May 3 2020
Acts 7:1-58
It seems as if that with the coming of the month of May that life will be getting back to normal, a new normal but a normal none the less.Some businesses are finally allowed to open back up and going out in public is ok as long as a mask is worn. There are certain customs though which may never return like greeting each other by a handshake. Reaching out to shake another persons hand is so common place that it is hard to imagine that it will perhaps be a thing of the past.
The way we worship when we once again as Christ’s church will also be affected. We will have to figure out how to do social distancing which may mean we have to sit somewhere other than our well worn spot in the pew. There won’t be any hugs or handshakes to pass the peace just a wave perhaps to convey the peace we desire. We will have to figure out how to serve communion because no matter how you slice the serving and eating of the elements is a touchy-feely kind of service. So, yes changes are coming and the hope we all have is that church one day will at long last feel like church not just some strange version of what we used to know as going to church.
It is times such as these that the book of Acts truly helps us get our bearings in uncertain times especially in the area of worship. You see with the death and resurrection of Jesus more than any other area of the lives of those early followers of Jesus worship was drastically changed. Going up to the stunningly beautiful Temple with its striking architecture and its ever hum of activity was no longer to be the focus of their worship. No longer were they to be concerned with the offering of an animal to the priests to be sacrificed; no longer were they to set their calendars by the observance of the feasts or to partake of the eating of the various foods that each festival had to offer. You see for the early followers of Jesus who were leaving behind their Jewish faith meant leaving behind a life marked by certain sensory moments; the smell of the burning sacrifice upon the altar, the hearing of the singing of the psalms as the people ascended the stairs into the Temple, the joy as the people gathered together in large throngs waving their harvest as they proceeded to the Temple. These were the sights, the smells, the moments that grounded their life. This is all what those early followers were willing to give up yet it is the sacredness of this normal that the Jewish people clung to that also explains their unwillingness to leave their Temple worship of God behind. For the followers of Jesus to boldly state that there was a new Temple and the name of this Temple was Jesus turned the whole world of the Jewish people upside down. They, much like us, did not like their normal way of life being questioned. The Jewish people hated the fact that Temple life was one day going to be an obsolete way of living and this was a large part why theJewish people persecuted the early followers of Jesus.
We have to understand where this anger of the Jewish people was coming from to also understand the persecution and murder of Stephen. Stephen was one of seven men chosen to serve the widows in the daily distribution of food so that the apostles could have more time for the preaching of the word. These seven were men of good repute, full of the Spirit and wisdom. Stephen, our scripture tells us, was full of grace and power and did many wonders and signs among the people. This of course upset certain Jewish believers who saw clearly the power of God in someone who believed in Jesus who just as clearly was to them, not of God. This is what upset them because if Stephen could perform miracles through the power of God then the people would have to concede in the holiness of Jesus and this would shake their world. So these Jewish believers brought charges against Stephen stating that Stephen had blasphemed against Moses and against God. Specifically they stated that Stephan had said that Jesus was going to destroy the Temple and do away with the customs of Moses. These are the charges that Stephen was defending himself against that takes up most of the seventh chapter of Acts.
Stephen begins by reciting the history of the people of Israel beginning with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. He recites the story of Joseph and the enslavement of the people of Israel in Egypt and how Moses went down to Egypt and through wonders and signs led the people out of Israel. It was Moses who went up on Mount Sinai and received the living oracles, the law to give to the people. Now up to this point the story of Stephen seems like a pretty impressive telling of the past of the people of Israel. It is right here though that the tone of the story begins to change because Stephen reminds them how it was their ancestors who refused to obey Moses, thrusting him aside and in their hearts turning back to Egypt. They built an idol, the golden calf and worshiped it instead of the living God. So their support of Moses and his customs had a much more checkered past than they were willing to let on.
Stephen continues with the story of the houses of worship in Israel’s history beginning with the tabernacle, the house of meeting that Moses built according to the plan given to him from heaven. Then much later came the Temple built by Solomon.Yet, as Stephen quoting what was written in the sixty sixth chapter of Isaiah tells his audience which were the very same thoughts of Solomon when he dedicated the Temple, that the Most High does not dwell in houses made by hands. The phrase “made by hands” is the common way that the prophets would speak about the idols that the people of Israel would worship, that they gods made by hands. The implication is that the Temple had become an idol which was being worshipped in place of worshipping the living God. Well, Stephen continues with what Isaiah had written telling his audience that God teaches that “ Heaven is my throne and the earth is my footstool. What kind of house will you build for me says the Lord, or what is my place of rest? Did not my hand make all these things? Then Stephen summed it all up by just flat out telling these Jewish instigators the truth of who they really were telling them they were stiff necked people, uncircumcised in heart and ears, people who always resist the Holy Spirit. The reason for the history lesson is to point out that just as their ancestors had resisted Moses so now they were resisting Jesus. Stephen asked them just which prophet did their fathers not persecute? They killed the prophets who had announced the coming of the Righteous one and now they had betrayed and murdered him as well. They received the law given to them by angels yet they did not keep it. In other words even though they proudly declared themselves to be followers of the law the truth is that they did not keep the law as they killed Jesus a clearly innocent man.
When Stephen stated the truth of who they were in all stark detail it is no surprise that the crowd became enraged. These were people who like the rest of the world believed in the power of the flesh. It is in the weakness of the flesh that sin finds its power which is death. With the blazing fire of the crowds anger staring down upon him, Stephen, full of the Holy Spirt gazed into heaven and he saw the glory of heaven and there was Jesus standing at the right hand of God. What the crowd would never understand being so lost in the darkness of their sin is that they were staring right at God’s new Temple because as we learn in the third chapter of the first letter to the church at Corinth, “Do you not know that you are God’s Temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?” This is the new normal that the death and resurrection of Jesus had brought about. Just as Jesus had foretold when he turned the tables over in the Temple, he told them “destroy this Temple and in three days I will raise it up.” Jesus was speaking of the Temple of his body where the Holy Spirit dwelt. The people of Israel did destroy the Temple of of the body of Jesus upon the cross. This was as God foredained because Jesus was the new High Priest of the new Temple offering his own blood as the once for all sacrifice for the sins of the whole world. The blood of Jesus purified and purged our sin becoming for us the mercy seat where we might draw near to God no longer separated by our sin. Three days later Jesus was raised from the dead. He taught his disciples for forty days then he ascended to the presence of God the Father, the Ancient of Days. This is what Stephen saw, the heavens opening up the Son of Man standing at the right hand of the God.” At these words of Stephen the crowd had had enough and they cast him out of the city and stoned him. Even so Stephen in his last breath forgave those who had sinned against him just as Jesus had done upon the cross.
The death of Stephen shows that worship, especially worship at the Temple was an issue that separated the followers of Jesus from everyone else. These followers of Jesus had no Temple and no sacrifice which made them look like no religion at all to the rest of the watching world. So what does worship look like when it is us, the followers of Jesus who make up the Temple of Jesus. This is who Paul tells us in the second chapter of Ephesians. There Paul teaches that we are “ no longer strangers and aliens but we are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God built on the foundations of the apostles and the prophets, Christ Jesus the cornerstone in whom the whole structure , being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord” So it is the living Christ who is the very cornerstone of the Temple, the one who hold us true in three dimensions whose life causes the Temple to grow.
So we know now that we are the new Temple, a part of that Temple through being united with Christ. The roots of this understanding are found in the seventh chapter of the book of Daniel which Stephen quoted from when he poke about Jesus being the son of Man. The Son of Man was the one accepted by God to be the perfect human, the new Adam. Jesus being raised from the dead proved that his life was the life we as people were always supposed to live; this is the importance of Jesus being the Son of Man. The book of Daniel tells us that this Son of Man who was to be given a dominion, and a glory and a kingdom that all peoples, nations and languages shall serve him. This is what Jesus being ascended to the throne speaks to. Yet this is not all because further in the seventh chapter of Daniel we read that this kingdom and dominion and the greatness of the kingdoms under the whole heaven shall be given to the saints of the Most High; their kingdom shall be an everlasting kingdom and all dominions shall serve and obey them.” So the kingdom of Jesus is freely shared with the saints, the holy ones of the Most High. This oneness between Jesus and the saints, those who have placed their faith in their Heavenly Father, those who listen to the word of Jesus, this unity is what binds the living Temple together to make a place for the Holy Spirit.
What is also amazing about this new Temple brought about by the resurrection of Jesus is that this Temple is what our Heavenly Father is searching for. In other words, we do not have to wonder where our Heavenly Father is, where is it that we can find his presence. Jesus, teaching in the fourth chapter of the gospel of John tells us first, that the hour is coming when neither on this mountain of Samaria nor in Jerusalem will people worship the Father. These Temple sights will no longer be necessary with the death and resurrection of Jesus. Jesus continues that the hour is coming and is now here when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. It is amazing that while we are certain that our God has no needs that we could ever fulfill yet here we find that our Heavenly Father is still a God who is searching for people who rightly worship him. Now, while what Jesus states here seems like coming out of left field there are scriptures that help us discover that what God is seeking is what God has always been seeking. Jesus gives us hints to this when first in his ministry he is driven out in the desert by the Holy Spirit to be tested by the devil. In the fourth chapter of Matthews gospel, starting at the eighth verse we read how the devil taking Jesus to a high mountain and shows Jesus all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. The devil told Jesus, “All these I will give you if you fall down and worship me” Jesus said to him “Be gone Satan! It is written “You shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve.” This scripture Jesus uses to come against this temptation comes from the sixth chapter, the thirteenth verse of Deuteronomy. There this scripture is translated as being “It is the Lord your God you shall fear. Him you shall serve and by his name you shall swear.” So, first we find that Jesus uses the word “worship” instead of fear which gives us the true meaning of this scripture. This fear is the fear of awe and reverence of God. The second demand of this scripture is that we serve God. The word for serve here is the word used to describe the work of the priests in the Temple. Now, what is also interesting is that the work of the Spirit is create us to be servants. This is what we find in the third chapter of the First Corinthians where Paul tells us about the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Paul then in describing himself and Apollo, people in-dwelt by the Holy Spirit, considers themselves as servant. This is what we also find in the second chapter of Philippians where Paul admonishes church to have the same mind and Spirit of Christ who considered himself a servant. Jesus himself taught to be the greatest of all meant that one had to be the servant of all. So there is a definite connection between the Spirit and our service of God. The swearing by the name of God spoken of in Deuteronomy 6:13 is a taking of an oath that upon penalty of death we as God’s people will be true to God and God alone. This is what we learn in the fourth chapter of Jeremiah where we read “if you swearing “As the Lord lives”, in truth, in justice and in righteousness the nations will bless themselves in the Lord and in him shall they glory” This is the truth I believe Jesus is referencing in the fourth chapter of John. He is not referencing a propositional truth that such and such is the truth but rather Jesus is speaking about the truth of a person, being someone of integrity who swears to be true to living out the justice and righteousness God demands.
So the worship we as God’s new Temple do is not so much about the customs, whether from Moses or anyone else, but rather is about the commandments of God. In the tenth chapter of Deuteronomy we find that what was written in the sixth chapter is elaborated so we have a better idea of what God requires of our worship. There we discover that worshipping God is to do what God requires, to walk in all his ways and to love him. This is what it means to revere God, to be in awe of who God is not just in what he does and has done. To serve God as his priest in this world, a world which is his Temple, means to execute justice for the fatherless, and the widow, loving the foreigner, the one whose customs, whose ways are unlike ours, these we are to give our food and our clothes to. God told the people of Israel to love the foreigners because the people of Israel were foreigners down in Egypt and they knew what is what like to be a stranger in a strange land. Perhaps, we have all felt like that from time to time.We are to swear by the name of God, the unchanging character of God, to be that true and unchanging in our loyalty towards God even in the face of death. This means we are to cling fast to God to be united with him. And the scripture ends by saying that God is our praise. Praise is but a small part to worship God when we worship God in Spirit and in truth.
We see the truth of this teaching in the life of Stephen, as both in his life and death Stephen revered God. Stephen was full of the Holy Spirit and this Spirit formed him into a servant who executed justice for the widows by making sure that they were fed and cared for when they were unable to do so for themselves. Stephen was true to God even in the face of death forgiving his enemies in his last breath. We know he was united with Christ as one of his saints as we saw Jesus the Son of Man stand in his defense.Through his witness, Stephen was living proof of what it means to be a living stone in the new Temple of Jesus Christ. Stephen worshiped the kind of Spirit and truth filled worship our heavenly is seeking. So in these times of so much upheaval in our church life let us not forget that being a follower of Jesus is not about buildings and singing praises. No, we are the living stones, the Spirit dwells in us to form us into God’s servants who worship as we walk in the ways of God, no matter where we are walking, no matter what day of the week it may be. May we always be faithful in our worship of God. Amen!
No comments:
Post a Comment