If you turn in your scriptures
to Acts chapter 7, it is remarkable that in the
providence of the Lord. This man Stephen has given such
a place, such a prominent place, such a place of such high honour
in the church that this sermon of his has been recorded in such
great detail. A sermon no doubt interrupted,
interrupted I suspect by the looks of these people as they
became more enraged as they saw the scriptures spoke of them
and they weren't happy with what they saw. And of course, it's
a sermon that caused this man Stephen to be put to death, summarily
put to death by this angry mob. There are several fascinating
things about Stephen, isn't it? Stephen was one who was the chosen
deacon, and he was a man full of the Holy Ghost and wisdom,
and his wisdom was such that as we have seen in previous weeks,
Stephen just served. Stephen served at tables. Stephen's life in this journey
to glory began by him being a servant. Stephen was a servant, but he
was a witness And the other thing that I want you to note is that
Stephen is not mentioned amongst the apostles, he's mentioned
in the early church, and he may well have been one of the converts
on the day of Pentecost. There were people from all of
those parts of the Roman Empire. And I suppose that's one of the
things that is so significant to me about this, is that Stephen
was an ordinary believer. like we were in many ways. Stephen
was one of those who probably was not privileged with seeing
the Lord Jesus Christ in the flesh. Stephen is here as an
example of a Gospel witness. He's an example of someone to
whom the Gospel came with power. He is, in large measure, a type
of all the believers in the rest of this Gospel age until the
Lord Jesus Christ returns. and he was converted through
the word preached. He is one of those for whom the
Lord Jesus Christ prayed. In John 17 he prays initially
for his disciples and then in verse 20 he says, neither I pray
for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me
through their word. There will be believers and the
believers will be believers because of the word of God preached. That they, verse 21, that they
all may be one as thou, Father, art in me and I in thee, that
they also may be one in us, that the world may believe that thou
hast sent me, and the glory which thou gavest me I have given them,
that they may be one, even as we are one. I in them and thou
in me, that they may be made perfect in one, that the world
may know that thou hast sent me and hast loved them as thou
hast loved me. So twice in this prayer of the
Lord Jesus Christ is that the believers, those who believe,
will be there as a witness to the world, in verse 21, that
the world may believe that Thou hast sent me, that the world
may believe that this Jesus of Nazareth is the Christ of God,
this man who is to be crucified on that Roman cross the next
morning is the Christ of God, that the world may believe that
Thou hast sent me. and that the world may know that
Thou hast sent me, and that the world may know that Thou hast
loved them as Thou hast loved me." That's the purpose, isn't
it, brothers and sisters, of the witness, isn't it? This high
priest who prayed that prayer, and took that precious blood
into the Holy of Holies was interceding for Stephen as Stephen spoke.
Stephen typifies the Church of God, the witness of the Church
of God and he typifies believers. And the other thing that is remarkable
about Stephen is that we have in Stephen as we have in almost
no other example in the rest of the scriptures, we have the
dying testimony of a saint of God. We have what it will be
like for the children of God to fall asleep. Death for this world is a horrible
thing. They have no answer for it. They
carry on with all the platitudes about death. I was at my elderly
cousin's funeral the other day. In Providence I was made to go
and sit in the front row because I was delivering the eulogy and
there I was just a metre away from the head of this man and
there were several things that really struck me as just how
dead, dead is. And how a man who was such a
big man and prominent man in many ways had shrunk and managed
to fit in this little coffin. And how many people including
the so-called priest in that church, wanted to tell everyone
that he's in a better place. I don't know how many times they
told me that this man is at peace. May God protect us from all that
is false, but also may the Lord lead us to where Stephen was
led. Stephen died at the end of chapter
7. He died and he saw the heavens
open and he saw the Son of Man standing on the right hand of
God. He was there at his death. He was there when that grace
that takes the Lord's children out of this world is there for
them. They will go from here immediately
into the presence of God, to be with Him forever. Stephen
saw more through faith than multitudes and multitudes and multiplied
thousands saw in the flesh. He saw more through faith And
Stephen knew more through faith than all of the learners, all
of the martyrs, all of the learners of that time. When God creates
witnesses, they will be filled with the Holy Spirit and wisdom. And when God creates witnesses,
they'll bear witness to this witness that Stephen bears of
our great God. They will bear witness to the
Lord Jesus Christ. that sovereign, successful, reigning,
ruling, redeeming, both king and high priest, but sovereign
God over all things. So I'd like us today, as we end
this year 2017 and embark on 2018, which is a year in which
we celebrate our 10 years of being gathered by the Lord, gathered
out of religion and gathered there, We might see yet again,
brothers and sisters, that our testimony is the testimony of
the scriptures. Our testimony of the Lord Jesus
Christ is the testimony that Stephen bore before that religious
world. And the religious world might
treat us in time as Stephen was treated. that if the Lord grants
us the grace to be witnesses to Him, even if our time of testimony
and our lives are short as Stephen's were, what a glorious, glorious
way to finish. What a glorious privilege. We
have in this short time we are here, the only opportunity in
all of time for us to exercise faith. We have been given the
most extraordinary privilege, brothers and sisters. We have
been endowed with the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. It's
a remarkable privilege. It's a remarkable honour. It's
a blessed, blessed thing to bear witness to Him. So let's read
chapter 7 and then we'll go, Lord will you go back and we'll
just look at a few things. Obviously I don't have time to
pick up all the points, but I wanted us to hear this sermon in its
entirety. and to travel with Stephen as
the Holy Spirit led him into the Scriptures, to take the Scriptures
and to make them living. The reality of the Scriptures,
brothers and sisters, is that according to Hebrews 4, chapter
10, they are living and active. God purposes that His people
will see in the Scriptures not just history that's old, but
history that is now and fresh, which is why in that psalm that
Norm read in Hebrews 4, it says, now, today, if you hear His voice. The Scriptures are living and
active. They are powerful. The word of
God is quick and powerful, sharper than a two-edged sword, piercing
even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit and of the
joints and marrow, and is the discerner of the thoughts and
intents of the heart. Hebrews 4.12. Let's read this sermon. Stephen,
if we go back into chapter 6, Stephen has these accusations
laid against him. The accusations of blasphemy
against God and blasphemy against Moses and blasphemy, as they
saw it, against this holy place and blasphemy against the law.
And all that sat in the council, verse 15, looked steadfastly
on him and saw his face as if had been the face of an angel. Then said the high priest, are
these things so? These are the allegations, these
are the accusations made against you, Stephen. Are these things
so? And I just love Stephen's answer
to all of those accusations. And he said, Men and brethren
and fathers, hearken! The God of glory appeared unto
our father Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia, before he dwelt
in Charan, and said unto him, Get thee out of thy country,
and from thy kindred, and come into the land which I shall show
thee. Then he came out of the land
of the Chaldeans and dwelt in Charan. And from thence, when
his father was dead, he removed him into this land wherein ye
now dwell. And he gave him none inheritance
in it, no, not so much as to set his foot on. Yet he promised
that he would give it to him for a possession, and to his
seed after him, when as yet he had no child. And God spake on
this wise, that his seed should sojourn in a strange land, that
they should bring them into bondage, and entreat them evil for a hundred
years. And the nation to whom they shall
be in bondage will I judge, said God. And after that shall they
come forth and serve me in this place. And he gave him the covenant
of circumcision. So Abraham begat Isaac and circumcised
him the eighth day. And Isaac begat Jacob, and Jacob
begat the twelve patriarchs. And the patriarchs moved with
envy, sold Joseph into Egypt, but God was with him, and delivered
him out of all his afflictions, and gave him favour and wisdom
in the sight of Pharaoh king of Egypt, and made him governor
over Egypt and all his house. Now there came a dearth over
all the land of Egypt and Canaan, and great affliction, and our
fathers found no sustenance. But when Jacob heard that there
was corn in Egypt, he sent our fathers first. And at the second
time Joseph was made known to his brethren, and Joseph's kindred
was made known unto Pharaoh. Then sent Joseph, and called
his father Jacob to him, and all his kindred, threescore and
fifteen souls. So Jacob went down into Egypt
and died, he and our fathers, and were carried over to Sikkim,
and laid in the sepulchre that Abraham bought for a sum of money
of the sons of Emor, the father of Sikkim. And when the time
of promise drew nigh, which God had sworn to Abraham, the people
grew and multiplied in Egypt, till another king arose which
knew not Joseph. The same dealt subtly with our
kindred, and evil entreated our fathers, so that they cast out
their young children to the end that they might not live. in
which time Moses was born and was exceeding fair and nourished
up in his father's house three months. And when he was cast
out, Pharaoh's daughter took him up and nourished him for
her own son. And Moses was learned in all
the wisdom of the Egyptians and was mighty in words and in deeds. And when he was fully forty years
old, it came into his heart to visit his brethren, the children
of Israel. And seeing one of them suffer
wrong, he defended him and avenged him that was oppressed, and spoke
the Egyptian. For he supposed his brethren
would have understood how that God by his hand would deliver
them, but they understood not. And the next day he showed himself
unto them as they strove, and would have set them at one again,
saying, Sirs, ye are brethren, why do ye wrong one another? But he that did his neighbour
wrong thrust him away, saying, Who made thee a ruler and a judge
over us? Will thou kill me as thou didst
the Egyptian yesterday? Then fled Moses at this saying,
and was estranged in the land of Midian, where he begat two
sons. And when forty years were expired,
there appeared to him in the wilderness of Mount Sinai, an
angel of the Lord in the flame of fire in a bush. When Moses
saw it, he wandered at the sight, and as he drew near to behold
it, the voice of the Lord came unto him, saying, I am the God
of thy fathers, the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the
God of Jacob. Then Moses trembled, and durst
not behold. Then said the Lord to him, Put
off thy shoes from thy feet, for the place where thou standest
is holy ground. I have seen, I have seen the
affliction of my people which is in Egypt, and I have heard
their groaning, and am come down to deliver them. And now come,
I will send thee into Egypt. This Moses whom they refused,
saying, Who made thee a ruler and a judge? The same did God
send to be a ruler and a deliverer by the hand of the angel which
appeared to him in the bush. He brought them out. After that
he showed wonders and signs in the land of Egypt, and in the
Red Sea, and in the wilderness forty years. This is that Moses
which said unto the children of Israel, a prophet shall the
Lord your God raise up unto you of your brethren, like unto me,
him shall ye hear. This is he that was in the church
in the wilderness, with the angel which spoke to him in the Mount
Sinai, and with our fathers who received the lively oracles given
unto us. to whom our fathers would not
obey, but thrust him from them, and in their hearts turned back
again into Egypt, saying unto Aaron, Make us gods to go before
us. for as for this Moses which brought
us out of the land of Egypt, we want not, we know not what
is become of him. And they made a calf in those
days and offered sacrifice unto the idol and rejoiced in the
work of their own hands. Then God turned and gave them
up to worship the host of heaven, as it is written in the Book
of the Prophets, O ye house of Israel, have ye offered to me
slain beasts and sacrifices by the space of forty years in the
wilderness? Yea, ye took up the tabernacle
of Moloch, and the star of your God Repham, figures which you
made to worship them, and I will carry you away beyond Babylon. Our fathers had the tabernacle
of witness in the wilderness, as he appointed, speaking unto
Moses that he should make it according to the fashion that
he had seen, which also our fathers that came after brought in with
Jesus, Joshua, into the possession of the Gentiles, whom God drove
out before the face of our fathers unto the days of David. who found
favour before God, and desired to find a tabernacle for the
God of Jacob. But Solomon built him a house.
How big it, the most high, dwelleth not in temples made with hands,
saith the Prophet. Heaven is my throne, earth is
my footstool, What house will ye build me, saith the Lord,
or what is the place of my rest? Hath not my hand made all these
things? Ye stiff-necked and uncircumcised
in heart and ears. Ye do always resist the Holy
Ghost, as your fathers did, so do ye. Which of the prophets
have not your fathers persecuted? And they have slain them which
showed before of the coming of the Just One, of whom you have
been now betrayers and murderers, who have received the law by
the disposition of angels, and have not kept it. When they heard
these things, they were cut to the heart, and they gnashed on
him with their teeth. But he, being full of the Holy
Ghost, looked up steadfastly into heaven and saw the glory
of God. And Jesus, standing on the right
hand of God, said, Behold, I see the heavens open, And the son
of man standing on the right hand of God. Then they cried
out with a loud voice and stopped their ears and ran upon him with
one accord and cast him out of the city and stoned him. And
the witnesses laid down their clothes at a young man's feet,
whose name was Saul. And they stoned Stephen, calling
upon God and saying, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit. And he kneeled
down and cried with a loud voice, Lord, lay not this sin to their
charge. And when he had said this, he
fell asleep. And devout men carried Stephen
to his burial, and made great lamentation over him. As I said earlier, there is so
much in this remarkable sermon that we will just, Lord willing,
touch on to things and I trust the Lord might cause us to be
drawn to worship, drawn to adore, drawn to bear witness. To bear
witness, of course, the word witness is to be a martyr. It's
exactly the same word, just translated differently. It's to bear witness
to Him. To be filled with the Holy Spirit
is to have wisdom. Stephen is a man acting in the
most extraordinary wisdom. It is wise, it is always wise
if the Lord allows to bear testimony to the Lord Jesus Christ, no
matter what the circumstances and no matter what the response
of others. He's full of the Holy Ghost and
wisdom. And being full of the Holy Ghost,
he actually takes his starting point and his reference in all
things. He speaks of the Word of God.
He speaks out of the Scriptures. He takes those Scriptures that
speak of God and speak of our Lord Jesus Christ And he takes
those scriptures and from those scriptures he takes that history
of those people throughout those thousands of years and he makes
it the history that they are experiencing at this time. Such is the power of the Word
of God. Such is the God who is revealed
here at the beginning, isn't it? We looked at it last week.
The men and brethren and fathers hearken. The God of Glory appeared
to our Father when He was in Mesopotamia before He dwelt in
Haran. And when the God of Glory appears,
the God of Glory is always going to appear as a speaking God. The God of Glory is going to
reveal Himself in His glory by revealing His Word to them. He does come, and when the God
of Glory appears, He will be a speaking God. The God of Glory
appeared to Abraham, the God of Glory appeared to Moses, and
Moses never forgot that meeting with the God of Glory in the
bush. And Abraham never forgot the meeting with the God of Glory
when he came to Him and said those words, didn't he? Those
words that came with spirit and power to him, get thee out of
thy country, get thee out from thy kindred, get thee out and
come, come into the land which I shall show you. And then, verse
4, he came out of the land of the Chaldeans and dwelt in Haran. It is remarkable, isn't it, that
they accuse Stephen of blasphemy. Blasphemy against God, blasphemy
against Moses, blasphemy against this holy place. And Stephen
reminds them of their heritage. When God appears to people, when
God first appeared to the man who was the one who was to become
the father of that nation, the father of the faithful, he appeared
to him as a pagan idolater. An Iraqi idolater was Abraham. There was no law. This was before
the law. There was no land. There was
no temple and there were no people, and yet God appeared to him."
So God appears to people not on the basis of the law, not
on the basis of land, not on the basis of temple, not on the
basis of human association. When God appears to people, He
sovereignly appears to people. He now appears to people through
the preaching of the Gospel, but He does so with exactly the
same sovereignty as He does in his appearances to Abraham. And
when God appears, God speaks, and it's a word of separation,
isn't it? This sovereign God speaks and
it's a word to draw people out. But not just to draw them out,
it's a word to draw them to. And it's a word that comes from
God with power. And that's exactly what happened
to Abraham. Our friend Stephen, by the Holy
Spirit, is revealing the fact that the God of Abraham, the
God of Isaac and the God of Jacob is a God who is not to be tempted
with and a God who is absolutely sovereign. If you go through
this sermon and look at all the instances where God absolutely
reigns and is revealed as sovereign. He speaks and it is done. He speaks, and he speaks words
of promise. And Stephen is led, as I trust
we will be led in our witness always, he is led back to God's
covenant arrangement. If you go down there in verse,
he gave him non-inheritance in verse 7. No, not so much as to
set his foot on. Abraham had no inheritance there.
He had to buy that plot of land to bury his wife and the land
that his descendants were buried in. Yet he promised. Again and
again in this sermon we see God promising. He promised. He promised
that he would give it to him for a position and to be seed
after him when as yet he had no child. And God promised, he spoke on
this way, God promised that his seed should sojourn in the strange
land and that they should bring them into bondage and he'd treat
them evil for 400 years. God made a covenant promise to
his people that he would take them out of Ur of the Chaldeans,
he would bring them to that land, but he'd bring them there just
briefly and he'd give them no inheritance in it, and he would
take them to this other land for 400 years, the land of Egypt.
And that land, that nation, will put them into bondage despite
the fact that that land exists because of the grace of God,
the mercy of God through his servant Joseph. But that nation,
verse 7, that they shall be in bondage will I judge, that they
shall come forth. God's purpose in judging that
nation, God's purpose in bringing that people down there to grow
them as His seed in that land, in verse 7, is that they might
serve Me in this place. God's purpose of redemption is
that He would be served. As we saw last week, when the
God of glory appears, God's glory rebounds back to Him. Abraham
gave glory to God. Abraham met the God of glory.
then Abraham gave glory to God, being fully persuaded that what
God had promised he was able to do. And God, to reinforce that promise,
to reinforce that covenant gave these people that sign of circumcision. He gave him the covenant of circumcision. Every day those Jewish people
knew that they were separated from the rest of the world and
that they were separated unto God. These patriarchs These patriarchs
show us yet again that God operates in gracious ways of providence
which is beyond the understanding of men and he turns the wickedness
and he turns the evil of the hearts of men into glory for
himself. These patriarchs, they sold Joseph
and I love the description of Joseph in verse 9, but God was
with him. There he is, in the most cruel
and evil way, mistreated by those who should have loved him and
cared for him. Those patriarchs who then went on to cause their
father Jacob to have all of that anguish about the death of his
son for all that time. All of this, which seems so evil
and so perverse, and you would think, where can good come out
of this? Such is the state of God's children in these lives,
isn't it? But there is just one answer, isn't there? God was
with him. God had made a promise beforehand,
and God was with him, and God was faithful to his promise.
And he delivered him out of all of his afflictions and gave him
favour and wisdom in the sight of Pharaoh, king of Egypt, and
made him governor over Egypt and all his house. And he did
it for a purpose. He did it so that Jacob in verse
12 would hear that there was corn in Egypt, there was bread,
there was life in Egypt. Joseph typifies the Lord Jesus
Christ in so many remarkable ways, doesn't he? He was the deliverer of his family. He was the ruler over that evil
empire that stood opposed to the children of God. And Jacob
went down into Egypt and he died, verse 15, and he was carried
over into Sikkim and laid in a sepulchre that Abraham bought
for the sum of money from the sons of Emor. But, verse 17,
when the time of promise drew nigh, you see always, always
God is going to operate on the basis of covenant promises, covenant
engagements, and the time, the time of the promise drew nigh. God had sworn, that time which
God had sworn to Abraham, the people grew and multiplied, and
there was another king, and he dealt subtly with our people
in evil and treated our fathers so that they were cast out. And
in the midst of all of that, Moses was raised up. See, Moses
is still a man now, man with the mark of the covenant upon
him, a man marked out by God to be the deliverer of his people.
a man who at this stage, even though he came to typify the
law, a man who did not live under the law, without a temple, a
man who knew that God had dealt kindly with him. In which time
Moses was born was exceedingly fair and he is nourished in his
father's house. And you know the story, the remarkable
providence of God, you little little boat. The little, little
boat sailed down a river, and the little boat is covered on
the outside and on the inside with pitch. It's a little boat
that sails down those waters, inside and out, with propitiation. The wrath-absorbing sacrifice,
and there in the wrath-absorbing sacrifice is the life of this
one who would bring life to those people. And the story is remarkable,
isn't it? They go, Pharaoh's daughter finds
him and Pharaoh's daughter sends him back to Moses' mother to
nurture him until he's weaned. But Moses, verse 22, was learned
in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, mighty in words and in deeds.
When he was full forty years old, it came into his heart. How did it come into his heart?
The Holy Spirit had reminded him, didn't it? He had been reminded,
as all those Jews had been reminded, of a covenant promise that God
had made. They were marked in their bodies,
all of those Jewish men, they were marked in their bodies with
that sign of the covenant. It came into his heart, led by
the Holy Spirit, to visit his brethren, the children of Israel. And seeing one of them suffer
wrong, he defended him and avenged him that was oppressed and smote
the Egyptians." And listen to this. It's fascinating how the
Holy Spirit led Stephen to give us things which are not written
in the rest of the scriptures. For he supposed His brethren
would have understood how that God by His hand would deliver
them, but they understood not. Moses was led that way. He thought and he knew that he
was to be the deliverer of these people. God had come and visited
him, and God had shown him that by His hands He would deliver
him. And we know the story. Moses came and Moses was rejected. It is the same rejection that
man make of the Lord Jesus Christ. Who made thee, verse 27, who
made thee a ruler and a judge over us? How dare you presume
to be the one that has the right to speak and the one that has
the right to judge and the one that has the right to rule. Then Moses, verse 29, fled. And for 40 years, 40 long years,
Moses was there in the wilderness. It is a story, isn't it, like
Joseph, of people who were rejected by men, rejected by the children
of Israel, and yet raised up by God to be the deliverer. Joseph delivered them from famine,
delivered them from death. delivered them into a place where
they could prosper. Moses was to be their deliverer,
to rescue them out of that land, out of that land that typified
the world and typified Satan and his kingdom. But Moses came
this time, didn't he? When 40 years were expired, there
appeared to him in the wilderness of Mount Sinai an angel of the
Lord in the flame of fire in the bush. Moses speaks of a lot
of things that happened in his life as he's dying, but the one
event of Moses' life which seemed to captivate him for the rest
of his days was this meeting with God in the burning bush.
It is, of course, a meeting with the Lord Jesus Christ. It is
the God of glory that appeared to him. If you turn to Exodus
3, verse 6, Maybe this is a reference to
it. And there's just no question about it whatsoever that when
we proclaim and bear witness to the Lord Jesus Christ, we
are proclaiming and bearing witness to the fact that the Lord Jesus
Christ is Jehovah. He is God the Son. He is God who rules over all
things. He is God who comes and visits
his people. He is God who speaks to his people. When the God of glory appears
and the God of glory speaks, It is always going to be in the
form of the Lord Jesus Christ. Now Moses kept the flock of Jethro,
his father-in-law. The priest of Midian, he led
the flock to the backside of the desert, and he came to the
mountain of God, even to Horeb. And the angel of the Lord appeared
unto him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush. And he
looked, and behold, the bush was burned with fire, and the
bush was not consumed. And Moses said, I will now turn
aside and see this great sight. Why the bush is not burnt? And
when the Lord saw that he had turned aside to see, God called
unto him out of the midst of the bush and said, Moses, Moses. And he said, Here I am. And he
said, Draw not nigh hither, don't come so close, put off thy shoes
from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy
ground. Moreover, he said, I am the God
of thy father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God
of Jacob. Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look upon
God." It was the Lord Jesus Christ as God that Moses met there.
It was the Lord Jesus who spoke to him. It was the Lord Jesus
who is the angel of the covenant. It was, as Moses said at the
end of his life in Deuteronomy 33, he says, the goodwill of
him that dwelt in the bush. See that's the wonder of this
site, isn't it, is the wonder of the Lord Jesus appearing to
Moses as the man who was. so typical of all men and yet
was God in human flesh. He is God and there He was. He was coming to Moses to see
all those blessings and to sign and to see all those promises
and to commission Moses to do that work. But He comes first
to reveal to Moses that He comes, as it were, in our nature. And
there he is in that nature and he is not consumed. The fire
which typifies the wrath of God burns and the fire does not burn
the bush. It is a picture, isn't it? that
that bush was not burnt because God dwelt in it. It is a picture,
of course, of redemption, that the wrath of God fell on the
Lord Jesus Christ, the entire wrath of God for all of His children
fell on the Lord Jesus Christ and it was not consumed. In fact,
the fire of God's wrath fell on the Lord Jesus Christ and
He consumed it and put it away. He will reveal himself as the
God of glory. He will reveal himself to his
people as he did to Stephen. He will reveal himself as the
God of covenant promises. And he will reveal himself as
the God who is holy. When God appears to people, when
he really appears to people, he will appear as holy. And God's
people will never forget the holiness of God. They will not
forget the awesome presence of God in His holiness. In verse
32, He spoke, saying, I am the God of thy fathers, the God of
Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. He's always
in the Scriptures the God of history. He's the God of providence.
He's the God who, in His covenant, rules all the providences of
the world for His glory and for the good of His people. And he's
going to be a holy God. Verse 32, then Moses trembled. When Moses trembled and doth
not behold. Then said the Lord to him, put
off thy shoes from thy feet, for the place where thou standest
is holy ground. When people come to meet God,
they will see that they are standing upon holy ground and they won't
play games with the things of God. They won't trivialise his
character, his nature, they won't trivialise his word and they
won't trivialise his witness. But I love the next verse. It's
remarkable, isn't it? We spend so often in this world,
we spend out so much time grieving and groaning and lamenting the
things that go on. And we often spend so much time
wishing that they were not. And it is right. for us to think
that they shouldn't be as they are. But it's also profoundly
wrong for us, in the midst of all that, to deny the fact of
what God says. I love that he repeats it here.
Look at verse 34 with me. He says, I have seen, I have
seen. It's emphasised, isn't it? I
have seen, I have seen the affliction of my people. He sees, brothers
and sisters, He sees the affliction of His people. He saw the affliction
of them there and He heard their groaning. I have heard their
groaning and I have come down to deliver them. God's people
in this world find themselves afflicted and they find themselves
groaning. They find that this world, this
world that treats the Lord Jesus Christ with such utter contempt,
treats His Word with such contempt, treats His people with such contempt,
they groan, they grieve and lament when God marks His people to
rescue them and to redeem them from this fallen and broken world.
When God puts a mark on His people, when He brings judgement on this
world and He marks His people for salvation, in Ezekiel 9 verse
4, when the angels were about to come and destroy this city
Jerusalem in that first destruction, And
the Lord said to the avenging angels, go through the midst
of the city and through the midst of Jerusalem and set a mark,
set a mark on the foreheads of them that sigh and that cry for
all the abominations that are done in the midst thereof. God's
people sigh and cry over religious abominations, and they are around
us. And God marks His people. They
are mine. It is a lovely description, isn't
it, in verse 34. He says, I have seen, I have
seen the affliction of my people. He has a people, our great God,
We bear witness to the fact that he has a people. He had a people
from before the foundation of the world. And he gave those
people to the Lord Jesus Christ. And amongst this vast multitude
that was taken out of there, there was a people that he especially
said, are my people. Norm read about the 600,000 that
died in the desert. How many went into the promised
land of all those men of that time? How many went into the
promised land? 603,000, I think, died. Their carcasses were buried in
the desert. My people that went into the
Promised Land were too. I'm not saying that some of the
others weren't the Lord's people. But the Lord's people, my people,
are a remnant people in the midst of another people, aren't they?
They are a remnant people in the midst of this world. They
are a remnant people in the midst of this religious world. But
they are my people, says our God. They are owned by me, he
says. I own them. I possess them. They are His by right of creation. They are His by right of redemption. They are His and He rules over
them. But also when He says that they
are my people, they can say that He is my God. I love what the
Shulamites said in the Song of Solomon, I am my Beloved. I am
my Beloved's. I belong to Him and my Beloved's
is mine. He'll come down and deliver them.
You see, Moses typified the Lord Jesus Christ. Joseph was a rejected
man. Abraham was a separated man,
Joseph was a rejected man, Moses was a rejected man, the Lord
Jesus Christ was a rejected man. This Moses whom they received,
saying, Who made thee a ruler and a judge? The same did God
send to be a ruler and a deliverer by the hand of the angel which
appeared to him in the bush. And he brought them out and he
showed them wonders in the land of Egypt. And this Moses, verse
37, this Moses made a promise at the end of his life, in Deuteronomy
15, he made a promise, a prophet. A prophet shall the Lord your
God raise up unto you of your brethren. There will be one who
comes and speaks as no one else has spoken of God. There will
be this prophet, the Lord Jesus Christ, and if you raise up out
of your brethren, Like unto me, and I love the promise at the
end of that verse, isn't it? Him shall ye hear. There will be a people, a my
people in this world, and they will hear Him. Him shall ye hear. And then there is this remarkable
description of the Lord Jesus. This is He that was in the church
in the wilderness. He was always there with His
people. He's never been separated from His people. He was there.
And the church didn't begin on the day of Pentecost. There was
a church in the wilderness. with the angel that spoke to
him in Mount Sinai with our fathers. He was the angel. He is the angel
of the covenant. He is the messenger of the covenant.
He is that angel at the end of the Old Testament, the angel,
that messenger of the covenant who has promised to come suddenly
to his temple, to his people, to redeem his people. He came. They thrust him from
them. They thrust Him from them. Why do people thrust the Lord
Jesus from them? It says in verse 39, their hearts,
in their hearts, Norm read out of Psalm 95, the problem we have
is a heart problem. Their hearts turn back again
to Egypt. What does Egypt offer? Egypt
offers all the things of this world. May God keep your hearts
from desiring the things of this world. They are deceptive. They look as if they are stable
and they are not. They look as if they give comfort
and peace and security and they do not. They lie to us all the
time, our possessions. We are the richest generation
that has lived en masse on planet earth and the possessions that we have
ensnare us. May God cause our hearts to be
turned to Him. May God cause us to see this
life in the light of who the Lord Jesus Christ is. We don't have much time to look
at it closely, but in verse 42 we must remember that wherever
there is idolatry, whatever it looks like in this world, that
idolatry has not come outside of the sovereignty of God and
does not impinge on the sovereignty of God at all. That idolatry,
that religious idolatry, no matter what shape or form it's in, is
actually God's judgement upon people. We should be grieving
over the witness, the appalling way this world treats the Lord
Jesus Christ, and we should if the Lord would allow us to see
it through spiritual eyes and to see that the heart and the
basis of fornication and sodomy is spiritual fornication and
sodomy and adultery. But we also must see that God
sovereignly rules over that. You see there in verse 42, God
turned and God gave them up to worship the host of heaven. You
see the worship of the host of heaven and the worship of all
these false gods and these false idols and the worship of man
is the judgment of God upon people. I was in a place at that funeral
the other day which was just full of idolatry, idolatry in
every way, shape and form, and it was the judgement of God upon
those people. God can reveal Himself, but when
God in judgement has revealed Himself in providence and in
His Word and people turn from Him, No longer am I shocked at
where they go, because when God says He sends them a powerful
delusion that they'll believe the lie, I figure that they'll
get deluded, and I figure that they'll believe the lie, and
they'll believe the lie to the point of these people where they
will murder the children of God, murder their character and their
reputation. But it's God who gives them up.
It's God who has given them up and God in judgement gave them
over and God in judgement sent them way beyond Babylon. God in judgement causes the one
that is rejected to be the one that God's people must turn to
for salvation. The rejected Moses was the deliverer,
the rejected Joseph was the deliverer, the rejected one is the deliverer,
the rejected Lord Jesus Christ is the deliverer. He speaks of this house that
Solomon built in 47. Then he says that our God is
much above houses, is much above stones, isn't it? How be it,
verse 48, the Most High dwelleth not in temples made at hand,
saith the Prophet. Heaven is my throne, earth is
my footstool. What house will you build for
me, saith the Lord, or what is the place of my rest? Hath not
my hand made all these things? There they were, they had more
interest in worshipping the temple than they did the one who the
temple represented. They had more interest in their
righteousness that they felt they attained by observing the
law of God, thinking that they observed it meticulously, which
revealed two things about them. They had no idea of the holiness
of God. They had no idea of the simpleness
of their state. They had no idea that the law
was spiritual. They had no idea that they couldn't
keep it. They were in their law-keeping
exactly like those people at Mount Sinai. They were in their
law-keeping and their religious self-righteousness as no different
from those who went to the tabernacle of Moloch and worshipped the host of heaven. Then he describes these people. You stiff-necked and uncircumcised
in heart and ears, you do always resist the Holy Ghost. As your
fathers did, so do ye. Which of the prophets have not
your fathers persecuted? They have slain them which showed
before the coming of the Just One, of whom you have now been
betrayers and murderers." When Stephen comes to deal with these
people personally, he deals with the reality of their sin and
the magnitude of their sin. Sin against God is murder of
the Lord Jesus Christ. There is no such thing as little
sins, brothers and sisters. There are no little sins. All
of those sins that were put on the Lord Jesus Christ and God
punished to the full satisfaction of His justice. They caused His
heart to break. They brought blood through the
pores of His skin under the weight of those sins when they were
laid on Him. And that cup that the Father
gave Him in Gethsemane's garden, that cup was no doubt was the
cup of all of the sins of all of His people. May God cause
us as we bear witness to do with sin as serious as sin is. May God cause us not only to
see the seriousness of sin, but see the wonder of a sin redeemer. He took it away, brothers and
sisters, he drank that cup dry. That's why he's called the just
one. He was just in all of what he
did and it was justice, it was the justice of God that slayed
him. It was the justice of God that
took him to Calvary's tree and it was the justice of God that
poured out that wrath upon him because of his surety engagements
from all eternity. He says, I will take responsibility
for this my people. I'll take full responsibility,
I'll bear the responsibility of all their sins and the guilt
of all their sins. and I'll bear them away forever." When He appears, He will appear
as the God of glory. He will appear as the just God. He will appear as the sin-exposing
God. And He will appear to His people
as the one who takes those sins away. And He will appear to His
people as the one who stands in heaven's glories right now.
That's where Stephen saw Him at the end of this message. The
result of bearing witness to the Lord Jesus Christ is to bear
witness to Him reigning and ruling from Heaven's glory. The world and its religion will continue to
do the things that these people have done. And God's people will
continue to be sustained by the very presence, the appearance
and the reality of the God of glory, who sovereignly works
all things, who rules all things and reigns over all things. But
He's a God who sees. And He's a God who hears, and
He's a God who comes, and at the time of our greatest need,
at that time when we leave this earth, He's a God who comes in
remarkable ways to take His people back to Himself. That one who
overcomes Him in Song of Solomon with her look is the one that
He guards over with jealous affection now. He is the covenant keeping,
sovereign, redeeming God. And he's not inactive, brothers
and sisters. He's always working. He's always
working. And he stands on the right hand
of God. He stands on the right hand of
God. Men might be enraged at the God of glory and enraged
at his people declaring the God of glory. But one look, one moment of His
presence is worth all that this universe can give. May God cause
us and lead us to bear witness in faithfulness to our great
Redeemer and God. Let's pray.