home >  Media > Weekend Message

What can be wrong about pursuing the Good? Sometimes our commitment to the Good blinds us to what is Best. Stephen, the first martyr in church history, won few friends when he called out Jerusalem’s religious establishment for their obsessive preoccupation with the temple and the Old Testament law. But Stephen was pointing to the true treasure — Jesus the Messiah. His passion cost him his life.

ZIONSVILLE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH
February 22, 2009 Rev. Glenn McDonald
Acts 6:8-7:60

Back to the Blueprints
(8) Pursue the Right Treasure

As a congregation, we feel called to take a stand this morning. It's time to put an end to subliminal messages. Now in case you don't know, subliminal communication is the subversive and illegal practice of concealing messages within what otherwise seems like ordinary give and take. In other words, if you're communicating subliminally, you can say things without actually seeming to say them (go Purdue).

You can see the danger, especially within the church. A pastor could signal to his congregation, without their fully realizing it, that he appreciates receiving snacks (Dairy Queen), or maybe gifts from local stores (42 long). He could even secretly plant the idea for a change in the worship service (second offering).

Just this week I received this letter: "Dear Reverend McDonald (great preacher), when is ZPC going to take a stand against the dangers of subliminal communication?" Now the writer signed his name, but I'd prefer at this time that he remain anonymous (Chris Malott). Today we're taking a stand. Other churches may think that God tolerates subliminal communication (the Methodists), but we're saying no. And you can absolutely trust our staff, almost without exception (Daniel Shreve).

Do you sometimes wonder if you're getting the real story when you come to church, or when you talk to spiritual leaders, or even when you open your Bible? The world is ready for the end of spiritual doubletalk. How and where can you find someone who will lay it on the line, and not try to do an end run around what actually needs to be said?

Meet Stephen - the most straight-talking character in the entire book of Acts. Stephen is one of the seven deacons who are called into public service early in the life of the Jerusalem church. We're going to save the details of that calling for later this spring. Stephen's ministry turns out to be brief and spectacular, apparently because he skipped class on the day his seminary professors had warned, "Just because you're thinking it doesn't mean it's a good idea to put it into your sermon." Stephen stands up and tells the spiritual leaders of his time that they are so preoccupied with being religious that they have missed God's will for their lives. As you might expect, the Jewish establishment isn't overly exuberant about this news, and there are fatal consequences for the whistle blower.

Stephen's story is rather long, and today we're going to do a bit of skipping around. Let's begin in Acts chapter six, which you can find on page 1083. In verse eight we read: "Now Stephen, a man full of God's grace and power, did great wonders and miraculous signs among the people. Opposition arose, however..." and here we need to pause to remind ourselves that Jesus had warned his followers that this very thing was going to happen.

At the Last Supper he had even said, "A time is coming when anyone who kills you will think he is offering a service to God." (John 16:2) Stephen has been out preaching and teaching and is being used by the Spirit to do amazing things. But in short order certain people who are offended by his ministry manage to get him arrested and dragged before the Sanhedrin, the Jewish ruling council.

So what buttons has Stephen managed to push? Verse 13 tells us: "They produced false witnesses, who testified, ‘This fellow never stops speaking against this holy place and against the law.'" It appears that Stephen's preaching has hit two sensitive nerves. He's been calling out the leaders of Israel for their fanatical devotion to the law and the temple - that is, God's written Word as expressed in the first five books of the Bible, and that massive structure in Jerusalem that was dedicated as God's dwelling place on earth.

Stephen has been echoing the preaching of Jesus: The law and the temple are wonderful things. They are two of God's most excellent gifts. But the moment we start treasuring the law and the temple as if they themselves are God, we have settled for spiritual fool's gold.

It's hard to overstate the radical devotion of many first century Jews to the law. We know of Pharisees who, when imprisoned, accepted torture and death instead of eating a single piece of pork, which would have violated the teachings of the Torah. These Jewish leaders had begun to see the law as a backbreaking, never-ending spiritual to-do list that only the worthiest people, such as themselves, could actually obey. We also know that many Jews had begun to treat the temple as a kind of spiritual good luck charm. Nothing would ever happen to Israel because they had God's house in their capital city. They were the proprietors of God's crib.

Then Stephen comes along. He doesn't say, "If it's OK, I'd like to share a few personal opinions about the meaning of life (Jesus Christ)." He talks straight. Stephen says, "You've embraced the good at the cost of the best." The real treasure isn't having God's law. It's having a life-transforming relationship with God through Jesus. And God doesn't exclusively hang out in a limestone building, no matter how spectacular it looks. God wants to dwell in human hearts. By publicly questioning the primacy of the Torah and the temple - just as Jesus did - Stephen has managed to get himself a day in court. Jesus' day before the Sanhedrin had not gone well. Stephen undoubtedly suspects that his will be no different.

As we come to chapter seven we see that the high priest himself is presiding over this inquest. He asks, in verse one, "Are these charges true?" Stephen is given a chance to respond. What follows is quite a speech - a 52-verse tour de force of Old Testament history. Stephen goes on and on and on. The first couple of times I read this I thought, "Why is all this in the Bible?" Stephen reminds us of that person in every family who struggles to provide yes or no answers to simple questions. "Did you mail those letters today?" "Well, I started off for the post office, and it began to snow, so I decided to cut over onto Elm Street. That took me past the Smiths - and did you know that they have a For Sale sign in their front yard? Although, come to think of it, maybe it was an election sign they haven't yet taken down." Would you please just answer the question?

Why is Stephen summarizing the whole Old Testament? The answer is that he is convinced that the Bible's basic storyline is not about the Torah and the temple. It's really about God's Messiah, Jesus of Nazareth. There is a method to Stephen's storytelling. Two patterns emerge.

The first is a declaration that even though the Jewish leaders may be hung up on the primacy of Israel, God isn't hung up at all. Stephen points out that Abraham wasn't in Israel when God first spoke to him. He didn't have a temple to go to, yet he seems to have heard God accurately enough. Joseph was carted off to Egypt where he didn't have a temple, either. Yet things turned out pretty well for him. And Moses was on the far side of a desert when God called him into service. Stephen culminates this line of thought by acknowledging that Solomon did indeed build a temple for God. But as he concludes in verse 48: "The Most High does not live in houses made by men."

Stephen's second theme is that religious people routinely reject the special messengers whom God sends to earth. Look at verse 35: "This is the same Moses whom they had rejected with the words, ‘Who made you ruler and judge?' He was sent to be their ruler and deliverer by God himself, through the angel who appeared to him in the bush." In other words, if the Sanhedrin is so excited about Moses - who was at first a rejected leader - shouldn't they give a second glance to another rejected leader named Jesus?

He wraps up his argument in verse 51: "You stiff-necked people, with uncircumcised hearts and ears! [And when you think about it, what an insult this is! Stephen is telling these Jewish men that they've managed to do a good job performing a surgical procedure on one part of the body, but have overlooked the ears and the heart]. You are just like your fathers: You always resist the Holy Spirit! Was there ever a prophet your fathers did not persecute? They even killed those who predicted the coming of the Righteous One. And now you have betrayed and murdered him..."

The class in seminary that Stephen apparently did not skip was the one in which his professors said, "When you know for sure you're preaching your very last sermon, you might as well go ahead and get everything off your chest." He identifies the Sanhedrin as betrayers and murderers. This is way over the top. This is not going to turn out well.

Look at verse 54: "When they heard this, they were furious and gnashed their teeth at him. But Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit, looked up to heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. ‘Look,' he said, ‘I see heaven open and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.'" What is the significance of this vision? Jesus is standing in heaven as Stephen's defense attorney. No one is defending him on earth. But Jesus is saying, "I've got your back, Stephen. All is well."

"At this they covered their ears and, yelling at the top of their voices, they all rushed at him, dragged him out of the city and began to stone him." Now whenever the Roman Empire occupied another nation, they took away its authority to carry out capital punishment. Thus the Sanhedrin had manipulated Pontius Pilate into executing Jesus by Roman hands. But Stephen's hearing has now generated a frenzied lynch mob.

Stoning, not crucifixion, was the preferred method of execution in Israel. The victim was generally pushed over the edge of a small cliff, about eight to ten feet down. Then the accusers would drop one large rock on top of him. If he survived that, a multitude of small rocks would follow. It appears that in this case there wasn't enough time to go the cliff. Notice verse 58: "Meanwhile, the witnesses laid their clothes at the feet of a young man named Saul." According to tradition, the accusers of someone about to suffer capital punishment would remove their cloaks, or outer garments. From a practical standpoint, this made it easier to throw rocks. Legally this became a way of saying, "I am signing my name to this person's death warrant." Next to the heap of cloaks is Saul. He is the cloak check boy. By assuming this role, he becomes complicit in the crime.

Notice how Stephen dies, as described in verse 59: "While they were stoning him, Stephen prayed, ‘Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.' Then he fell on his knees and cried out, ‘Lord, do not hold this sin against them.' When he had said this, he fell asleep." Stephen prays for the forgiveness of his murderers, just as Jesus did on the cross. He dies as a marturion, which is the Greek word for "witness" - someone pointing in the court of public opinion to the true identity of Jesus. Ultimately this word will become "martyr." Stephen is the first of millions of men and women who will die as martyrs because of their love for Jesus.

And what of this young man Saul? We'll pick up his story again in two weeks. Suffice it to say that the Pharisees are gratified to have a talented young star playing for the home team. Little do they know that he will soon become a superstar for the opposition, and become known to the world as the apostle Paul.

Israel's spiritual leaders had committed themselves to a pair of good things: the Torah and the temple. But by clinging to the good, they became blind to the best. Within four decades the temple would be destroyed. It has never been rebuilt. To this day the law remains Judaism's greatest possession, but in their zeal to pursue it - in their passion to please God - most Jews have missed what the earliest Christians said the law was all about: Jesus the Messiah.

And what about Stephen the straight talker? He preached quite a last sermon. This week I found myself thinking, "What if I knew I had just one more sermon at ZPC?" I've been a pastor here since Ronald Reagan's first term, and have delivered at least a thousand sermons. By God's grace, I hope to preach many more here. But what if I knew that I had just one left, and there was nothing to inhibit me from talking straight? What if I didn't have to worry about making people unhappy, or getting a stack of emails in my inbox on Monday morning, or getting myself fired? What would I say?

Here's what I would say: There's only one event in your future that is certain. You are going to die. So it's time to start thinking backwards. When you're about to die, do you want to be thinking that you wasted the gift of your life? That you never got around to loving other people? That you shipwrecked perfectly good relationships because you were too stubborn or too afraid to make things right, especially if that other person didn't know how to love you back? Do you want that to be your legacy?

When you're about to die, are you going to be left wondering what it would have been like if you had really trusted God? You only get one shot at this. What are you waiting for? Will you have spent your whole life worrying about stuff you can't take with you? Jesus says that each of us can have an eternal bank account in the next world that we make grow and grow and grow even in the midst of the worst depression. Will you have made a lifetime of deposits in that account by trusting God, or will you have collected a pile of cheap trinkets designed to impress your neighbors for 15 minutes?

What are you waiting for? The data is not going to change. Your options are not going to change. You can spend the rest of your life being obsessed by closets you think you have to clean, and those 10 pounds you think you have to lose, and that business deal you think you have to close. Or you can surrender yourself to what one writer has called "the magnificent architect and most glorious resident of the cosmos - the God whose presence fills each person with unceasing splendor and ever-increasing delight" (John Ortberg). Are you going to come to the end of your life realizing that you pursued the good and missed the best?

Three businessmen went to the funeral of one of their partners. Walking past the casket got them thinking. They asked each other, "What do you want people to say about you when they walk past your casket?" The first one said, "I would want them say, ‘He had great integrity in all of his relationships.'" The second one said, "I would want them to say, ‘What a great husband and dad.'" The third one said, "I would want people to look down at me in that casket and say, ‘Oh my gosh, he's still breathing!'"

Will you be able to say that you kept breathing, all your life, because you were continually filled and refilled with the breath of God, the Holy Spirit?

That's what I would say if I knew this was my last sermon. Here's the kicker: For all we know, I may have just preached my last sermon. Or this may have been the last sermon that you ever hear. Will you miss what is best because you're so wrapped up in something good? Jesus the Messiah says, "Follow me." What are you waiting for?