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Stephen - the First Christian Martyr · Bentley Baptist Church Sermons

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: My wife thought better to hold the kids at home, so it's just me here today.
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: The other thing is I'm a New Testament lecturer at Moreland College, so that's the Baptist College.
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: It's actually quite close to the church here.
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: We do have an open day coming up in a couple weeks.
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: So if you're thinking of you want to study the Bible or theology or you want to train for ministry or missions, maybe you want to get a PhD and become a Bible scholar or you want an accredited program in counseling and education so something that's accredited but in a Christian framework, and go on to be a Christian teacher in a school.
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: Love to chat with you after or talk to you about the open day.
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: Now, when I'm not teaching at the college one of the past times I probably watch a little bit too much YouTube and sometimes I watch all this political commentary about what's going on in the US election.
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: Right now we can be grateful that's just about over.
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: It's kind of like a little bit like watching a train wreck.
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: As you kind of look over what's happening, sometimes I feel like I know more about the US politics than about here in Australia or back home in Canada.
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: But I like how we do it in Australia and Canada.
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: It's just one month, get it done, not have a year long of attack ads and polling.
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: Now, this won't be a sermon on politics and polling.
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: Now, this won't be a sermon on politics.
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: The only thing political I'd say is a Baptist value is freedom of conscience.
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: So we want to vote like, we want to live like Jesus would in a society where we have the privilege to vote, which Jesus did not have that privilege in his day, and so that's the only thing I would say about that.
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: But one thing is, when you watch a lot of this political stuff, you sort of get used to the thing about spin, right, that when a politician gets asked a question about maybe they have a policy that their base really loves, that votes for them, but it's not very popular outside of that base.
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: Or let's say, they get asked a question about something embarrassing in their past, the art of spin is to redirect the attention towards something else, right, and you start talking about another issue you're more comfortable with talking about and not have to address that question Now in the passage in Acts that we're going to cover today, it's going to be when Stephen goes on trial that we're going to cover today.
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: It's going to be when Stephen goes on trial and Stephen is facing some very serious accusations and he gives a speech, a long speech, and at first it doesn't seem like it addresses the issues that he's accused for.
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: You know, it looks like Stephen is doing a bit of spin where he's like look at this issue and not this concern you might have I don't think that's the case when he listens to the speech, but you might get that impression if you actually read it.
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: And so we want to ask what is Stephen doing in his speech that he gives?
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: So the accusations are pretty straightforward.
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: He gets put on trial and they say this man said that Jesus of Nazareth will destroy this place this place is the Jerusalem temple and change the customs that Moses handed down to us Pretty serious charge in his culture, especially the first one.
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: So the temple was understood as God's house in Jerusalem.
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: It wasn't just any ordinary church building or any ordinary synagogue building that could be all over the place, but there was one temple in Jerusalem and although they recognized that the God of all the universe didn't literally dwell there, they had that theology that God put his name there and the inner sanctuary was like God's throne room and the priests were actually the de facto leaders and the Romans appointed the high priest and basically the high priest kind of mediated between the people, the Jewish people, and the Roman Empire that ruled them to keep the peace.
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: So it could be a very serious thing to threaten the temple, as Jesus was perceived as doing so.
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: When Jesus went to the temple courts and overturned the tables of the money changers and said this is supposed to be a house of prayer but you're making it a den of robbers.
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: Or when Jesus said every stone in the temple will be thrown down, this probably got him on the chief priest's radar.
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: That said this person's a threat and we have to get rid of him.
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: And if you go to Jesus' trial, what's one of the very first accusations that shows up in his trial?
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: This guy said he was going to destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days.
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: It also gets thrown at Jesus' face when he's crucified.
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: You know when people are mocking him.
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: You said you were going to destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days.
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: So that was one of the charges that led to Jesus' execution.
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: He was ultimately executed on the charge of claiming to be a king of the Jews, which, when you're living in a Roman empire with an emperor on the throne, they don't like other kings.
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: But the temple charge didn't help for Jesus.
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: So when Stephen gets accused of this, it's a very serious threat.
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: Now Stephen gives us response to these accusations and it's a very long speech.
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: So instead of reading the speech together, I thought we could watch it.
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: I'll set up a clip here.
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: Basically, there was a group that did a movie of the Gospel of Matthew and they did it word for word and that movie was actually four hours long.
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: I don't know if some of you have seen this movie in the past.
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: It has a really interesting portrayal of Jesus, but it's also a bit low budget and not everyone's a professional actor.
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: So it's interesting to watch, but we won't expect any Oscar performances.
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: They did another movie on the Book of Acts where again it was word for word the Book of Acts.
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: So in this clip you're going to have an actor speak through the speech of Stephen I think it's about nine minutes and then we'll come back and talk about it.
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: So, like I introduced this, you'd say at first what does that speech have to do with the temple and the customs.
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: So hopefully we'll break it down a bit.
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: I think there's two messages that do come through that speech.
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: One is about the rejection of God's messengers and one is about even a great place like the temple, which is supposed to be God's house, can become an idol if it's not properly used.
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: So let's look at the first point.
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: The first point actually comes straight out of the Hebrew Bible.
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: It fits the book of Deuteronomy.
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: So Deuteronomy is basically like God has made a covenant, an agreement, with the people of Israel, who are going to be his chosen people.
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: He called them by grace.
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: There's nothing their ancestors did to deserve God's call to be his people.
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: There's nothing they did to deserve God liberating them from slavery in Egypt, but nevertheless, by grace, he made them his people and as part of the covenant he said here are commandments that I'm giving through my lawgiver Moses, that you are to obey.
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: And if you obey them, this is to show the world what it means to be the people of God, how you are to obey and if you obey them.
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: This is to show the world what it means to be the people of God, how you are to live.
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: And to be the people of God doesn't mean you are better than other peoples, that you were chosen and others were not.
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: But it was to be a light to the nations.
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: It was a call to serve other people.
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: So that was the call of being chosen.
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: Now Deuteronomy basically says that if you obey the covenant, you'll do well in the land and you'll serve this purpose.
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: If you don't obey, god will continue to send warnings, but if you continue down a certain path, you'll be kicked out of the land.
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: Now, of course, that's not God's arrangement with every one of us.
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: We have to be very careful with this theology that just because someone is materially blessed doesn't mean they're righteous, or just because someone's suffering and living through hardship doesn't mean they're wicked.
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: But this was the basic arrangement that God had with the nation of Israel and basically the history books so Joshua all the way to 2 Kings sometimes they're called the Deuteronomistic history, and what that means is they tell how Israel went wrong, that they're not going to obey the covenant.
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: Eventually, the nation divided in two and part of the nation got wiped out by the empire of Assyria, and the other part, the kingdom of Judah, got taken into exile in Babylon, where the Babylonians came and they burned down the temple, which was supposed to be God's house.
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: They deposed the king and they took the elite citizens to live in a foreign land where they'd be second-class citizens.
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: So this is one of the central tragedies in the Hebrew Bible and the interpretation of the biblical authors is because you did not obey the covenant and sometimes what the prophets' role were.
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: They weren't primarily fortune tellers, the prophets, they were more like covenant police.
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: So their job was to go to their fellow Israelites or their fellow Judeans and say return to God's covenant, repent.
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: And sometimes their message wasn't too popular.
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: So Jeremiah, for instance, was predicting if you don't repent, the Babylonians are going to destroy this place.
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: And they put him in prison and threw him in a well and did all kinds of things to Jeremiah.
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: So there's this long history of rejecting God's messengers and Stephen kind of says this culminates in the rejection of Jesus.
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: Now we have to be a bit careful with how we interpret this message today.
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: There has been a history of Christians saying that the Jews rejected the prophets and Jesus and mistreated the early Christians.
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: The problem with that narrative is it paints with too broad of a brush.
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: Like the Israelites were a large and diverse community, some were supporting the prophets, some were against, some were neutral, some never heard of them.
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: So you can't just tar a whole people group doing this, and the problem with that narrative is actually, through most of Christian history, christians have been the persecutors of Jews.
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: Jews have been minorities, and so some of this language has been used to attack Jewish people.
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: So instead of what we do with Stephen's speech, we direct it to ourselves and say how are we sometimes missing the messengers that God is sending us and when he wants to steer our course in another direction and we're not listening to that?
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: That's how we can reuse Stephen's speech today.
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: The other thing Stephen brings up is the temple, which was supposed to be God's house.
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: God permitted it to be built.
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: It was sacred.
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: God authorized it.
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: So the temple is a good thing.
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: Jesus and the apostles continued to worship at the temple and, like the speech said, before there was a temple, there was a tabernacle.
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: So what that meant is when the Israelites were in the wilderness for 40 years, they had this tent.
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: It was like a portable sanctuary.
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: So wherever they wandered in the wilderness, they carried their sanctuary with them, and that was a sign that wherever they go, god is actually with them.
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: But when they settled in the land, they built a temple.
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: So the temple is a good thing, but one thing God cares more about sacrifices and songs of worship is obedience.
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: So even what's meant to be a good thing, if it's not accompanied by obedience to God's covenant, it can become an idol.
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: So yes, a temple was built by human hands, but sometimes that polemic is used against idols, that idols are things that people build with human hands and human artistry and they can't really capture the majesty of who God is.
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: An idol ends up substituting something else for God, because sometimes, when God challenges us, we create a God in our own image that keeps us safe.
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: That don't worry about that.
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: It's not a big deal, and maybe we're not tempted to bow down to some idols like they did.
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: But we have the idols of money and power and pleasure, those things that we put ahead of God, those things that God wants to steer us off, or those things that steer us off course.
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: So what is Stephen's message to us?
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: It's a message is sometimes God might be wanting to speak to you and to give ear to that, to not be stiff-necked towards that, to kind of turn and respond.
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: And you know I've never heard an audible voice in my lifetime.
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: I haven't even had the experience that some of you have had, where you say someone has come to you and said they have a word of the Lord to speak to you.
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: Maybe that's been your experience.
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: Maybe for many of you it's not.
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: But there might be other ways that God is speaking to you.
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: Maybe when you're reading scriptures in your devotions and you read something and you have a twinge of conscience about that.
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: Or maybe it's through the collective wisdom of the church or your Christian brothers and sisters who are encouraging you or speaking a word into your life.
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: Maybe it's a calling or a vocation, that you just have a strong sense that this is the direction I'm supposed to go.
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: I pray that we would all have the wisdom and discernment to hear the message that God wants to speak in our lives.
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: So let me pray and then I'll call up the worship band to conclude this service.
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: So, father God, I thank you for this opportunity where we can gather together and worship you.
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: I think that you accept our worship and our praise, but I also pray that our lives would be characterized by obedience to you and that when you are calling, when you want to speak to us.
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: Speak to us through our brothers and sisters, or through scripture or prayer, that we would hear your voice.
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: So I pray this in Christ's name Amen.