The Stoning of Stephen
Acts 7:54-60
For our study this morning we come to the closing portion of the seventh chapter of Acts, and this is not only the closing of the seventh chapter of Acts, but it's the closing of the life of Stephen. This is a very dramatic and a very interesting and a very instructional part of the Word of God. I think very often it is passed over and kind of filed because, as so many passages, we know a little bit about it, therefore, we think we know everything about it.
And even I find myself having difficulty narrowing it down. There is much theology that can be taught from this, and I'll just trust God that we'll get back here again and again as days go by and not try to do it all this morning. But in these verses that deal with the stoning of Stephen, what hit me most dominantly as I read it and reread it and read it and meditated on it and studied it, what I kept seeing, and I always look for some common factor that ties a passage of Scripture together, so that we can consider a reigning thought or something to hang our thoughts on, the thing that kept coming up was the tremendous contrast that weaves through this passage, the contrast between a Spirit-filled man dying and the hate-filled mob killing him.
Everything here is contrast. And the contrast is extreme. It appears almost to be the contrast between heaven and hell, if I could put it as extreme as possible. And the real victim of this passage is not Stephen. He is no victim at all. He wins. He dies, but he dies the victor. They live. They live the loser. The mob is the tragedy. Stephen's was the victory.
Now, you remember the circumstances, and if you have not been here the last couple of weeks and heard the sermon of Stephen and that which brought about the need for that sermon, then you're somewhat at a loss to get into this with all the intensity that's really in it. But let me just pick up some of the pieces so that you kind of feel your way into the text with a little bit of a running start.
The early church has grown. In the time of their growth, they have run into certain organizational problems. They therefore needed to select seven men who could handle some of the administration. They were men who had to be highly qualified spiritually, full of the Holy Ghost. They were men who needed to have good reputations, those kind of men who would be chosen by their peers to rule over them.
And of those men, one was chosen by the name of Stephen. He is listed first, indicating he may have been the first one chosen. He was ranking in terms of spiritual life. He was not a Jewish...I should say, he was not a Palestine Jew. He was a Grecian Jew. That is, he was a Jew that lived outside of Palestine. He was selected to be a key to the structure of the early church.
Now, he spent himself in preaching in synagogues in Jerusalem, but synagogues that were run by foreign Jews. When foreign Jews came to Jerusalem, they went to their own synagogues, where they could hear their own language. And so Stephen began to extend the gospel to these foreign Jews by preaching in these synagogues.
Well, he ran into a lot of reaction, and it was negative. And they came after him with accusations. They said, "Stephen, by offering us this Jesus Christ, and by giving us this new covenant, you're guilty of blaspheming God, Moses, the law and the Temple." And that's the big four in Judaism. You don't blaspheme those.
And so they indicted Stephen for blasphemy, and they brought him to trial before the council. And in the chapter that we have just begun to study, chapter 7, he gives his great defense. He defends himself to the council. And all through chapter 7 he is defending himself, but not only that. At the same time that he gives his defense, he indicts Israel for the execution of Messiah, and he also presents Jesus as Messiah. By the time he is done with his defense, they are on trial. He has accused them of blasphemy.
He says, "I believe in God," in effect, in his sermon, "you don't. I believe in Moses, you don't. I believe in the law, you break it all the time. I believe in the Temple, if you'd have believed in the Temple, it wouldn't have been destroyed. You're now on your third temple. Guess who doesn't believe in the Temple? God has to keep wiping it out." And so he turns the tables completely on them and indicts them, and it's a building thing.
It just kind of builds. And you can see first there's a little agitation. Then there's a little more agitation. Then there's steam, and then there's smoke and then there's fire, you see. And so when you come to chapter 7, verse 51, Stephen climaxes out by saying, "You stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears." What he means by that is, "You won't bow to God, and secondly your religion is only external."
"You do always resist the Holy Spirit. As your fathers did, so do ye. Which of the prophets have not your fathers persecuted? And they have slain them who showed before of the coming of the Just One, of whom you now are the betrayers and murderers, who have received the law." You have no excuses. You knew the truth "by the disposition of angels," and you haven't kept it.
And so the thing climaxes out in a fantastic indictment where they are the blasphemers, not Stephen. And it's a masterpiece of a sermon. And by the time that comes out, they are in fury. They are in frenzy. And contrasted to their fury and their rage and their frenzy is the majestic calm of Stephen. He stands there serene, absolutely in control, sustained by the Lord, while they are torn into shreds. And so that's the picture of contrast that begins to weave itself through these few verses.
And really what it boils down to, in a general sense, is the contrast between a hostile, Christ-hating world and the gentle, loving, Spirit-filled servant of God who confronts that world. The world gives its worst. The Christian shows his best. Stephen had confronted the world boldly, dynamically. He said the things that needed to be said, even though they were painful, even though they hurt. Even though he knew they were going to cost him his life, he said them because he was expendable for the sake of the truth. They killed him, but God glorified him.
Now, let's follow these contrasts. And if you follow along with us in the text and on that little piece of paper, I'm sure you'll be able to see what is unfolding in this most dramatic picture.
The first contrast between the Christ-hating mob and the man of God is the contrast between full of anger and full of the Holy Spirit. Verse 54, "When they heard these things," and I think that Stephen's sermon was interrupted before it was ever finished, "when they heard these things," you see, they always prided themselves on their obedience to God, worship of God. "We love the law. We love the prophets," and all this. And he had just torn that to bits. "And when they heard these things, they were cut to the heart." That means they were sawn in half.
You see, at first when they listened to him, "Oh, yeah, he's right, sure," and they were nodding, probably, because all he was doing was reciting their history. And they had to agree. And he did that purposely, to keep their attention. But then as the drift of the argument became clear, their interest began to change, and pretty soon it turned into horror, and then it turned into fury. And they were cut to the heart by now. They were sawn in half. The great saw of conviction had ripped them right through the middle, and they knew everything he said was true, and they were ripped apart.
And, you know, in this kind of a rage, it says in verse 54, "they gnashed on him with their teeth." They began to grind their teeth at him. This is the picture of rage mixed with frustration. They didn't know how to give vent to their wrath. And so they just stood there and ground their teeth at him. And, you know, I couldn't help but read that, "they gnashed on him with their teeth," and think they were already in a little bit of hell. Because that's how many people are going to spend forever, just grinding their teeth in fury at God.
You say, "What makes you think that?" Listen as I read Luke 13:28. I'm going to read several passages. Write them down if you want to look them up later, but don't try to follow. I'll go a little quickly. Jesus, speaking to Israel, Luke 13:28, "There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth when ye shall see Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God and you yourselves thrown out."
See, the Jews had waited all along for the kingdom. They had dreamed of the kingdom. The King came, offered them the kingdom, and what did they do to the King? They killed the King. They forfeited the kingdom. Jesus says, "You're going to spend forever grinding your teeth at God when you see you didn't get into the kingdom."
And in Matthew we have it again, in chapter 8 and verse 12. Listen to these words. They're fearful words. "But the sons of the kingdom," you know who that is? That's Israel, the rightful heirs to the kingdom. "Shall be cast into outer darkness. There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth."
Then you go on in Matthew to chapter 13, and you have it all over again. Whenever you hear something once in the Bible, it's absolutely important. Whenever you hear it repeated over and over again, it is extremely important. Matthew, chapter 13, and verse 42, well, 41, "The Son of Man shall send forth His angels and they shall gather out of His kingdom all those that offend and them who do iniquity and cast them into the furnace of fire. There shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth." You know, hell's going to be full of mad people, angry people. Verse 50, "and shall cast them into the furnace of fire. There shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth."
Chapter 22 of Matthew, verse 13, Jesus isn't finished. He says, "Then said the king to the servants, 'Bind him hand and foot, take him away, cast him into outer darkness. There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.'" You find it again in chapter 24 of Matthew as He's still talking about the kingdom. Verse 51, "shall cut him asunder, appoint him his portion with the hypocrites. There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth."
Hell is going to be full of people forever gnashing their teeth at God in fury. And these people were already so hell-oriented that they were already that far along that when they faced the truth of Christ again, they got mad. And you know something? This tells us a little bit about the kind of anger it is, because they could've repented. But they didn't. It's not the kind of anger that leads to repentance. It's the kind of anger that remains bitter and hateful.
You say, "Well, isn't it true that if people go to hell, if they were given a second chance, wouldn't they want to get out?" I don't believe they would. If a man won't respond to the loving grace of God, he'll never respond to God's judgment. It'll only make him mad. He'll only hate God all the more.
You say, "Is there any evidence for that?" I believe there is, in the Book of Revelation. This is a footnote, but let me maintain it for a moment. In Revelation, chapter 9, verse 20, and I'll read several verses from Revelation, it says, "And the rest of the men who were not killed by these plagues," and that means a third of the world. It just has talked about the sixth trumpet during the Tribulation, when a third of the world is going to be killed by fire, smoke and brimstone. And then he says, "They were not killed, yet repented not." Verse 21, "Neither repented they of their murders, sorceries," that's pharmacia in the Greek. It's the word for drugs. "Nor of fornication," sexual sin, "nor of their thefts."
You see, even after the horror of judgment, when God wipes out one-third of the earth, they're not going to repent. They're only going to get mad. In Revelation 11:15, "The seventh angel sounded. There came voices from heaven saying, 'The kingdom of this world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ, and he shall reign forever and ever.' The four and twenty elders who sat before God on their thrones fell on their faces and worshipped God and said, 'We give thanks.'" And all this praise is going on. And verse 18 says, "And the nations were angry." They get mad.
But the classic example is in chapter 16, when final great devastating judgment pours out of God on that great Tribulation population. It says in verse 8, "And the fourth angel poured out his bowl upon the sun, and power was given unto him to scorch men with fire." The sun's going to burn the skin right off men. "And men were scorched with great heat," listen to this, "and repented?" No. "And blasphemed the name of God. And they repented not to give Him glory."
Verse 10, "And the fifth angel poured out his bowl upon the throne of the beast, and his kingdom was full of darkness, and they gnawed their tongues for pain." Absolute pitch black all over the world. You say, "They'll repent then." It says in 11, "And blasphemed the God of heaven and repented not." If grace and love don't bring repentance, judgment never does. It only makes them mad.
Jesus had offered grace upon grace upon grace. Stephen came along and said, "You've rejected it so long, you've had it." And that only made them all the more furious, and so they began to grind their teeth. Hell is going to be full of people who are very, very angry.
Now, I believe that these leaders were apostates. I believe that these leaders were past feeling. I believe they were so hard, they were rocks. I believe they were damned by their continuous willful rejection, and now they were locked in a judicial kind of blindness. You see, when you willfully reject, willfully reject, willfully reject, then God moves in and judicially blinds.
In the case of Israel, it's reiterated in Romans, chapter 11, verses 7 through 10, and that's a very familiar passage and one which we should note with great care. In Romans 11, verse 7, it says, "What then? Israel hath not obtained that which he seeketh for; but the election hath obtained it, and the rest were blinded." Somebody blinded them. "As it is written, God hath given them the spirit of slumber." You say, "Did God blind Israel?" Absolutely. But only after they willfully blinded themselves. Just like Pharaoh. It says, "Pharaoh hardened his heart, Pharaoh hardened his heart, Pharaoh hardened his heart," bang, "God hardened Pharaoh's heart."
You see, grace runs its course, and then it runs out, and God moves in judicially and confirms that blindness. "God hath given them the spirit of slumber, eyes that they should not see, ears that they should not hear. And David said, 'Let their table be made a snare, and a trap, and a stumbling block, and a recompense unto them. Let their eyes be darkened, that they may not see, and bow down their back always.'"
These people had heard the truth. They had heard Jesus. They had seen His miracles. They had heard the apostles. They'd seen their miracles. They'd heard the witness of the early church, the message and the miracles of Peter and John, the message, the miracles of Stephen. They had seen it all, and they had rejected and rejected and rejected. And Stephen here is simply now not inviting them anymore, but indicting them. And the point of his sermon here is to bring about judgment. That's why you don't hear any invitation in it. It's indictment. It's giving a basis for judgment.
And they reacted as all people do to judgment. They got mad. They got mad. You see, even Paul said, "It is the grace of God that bringeth," what? "Salvation." Judgment upon an apostate only makes him all the more angry. And yet, in all their fury, they were at least direct enough, as we shall see in a moment, to maintain some kind of logic in the execution of Stephen. And so they got mad. They gnashed on him with their teeth. The storm in all of its fury begins to break on Stephen's head.
In their madness, they were speechless with rage. They couldn't even find words to give vent to their burning hatred. All they could do in their frenzy was grind their teeth, an expression of impotent rage, of inexpressible frustration. And I don't think this was a sudden outburst. I think it was a growing thing that gradually grew higher and higher as Stephen continued to speak, and actually it never died away until Stephen lay before them, horribly mangled, blood-spattered and dead.
You see, these dignitaries had never quite faced such a prisoner as Stephen. He spoke like a judge, not a prisoner. He seemed to be an accuser rather than the accused. And he hit the nail right on the head. He hit them right where they lived. And he was right on. And they didn't want anybody to expose and unbare their sins. And so they reacted satanically.
You'll remember that Herod killed John the Baptist because John pointed to Herod's sin and rebuked him for it. You'll remember that the Pharisees nailed Jesus to a cross because He demanded...He denounced, I should say, and exposed their hypocrisy. The Jews reacted in the same manner toward the apostles. Stephen was the first of multitudes of men who, in their unflinching exposure of the sins of others, have died for it. And so they were mad, full of anger.
You know, the Bible warns people like this. If you're getting to the place in your life where you just get mad when somebody tells you about Christ, you're standing on the brink of judgment. The Bible says in Hebrews 3, "Harden not your hearts. Don't be hardened to the deceitfulness of sin lest you obtain an evil heart of unbelief." So they were hard.
But, in contrast, I love this, they were full of anger, but Stephen was full of the Holy Spirit. Look at verse 55. "And he, being full of the Holy Spirit, looked up steadfastly into heaven." Isn't it a beautiful contrast? They were completely ripped apart. They were torn up. Stephen was together. He was full of the Holy Spirit.
And I like this thing. It says in verse 55, "But he, being." It's saying this, "But he, being continually full of the Holy Spirit." Stephen didn't have to make any adjustment in his life to die. You see? He didn't have to get it all together in the last moment. It had been together for a long time. He was being full of the Holy Spirit. He was full of the Holy Spirit in chapter 6. That's why they chose him. He's still full of the Holy Spirit in chapter 7.
And that's what Paul was saying, you see, in Ephesians 5:18. When Paul gave the command, he said this: "Be filled with the Spirit." The actual Greek is, "Be being kept filled with the Spirit." Be being. We are to be continually being controlled by the Spirit. And that was Stephen. He was full of the Spirit all the time. It wasn't some sudden shot. It was a preexisting, permanent state.
Some people would tell us that if you're filled with the Spirit, you do ecstatic things. If that were true and you obeyed the Scripture, then you'd be doing nothing but that all the time, because this is not a sudden shot experience. It is that which is to be the continuous pattern of the life of the Christian. Unfortunately for most of us, we yield and then we don't yield, we yield and then we don't yield, and it's kind of a rollercoaster thing. But Stephen was being full of the Holy Spirit.
And to be filled with the Spirit, beloved, we've talked about this many times, let me just say this, means to be controlled by the Spirit, yielded to Him. That's all it means. And Stephen was controlled by the Spirit. And because the Spirit was in control, you see, the normal reactions didn't take over. You see, the Spirit was in control. And so he responded in a godly, trusting, faithful fashion. He didn't respond in the flesh. He responded in the Spirit. And I'll tell you, that's his strength and that's our strength.
There's another thing that comes to my mind here that I want you to see that I think is important. I believe, and this is a footnote, but it's important, I believe that there's a special work of the Holy Spirit for a Christian in a crisis. All right? You got that much? I believe there's a special work of the Spirit for a Christian in a crisis.
And I believe that we do not have to think, now, watch this one, we do not have to think, "I cannot get into a real tough situation, I can't really face the world and be bold and forceful for Christ because I'll never be able to hack it." I believe it is just at that point that the Spirit of God is doubly poured out in a double portion upon you.
You say, "Where do you get that?" Well, if you know me very well, you know I got it out of a verse somewhere, and it's I Peter 4:14. It says this. "If you be reproached," and he's talking about slamming yourself up against the world, against the system, and saying what's true, "If you be reproached for the name of Christ, happy are you." Now you say, "You're kidding. Who's happy? Why would you ever be happy?" Because the Spirit of glory and of God rests on you. In other words, there's some special divine intervention of the Spirit of God.
Have you ever heard anybody talk about dying grace? I used to wonder. I have read literally thousands of pages of historical information on the death of Christians and the death of martyrs, everywhere from the early church right on through to the present day, when people were being martyred in China, when people were being martyred in other places in our current, modern world for the cause of Christ. And in reading all of this, I have never one time read of a Christian who died a raving, screaming maniac. Have you?
There is something that God does in, I believe, the willing death of a believer in the face of persecution, that grants to him the adequacy to die giving God the glory. And I think that's what God bestowed upon Stephen in a double sense. So I'm saying that to say this. Don't ever shirk from being bold in the world for fear that you don't have the resources to handle it. It's at that point that God pours out a double portion of His Spirit to make it adequate.
So many times we look at the extreme situations as to how we've performed in the minimal situations. And, you know, if we did that, we'd certainly all be defeated, because we blow it so many times. But I believe it's when we really hit the world, and we are totally helpless and at the mercy of them, that God inte