The Sermon That Got Stephen Killed - Will We Listen to It Today? by David McClister (The Palmetto Reminder: http://palmettochurchofchrist.org/)
I've had people object to things I have said in sermons, and I have had people upset at me for preaching on certain topics or Biblical texts. Never, however, has my life been threatened for a sermon I have preached. Maybe that is an indicator of the receptivity of those to whom I have preached, or maybe it is an indicator of the softness of my preaching. The Lord will ultimately judge that. There is one particular sermon recorded in the Bible, however, where a harsh message met an unreceptive audience head-on, and it got the preacher killed. I refer to Stephen's sermon in Acts 7.
Space in this bulletin forbids a lengthy analysis of that sermon. But perhaps we can see enough of it to get a sense of Stephen's main point. The application of Stephen's sermon was clear and bold. He said to his audience "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. Which one of the prophets did your fathers not persecute? They killed those who had previously announced the coming of the Righteous One, whose betrayers and murderers you have now become; you who received the law as ordained by angels, and yet did not keep it" (7:51-53).
Stephen's point was that Israel had a long history of rejecting God and His messengers, and the Jews of Stephen's day had acted no differently when they killed Jesus. How had the Jews created a history of rejecting God? Well, God set out to create a people for Himself, just as He had promised to Abraham (7:2-8). Abraham's grandson Jacob had twelve boys, one of whom was Joseph. Joseph would grow up to be the one who saved the entire family from death during a long and harsh famine, but Joseph's own brothers hated Joseph and did away with him - or so they thought. Then when God sent Moses to deliver the Israelites from their bitter hardship in Egypt, the Israelites at first refused his help, and even after Moses led them out of Egypt the Jews "repudiated him and in their hearts turned back to Egypt" (v 39).
At this point in Israel's history, the Jews not only rejected Moses, they also demonstrated a preference for idols over God. While Moses was on Mt. Sinai receiving the Law, the Jews quickly convinced themselves they would never seen Moses again and built a golden calf and gave it the credit for their exodus from Egypt. From that point onward Israel developed a love affair with idolatry that never ended. It resulted in God removing them from the land He had given them, but more importantly for Stephen's point is the forms that idolatry took.
At first Israel preferred the golden calf over God. Then they worshipped "the host of heaven," the then-known heavenly bodies as representations of gods. They also worshipped Molech and other gods such as Baal and Asherah. These were all gods the Israelites had seen among the pagans. But then Israel made an idol that was unique to them. God had commanded them to build a tabernacle while they were in the wilderness, but once they were fully settled in the land they built a temple. The temple in Jerusalem became the most significant idol the Israelites ever worshipped. At first the temple was understood as the place where God dwelt among His people, a tangible symbol of the relationship between God and Israel. But it was not long until the temple came to be treated quite differently.
The Israelites came to believe that the presence of the temple guaranteed the security of Jerusalem. After all, God would not allow a foreign nation to destroy His own temple, would He? It is this very mentality that Jeremiah the prophet rebuked so sternly in Jeremiah 7. Furthermore, the Israelites began to think that it was the external worship done in the temple, the rituals of sacrifices, prayers, and incense, which maintained their relationship with God. When king Abijah of Judah invaded Israel, he confidently said "But as for us, the Lord is our God, and we have not forsaken Him; and the sons of Aaron are ministering to the Lord as priests, and the Levites attend to their work. Every morning and evening they burn to the Lord burnt offerings and fragrant incense, and the showbread is set on the clean table, and the golden lampstand with its lamps is ready to light every evening; for we keep the charge of the Lord our God, but you have forsaken Him" (2 Chron 13:10-11). Abijah thought that going through the rituals in the temple meant they were being faithful; Abijah does not seemed to have realized that his own sin made him displeasing to God (the Bible says "He walked in all the sins of his father which he had committed before him; and his heart was not wholly devoted to the Lord his God, like the heart of his father David", 1 Kgs 15:3). The prophet Isaiah denounced this trust in ritual in Isaiah 1. These two attitudes toward the temple turned the temple into Israel's idol. Israel trusted in the temple (and its rituals), not in God, to keep them safe.
Once again, Israel had rejected God for something made of stone
and wood, something fashioned by human hands. The great irony
this time was that it was the temple that was originally built
with God's approval and with His worship in mind!
It was at this point that Stephen ended his sermon with the pointed
application of verses 51-53. It is also at this point that we
must consider the application of Stephen's sermon to us today.
What is our attitude toward the Church of Christ as it exists
today? Have we developed a supreme confidence that our 21st-century
manifestation of the church is the church, that we are certainly,
without doubt, pleasing to God because we have reproduced all
the external features of earliest Christianity? Do we take pride
and find confidence in the fact that we only have elders and deacons
like the NT Christians had, that we do not use instrumental music
in our worship, that we observe the Lord's Supper every Sunday,
that we call ourselves after the Scriptural name "Church
of Christ," and that we have no formal organization beyond
the local church? Do we think that we will be saved because we
belong to a Church of Christ that has faithfully maintained the
outward features of New Testament Christianity? Do we smugly think
that our membership in such a church means we will go to heaven?
Have we convinced ourselves that being faithful to God is primarily
or essentially a matter of maintaining the right name, worship,
organization, and work of the church? If we should begin to think
any of these things, allow me to suggest that we have then become
just like the Jews to whom Stephen preached and have made an idol
out of the Church of Christ. If we get to that point, then we
need to hear Stephen's sermon ourselves.
The Jews had subtly perverted what God had given them. Instead of being about God, Judaism came to be a religion concerned with the status and preservation of its human leaders. Judaism went from being a religion of God's making to a religion of man's making, designed for man's glory. God was retained to give an important sense of status and credibility to the religion, but it had lost its soul and, worst of all, it had in its heart rejected God.
Could the same thing happen to God's people today? Could the Church of Christ become perverted to the point that it becomes a modern reproduction of the Judaism of Jesus' day? Could God become nothing more than an ancient relic in our religion, kept only to give a sense of legitimacy? If it happened before, it could happen again. Each one of us must determine that we will do our part to make sure this does not happen in our generation.
Loving the Kingdom by Robert Turner (Reprinted from Plain Talk, January, 1982)
We sing, "I love thy kingdom Lord" but what do we mean by that? "The church our blest redeemer saved," says the song. Are we referring to the people (for Christ saved individuals) or do we think of the kingdom and church as something apart from the people?
We should love the saints, and it is heart-warming to meet with brethren who show a genuine concern for one another, who have established strong personal ties, who enjoy being together. But I have seen this kind of love in college alumni associations, or other social clubs. Is love for the "kingdom" or "church" only a party loyalty?
Jesus told a man, "Thou art not far from the kingdom of God" (Mk. 12: 34) when he saw that the man understood His teaching. All men of that day were the same number of days from the first Pentecost following Jesus' resurrection - so it was not this event to which Jesus referred. Rather, meant the man was close to grasping the principles of the kingdom. He was beginning to see that service to God ("kingdom," from basileia, rule), involved total submission, in love, to God, and an unselfish love for all of our fellow men. (Read Mk. 12:28-f)
Do we "love the church" if we are more concerned for our "public image" than for God's approval of our work and worship? Do we "love His kingdom" if we regard its principles as "unrealistic" or "too much pie in the sky"? Loving the kingdom of God means loving that realm in which Christ is first, where His "mind" becomes our way of thinking, where self is denied and we live for Him. (Gal. 2:20)
When one loves the principles of God's kingdom, the "cross" is easy to bear. ("He ain't heavy, he's my brother!") There is no figuring how little we can "get by" with, nor just how much "attending" and "giving" will satisfy the law. One is aware of many shortcomings, and realizes that without the mercy of God, expressed in Christ's sacrifice of Himself; none of us would "make it". When kingdom principles are so imbibed as to become our principles, we will "naturally" obey (Phil. 2:20), and love the church as ourselves (Eph. 5:28-32).
MONTHLY BIBLE READING: Lessons the Disciples Learned - Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
GOSPEL MEETING: Our winter meeting will be held during the week of February 15-20, 2004. Sunday night through Friday night. Services will be held at 6:00 PM on Sunday and 7:30 PM each weekday evening. It will once again be our pleasure to have Robert Harkrider as our guest speaker each evening.
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