Recently, I've been reading Acts, and God has really shown me a lot in it, so I'm just going to try and share a little of what I get out of the passages that I read. As sort of a disclaimer, I'm a noob. I'm no theologian, and I don't read the passage in the original Greek or anything super-intellectual like that, so my insights may be a little more contrived and may not actually completely and accurately reflect the author's intent, but I still hope you enjoy it.
The Build-up
I read Acts 7 as part of my quiet time last Friday. As you can figure out just by flipping your Bible open to Acts 7 (or being lazy and clicking this link), it's Stephen's last speech to the Jews who seized him before he was martyred. Now I didn't actually get to finish the entire chapter, so I finished it on Saturday as part of my quiet time, when Saturday, when Nathan, Jonny, and Cory came to visit. I had been really frustrated with not being able to finish the chapter, as Stephen's speech just sort of builds and builds, as he goes through Israel's history of disobedience and God's grace through it all. Halfway through we're all must be thinking "Okay Stephen...get to the point." The Jews that seized him, who had falsely accused him of blaspheming against Moses, must have been thinking "Yeah, Stephen. We know our history, we've all heard this before...". Stephen spends a little bit of time talking about some of the patriarchs, but actually spends more than half of his speech talking about Moses, who he was accused of blaspheming against. I don't actually think that there was anything that Stephen said that any of the Jews would have objected to. Until BAM. HE NAILS THEM.
The Pwnage
Out of NOWHERE Stephen just demolishes them. Stephen's just completely smashes them to pieces. For some reason, his speech kind of reminded me of Denzel's famous speech at the end of training day (video here), where he just lays entire sentences of insults and expletives at the people around him. Completely different situation, I know, but it just reminded me of it. In the buildup, you can almost imagine the Jew's thinking, "I hate this guy for talking about Jesus!!!!....oh okay...he's talking about Joseph...wow this guy knows his history...yay Moses! I love Moses...At least he's not talking about Jesus....OH WTF. WHAT DID HE JUST SAY. NO HE DI'INT. LET'S KILL THIS FOO." What exactly did Stephen say that so enraged them, that they "ground their teeth at him", which I guess is some sort of expression of hatred? [As a sidenote, I grind my teeth when I sleep (as Cory found out this weekend), so if you ever hear me grinding my teeth at you, please disregard it as my sleeping and not me wanting to kill you.] Let's take a look at what Stephen said.
I want to concentrate on verse 51: "You stiff-necked people, uncircumcised in heart and ears, you always resist the Holy Spirit."
"You stiff-necked people"
I'm no expert in stiff-necked-ness, but I assume that Stephen is talking about being stubborn and unwilling to change, as he will elaborate further on. Doing a quick Biblegateway search, we see that this isn't the only time that the phrase has been used in the Bible, as God had used it to describe Israel, which is exactly what Stephen was trying to point out in his speech.
"uncircumcised in heart and ears"
As you may have already guessed, this is the phrase that really caught my eye. THIS is probably what cut most deeply at the hearts of the Jews (pun intended). We know that of all that these uber-religious Jews were proud of, they were the most proud of their circumcision. They loved that they were Jews. They looked down on all with foreskins and really flaunted their circumcision and Jew-ness around. To call a Jew, especially a "religious" Jew, uncircumcised? That was the ultimate insult! Stephen was not only attacking their identity as Jews, but because the circumcision was a sign of the Jews' covenant with God, he was attacking their faith and their religiosity. He was correctly diagnosing the spiritual deadness of their hearts. But man. What a harsh rebuking.
"you always resist the Holy Spirit. As your fathers do, so do you."
This is when all of a sudden the conviction fell on me like a bag of bricks (who carries bricks in bags, anyways?). I was all like "Haha! You Pharisees just got BURNED by Stephen so hard!", but then I realized that this passage...the Pharisees...that's ME. This verse is a great, memorable summarization of the doctrine of sin - that apart from the saving grace of God, we ALL cannot help but resist the Holy Spirit. We ALL are stiff-necked, stuck in our sin, with no hope for true circumcision of the heart. This is the problem of my heart - I cannot help but sin and resist the Holy Spirit. Not only is this my problem, this is the problem of all of creation and all of man. This has been the problem for generations and generations and ages and ages. There is none that can self-determine to not resist the Holy Spirit.
When we read stories of the Pharisees in the Bible, we almost always vilify them without realizing that we are actually just like them, if not worse! Tim Keller said in one of his sermons, "How often do we read the passage on the Pharisee's prayer and the tax collector's prayer and think to ourselves 'Thank God I'm not like that Pharisee?'" I am that guy. I'm the modern-day Pharisee who scoffs at the Pharisees. I'm the pot who called the kettle black (not that there's anything wrong with being black, of course. I lovingly accept and enjoy the diversity of kettles of all colors). Apart from God, I hate Him. And I hate people that love Him. I cannot help but sin. I have no ability to please God. To top it all off, I have no ability to not hate God, even if I tried, which I would never do, because I hate God so much. Reading this passage with an understanding that I am actually the Jew - who is absolutely dead in sin and pride and hate having my sins pointed - really opens up my eyes.
But obviously, this isn't the end of the story. There is good news, and that is that God can overcome our resisting of him, which he accomplished by Jesus' death on the cross, that we can share in the communion with God as Stephen experienced, and one day we will meet him in heaven and give him a hug and tell him "Thanks for Acts 7. That was a pretty sweet speech."
The death of Stephen
So what ultimately made the Jews so mad that they killed him? Stephen said he saw Jesus. He said he saw God. How blessed are we that we have that same privilege to know the true, living God. In his entire speech, Stephen actually barely mentioned Jesus. He alluded to Jesus when he said that their ancestors killed the prophets we predicted the coming of "the Righteous One." This was only the second time. The Jews couldn't believe their ears, that Stephen was claiming that he could see God, and that he could see the Messiah. While I highly doubt anyone reading this post has actually seen God, we have the unthinkable opportunity to know Jesus. Jesus says in John 14:9, "Whoever has seen me has seen the Father". It's amazing how we can claim to know the Messiah personally and the Creator God of heaven and earth, the very things that Stephen died for.
God, I am a sinner. I cannot help but resist you. Thank you for overcoming my resistance and giving me your salvation. Reveal to me the places in my life where I'm still resisting you, and help me give those things over to you.
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