 22:5.  

[1]Excerpted from Come Before Winter and Share My Hope, Copyright © 1985, 1994 by Charles R. Swindoll, Inc. All rights reserved worldwide. Used by permission. http://thejourneyisthelife.wordpress.com/tag/isaiah-40-chuck-swindoll-hope-rest/