The last sermon, Acts 7

 There is a well known phrase in religious circles where someone is said to be “preaching to the choir.”  The inference is that the choir members are not the sort of people who need to hear that particular message.  The choir, as we all know,  being the most zealous for the church.  And yet I have known some pretty degenerate choir members in my day, so I’m not sure how well that idea really stands up.

But to some extent, any congregation that comes out at 8am on a Sunday morning, especially if you happen to be on vacation, sort of qualifies under the same sentiment.  Chances are, most of you are fairly zealous for the things of God, and the fact that you are here this morning is a testament to that.  So I applaud you for your zeal. 

But I have to say that according to scripture, and which has been verified by my experience, religious regularity, or even a zealousness for church, or a high degree of sincerity does not necessarily qualify one as a Christian.  In fact, in my experience, I have found that the choir needs preaching to more often than  you might think.  And that is because there is a great danger in religion; which is to come to a point of having some degree of faith, and to come to a point of practicing a certain degree of piety, but to never have become converted.  Therefore, it is much better to be a sinner, and know that you are a dirty, rotten sinner, than to be content that you are in the kingdom, yet in the end find that you have missed salvation altogether. 

I would dare say that if I were to ask for a show of hands in this audience this morning as to who believed that they were Christians, practically everyone would raise their hands.  Yet, as I think back on all the years that I have been in ministry, and all the people that once were considered stalwarts of the church and have since gone awol, I have to think that in reality there is a large percentage of people in the typical church audience that have not truly been saved in spite of how they might perceive themselves.  And the Bible validates that principle.

Jesus told a parable in Matthew 13 about the wheat and the tares.  It was a picture of the kingdom of heaven, a picture of the church.  And in this field, Jesus said, the enemy had sown tares among the wheat.  All of the time that the tares were growing they  were indistinguishable from the wheat.  So much so that Jesus said “Do not try to uproot the tares, lest you uproot the wheat as well.”  But rather, “Allow both to grow together until the harvest; and in the time of the harvest I will say to the reapers, “First gather up the tares and bind them in bundles to burn them up; but gather the wheat into my barn.”  The point being that the Lord knows those that are His, but when the time comes to gather the harvest, it will be obvious which is the wheat, because it has born fruit.  The tares do not bear grain.

I’ve said all of that to say this;  I am very concerned for the state of the  church today.  I am concerned that we have a form of religion that seems acceptable to us, that seems to be based on scripture, that has a form of worship, and yet many have not been converted.  Many who think that they are Christians are in fact not saved. 

Jesus said as much in Matthew 7.  He said many people will say to Me in that day, “Lord, Lord, did we not do all these things in your name?”  And Jesus said, “I will say to them, depart from Me you workers of iniquity.  I never knew you.”  Many people will think they are saved when in reality they are not. Consequently Jesus spent the majority of His ministry preaching to the choir.  He preached to the  most religious people of the day.  He spent a lot of time preaching in the temple and synagogues where people were essentially coming to worship God.  And He was constantly questioning them, constantly challenging them to reconsider, to examine themselves, to see if their deeds matched their profession.  His messages were always designed to reveal the truth about the kingdom of God, and turn upside down their self righteous assumptions.  And as a result of Christ’s confrontational preaching, the religious aristocracy of the day had Him arrested and crucified.

Now as we come in our study of Acts to this sermon of Stephen, we are going to see how he parallels Christ both in his message and in his death.  Stephen is the first martyr of the church.  He lived a short life, and he had an even shorter ministry.  This is the last sermon that he preached.  It is likely that he had a divine intuition that he would be martyred after he had preached this sermon.  So he didn’t pull any punches.  He told it like it is.  And the religious aristocracy rose up and stoned him to death.  But if I can learn anything from Steven, it is that I must preach every message like it might be my last.  This may be my last sermon I will ever preach, for all I know.  Or it may be the last sermon someone in this audience may ever hear.  This may be the last opportunity you have to hear the gospel, to examine yourself in light of the truth of the gospel.  And so I want to make it count.  We should live everyday as if it might be our last day.

Let’s look then at this last sermon of Steven.  He is refuting the charges of the Sanhedrin, which was the supreme court of the religion of the Jews made up of 70 men. And many other religious rulers were there.  The high priest was there.  You could not find a more religious group in all of Israel.  These were men that made their living from the scriptures.  They believed in the One True God, Jehovah.  They knew the Old Testament scriptures forwards and backwards.  They had memorized large sections of scripture.  They had studied it all of their lives.  They practiced strict adherence to the Law – not just the 10 commandments, but all 600 plus laws and ordinances.  From the average guy’s perspective, if anyone was in the kingdom of God, then these men would have to have been in the very choir loft of heaven.

But while Steven uses this address to answer the charges made against him, namely, that he had spoken against the law and the temple and against Moses, this message also is applicable to us today, as we examine our standing before God in the light of Steven’s last message.  I want to point out five ways that Steven shows that these men, though extremely religious, were not in the kingdom of God.  Five ways that we might also use to examine ourselves to see if we are of the faith or not.  

Number one, Steven explains that they misunderstood the basis of their salvation. In verses 1-8 Steven starts out by talking about Abraham.  I can only imagine the Sanhedrin covering their bored yawns as they must have thought that they knew everything there was to know about Abraham and thought this guy could teach them nothing new.  After all, they considered themselves as Abraham’s children.  They were God’s chosen people.  And they had been circumcised which they thought  guaranteed them a place in the kingdom of God. 

But what they failed to understand was that the kingdom of God is not inherited by birth. Citizenship in the kingdom of God is not the result of being Jewish, nor from being American, I might add.  They thought that citizenship came through association, through rituals such as circumcision, and by ceremony.  They failed to understand that the lesson of Abraham was that he was justified by faith.  Salvation is by grace through faith. Rom. 4:3 says “Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness.”  Salvation comes through faith in what Christ has done for us, not from some ritual or ceremony or nationality.  They thought it came by birth, by association, by nationality, by ritual, and by ceremony. 

You folks here this morning, assuming you would have raised your hands, on what basis do you claim to be citizens of the kingdom of God?  Was it through baptism, was it through communion, was it through some sort of membership or ritual or ceremony?  If that is what you are trusting for your salvation then you are in the same camp as the Sanhedrin.   Salvation is found only by grace through faith.  It is a gift of God, given to us through faith.  And faith is believing and trusting in Jesus Christ as Lord.  Faith is not just believing that Jesus existed.  Or that God exists.  The Bible says that the devils believe in God and tremble and yet they are not saved.  But I can assure you that though most church goers believe in some form of God, they do not tremble.  There is no fear of God before their eyes.  They have continued in their sin.  They have not renounced their sin in shame and humility.  Instead they flagrantly continue to trample underfoot the precious blood of Christ that was shed to cleanse us from sin.  Faith is obedience to what God says.  That is the lesson to be learned through Abraham.  Come out from the world and live as an alien, as a pilgrim, walking by faith, following God’s word, living in the world without possessing it.  That is what Steven was preaching, and that is what we all need to consider for ourselves.  How do we claim admittance into the kingdom of heaven?  It is only through faith and repentance as sinners receive grace.

By Steven’s standard, the Sanhedrin were unsaved, outside of the kingdom of God.  And I wonder if by that same standard how many here are trusting in something other than faith and repentance and are by consequence outside of the kingdom.

Number 2, Steven tells them that they rejected the very people God had sent to deliver them. In vs. 9-36 Steven tells an abbreviated history of Joseph and Moses, both of which were a type of Christ.  In each case, Steven explains that their brethren initially rejected them.  Joseph was thrown into a pit by his brothers and sold into slavery.  Moses tried to be the deliver that God had called him to be and his own people turned against him.   In each case the people hated Joseph and Moses without cause, they rejected and rebelled. In each case the people said, “Who made you to be a ruler and a judge over us?”  It was essentially the same question that would be asked of Jesus during His ministry. 

I wonder how many people in my hearing today have rejected Jesus from being a ruler and a judge over their lives?  To call Jesus Lord means to bow to His will, to be conformed to His image, to obey His word, to walk by His Spirit.  All of those things mean that we must humble ourselves, that we must die to ourselves and surrender to live for Christ.  It means we must stop serving ourselves and start serving Christ.  Is that the characteristic of your life?  Have you stopped serving yourself and started serving Christ?  Or has your feigned love for God provided you with the liberty to live like you want to live, in the false assumption that the love of God allows you to live anyway you want without consequences?

I would suggest that the Lordship of Christ is a key component in conversion.  Before you are saved, you served the flesh, you served your passions, you served the world’s agenda.  But after you are saved you are to serve God, you should serve the church, you should serve your neighbor.  There must be a conversion, a change, a new life. You are supposed to be a new creation, old things are passed away.  Or do you refuse to bow to Christ as Lord? Do you, like the Sanhedrin, say “who made you to be a ruler and a judge over us?”  “I can do whatever I want.  I can live how I want and God will just have to take me the way I am.”  I’m sorry, but that is not the gospel.  Jesus said whosoever will be my disciple must take up his cross and follow Me.  Have you died to yourself?  I don’t care how religious you are – have you died to your will to do God’s will?  That is the litmus test.

Number three, Steven told these law abiding citizens that in fact they had disobeyed the law in vs. 37-43.  They accused Steven of speaking against the law, but in fact they had repeatedly broken the law when it suited their purposes. That is why Jesus called them hypocrites.  He said you hypocrites tie heavy burdens on everyone else’s backs, but you are unwilling to lift even a finger.

Steven quotes from Amos 5:25, saying ‘IT WAS NOT TO ME THAT YOU OFFERED VICTIMS AND SACRIFICES FORTY YEARS IN THE WILDERNESS, WAS IT, O HOUSE OF ISRAEL?  YOU ALSO TOOK ALONG THE TABERNACLE OF MOLOCH AND THE STAR OF THE GOD ROMPHA, THE IMAGES WHICH YOU MADE TO WORSHIP. I ALSO WILL REMOVE YOU BEYOND BABYLON.”  They were guilty of outwardly claiming to worship Jehovah, but in their hearts they were serving idols. 

O church, listen to me!  Idols aren’t some little figurines that we put on a shelf and rub 3 times when we want to make a wish.  Oh no!  Idols are much more seditious than that today in the church.  Our idols today are our careers, our work, our boyfriend, or girlfriend, our idols are Hollywood movie stars, rock stars, sports stars, our hobbies or entertainments.  Our idols are anything that we devote more time and allegiance to than we do to our Lord. If the Lord is not first in your priorities, then you are guilty of idol worship.  And you cannot serve God and mammon.  You cannot have a divided loyalty.  God will not take second or third or fourth place in your life.  Jesus said the most important commandment was that you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.  That is a new covenant commandment by the way.  Jesus has to have first place in your heart.  That is why the church today is accused of being full of hypocrites.  Because the world can see that we claim to be worshipping God, but actually we are serving idols and that is hypocrisy.

Number four, Steven said that contrary to him profaning the temple as they accused him of, they were guilty of desecrating the temple.  In vs. 44-50 Steven reminds them that they were guilty of profaning Solomon’s temple by bringing in idols which led to it’s destruction as punishment from God.  He says in vs. 48 that God does not dwell  in temples made with human hands. 

These very men were guilty of profaning the temple by making it a house of merchandise.  That is why Jesus on two separate occasions cleaned out the temple with a bull whip, overturning the money changers tables and driving the vendors out.  These very men made money from that operation, and so they would have still smarted from Christ’s rebuke. 

But the fallacy is that they believed that God dwelled in the temple.  However, Steven makes it clear that God had left the building a long time before.  God doesn’t dwell in buildings as if you could contain the maker of the universe in a tiny temple. God dwells in the hearts of His people.  His Spirit takes up residence in us, that we might be living stones in the temple of God. 

I would ask you then, you that say that you are in the kingdom of God, does the Spirit of Christ dwell in you?  If He does, then do you do the works of the Spirit?  Is your life evidence of the Spirit living in you?  The Spirit of God does not dwell in His people just to make them feel weepy when some worship song plays.  He does not dwell in His people just to make them speak in an unintelligible language that does neither the hearer nor the speaker any good.  But the Holy Spirit of God dwells in His people that they might do the works of God.  That they might bear the likeness of Christ.  So that they might speak the gospel to the lost.  So that we might understand the scriptures. 

I am dismayed sometimes when I hear people that have been regulars at church for some time, and they unknowingly  reveal some of their theology in a casual conversation.  I am dismayed because I know that I have been preaching the word of God line by line, precept by precept, doctrine by doctrine for so long, and they acted like they were listening, acted like they were in agreement, and yet in their conversation they reveal that they lacked understanding of the basic tenets of the gospel.  They show they do not have in them the Spirit of Truth to give them understanding.  They reveal that though they have a zeal for God, it is not in accordance with knowledge.  And so I assume that they must not really be saved.  Nice people perhaps, but lost.  There is no evidence of the Spirit in them.

Number 5, Steven reveals in vs. 51-53 that they had stubbornly resisted God and His truth.  He says, “You men who are stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears are always resisting the Holy Spirit; you are doing just as your fathers did.”  Oh man! I get accused of preaching too harshly,  but I have nothing on Steven.  He is saying that though they had the outward sign of circumcision, they had never been circumcised in their hearts.  Their hearts were still fleshly, worldly, unchanged.  They had never been converted, never been changed.  They just added religion on top of a dirty, sinful unrepentant heart. 

I’m afraid that is the state of the church at large today.  We live anyway we want all week, live like the devil if the truth is known, and then we come to church for an hour on Sunday and it’s like putting makeup on a pig.  We put some religion on for an hour or so and then go right back to the slimy pig sty of the world that we love so much.  We go right back to the sexually explicit movies, the raunchy music, drunkenness, hateful attitudes, the lusts of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the pride of life.  Nothing has really changed.  We are not converted, we’re the same old sinful people we always were, but now we just try to cover it up with a little religion.

The part though I think is really apropos is vs. 53, “you who received the law as ordained by angels, and yet did not keep it.” The Sanhedrin put great value upon the law.  The law being the first five books of the Old Testament, the Pentateuch.  Yet Steven says that they did not keep it. 

I wonder if that is true of the church today?  Do we revere the Bible as God’s word, as inspired, God breathed, the actual words of God?  And yet we let it sit on a shelf.  We are content to let others read it and tell us what it means.  We are willing to abrogate it’s authority but we submit to the authority of tradition.  Some of you are unwilling to relinquish church traditions that have no basis in scripture whatsoever.  You put a higher premium on what some church leader says than what God Himself has said.  Some of you are running around seeking a new word of knowledge, a new vision, a new wisdom found in some spiritual experience, while ignoring what the word of God clearly says which was written down for us as a much sure word.

Israel had long before replaced the authority of God’s word with the word of the High Priest, the word of the rabbis.  They had the Mishna which reinterpreted the law, and effectively altered the word of God.  And I’m afraid that modern Christianity has replaced the simple preaching of God’s word with every conceivable contrivance, so that we learn our doctrine from Hollywood movies, we read so called Christian books which promise to teach us the secrets of financial success and health and prostitute the gospel to do so.  Churches used to have 15 minutes of music  and 45 minutes or more of preaching and reading the word.  Now they have skits and dancing, and endless song after endless song and everyone just sits there looking at a movie screen.  There is no need to bring a Bible to the modern church anymore.  At best, people are looking at a Bible app on their smart phone, in between checking out facebook.  And the preaching of sound doctrine is a thing of the past or denigrated to a brief entertaining social gospel sound byte.

Well, that’s Steven’s last sermon.  Some of you are probably hoping it’s my last sermon as well.  I hope you don’t feel that way.  I hope that you look earnestly and examine yourself honestly to see if you are of the faith.  To see if there is enough evidence to convict you of being a Christian, by the same standard that Steven raised in this message.  I hope that we would look earnestly into the mirror of God’s word and see if we measure up according to the picture Steven has presented us with.

In closing, I want to mention that there were four responses to this sermon.  The first response was from the Sanhedrin.  Vs. 54, “Now when they heard this, they were cut to the quick, and they began gnashing their teeth at him.”  They were convicted, but they did not repent.  Rather they hated him, they gnashed their teeth at him.  That means they were pretty mad, so mad that they rushed at him with one accord and threw him off a cliff and cast stones down on him to kill him. 

The second response we see there was from Christ Himself in vs.55,  “But being full of the Holy Spirit, he gazed intently into heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God; and he said, “Behold, I see the heavens opened up and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.”  As I said last week, in most other scriptures they always speak of Jesus seated at the right hand of God.  But here in response to this last sermon of Steven, and the life of Steven, Jesus stands up.  I believe He leads the hosts of heaven in a grand standing ovation for Steven as he yields up his life in service to Christ.  He gave everything to serve Christ as an example of how we should live our life.

The third response is that of Steven.  Vs. 60; “Then falling on his knees, he cried out with a loud voice, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them!” Having said this, he fell asleep.”  Steven was received into the presence of the Lord, saying much the same thing that the Lord Jesus said on the cross, “Lord forgive them for they know not what they do.” 

The fourth response was that of a young man named Saul in vs. 58.  But if you look at the text you notice that he doesn’t make any response in our text.  However that young man named Saul would one day be renamed Paul, after he repented and was converted on the road to Damascus.  I’m sure that the death of Steven was something that haunted Paul for all of his days.  I’m sure that it spurred Paul to greater heights of service to God.

The only question left then today is what is your response to this last sermon of Steven?  Maybe your response is to grind your teeth and run out of here with your hands over your ears.  But I would pray that you have taken this opportunity to examine your citizenship in the kingdom of God in light of God’s word.  And if so, how do you fare?  Are you truly a child of God?  Have you been born again by grace through faith?  Or do you reject the words of this preacher, just as the Sanhedrin rejected the prophets?  Are you a trespasser against the law of God?  If you recognize that, then there is hope for you if you will repent of your sins.  But if you do not recognize that you are a sinner, then you cannot be saved.  Have you defiled the temple?  1Cor. 6:19 says, “Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own? Therefore, glorify God in your body.”  Or have you stubbornly resisted God’s word?  How can you say you believe the word of God and yet deliberately rebel against it? 

I don’t know how you answered these questions.  I don’t know whether you are a wheat or a tare. But the Lord knows, even if you don’t.  I hope that you will make sure of your salvation today.  Today is the acceptable day of salvation.  None of us have been guaranteed tomorrow.  This may be my last sermon, or it may be your last sermon.  I pray you evaluate your salvation today in the light of God’s word.

God is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. A broken and contrite heart He will not despise.  Make sure of your salvation today.