40 Minutes In The Old Testament - Live From HWSS 2025 (Episode 482)

Episode Date: October 24, 2025

In this live episode, Chad and Dan are joined by Erick Sorensen to discuss Stephen's Old Testament sermon in Acts 7. Have a listen. Show Notes: Support 1517 Podcast Network 1517 Podcasts 1517 on Youtube 1517 Podcast Network on Apple Podcasts 1517 Events Schedule 1517 Academy - Free Theological Education What's New from 1517: Untamed Prayers: 365 Daily Devotions on Christ in the Book of Psalms by Chad Bird Remembering Your Baptism: A 40-Day Devotional by Kathryn Morales Sinner Saint by Luke Kjolhaug The Impossible Prize: A Theology of Addiction by Donavan Riley More from the hosts: Daniel Emery Price Chad Bird

Welcome to 40 Minutes in the Old Testament. 40 Minutes in the Old Testament is a 1517 Podcast Network podcast. You can go to 1517.org slash podcast and check out all those other podcasts, some of which you've seen today. subscribe to a bunch of those while you're over there. Check out everything else that 1517 is doing. There's a lot of stuff, articles and books and events, which you're at one right now. Academies, there's so many academies. If you've never taken a 1517 academy, you should do that. That being said, we are going to be in the New Testament, but not really.

Only kind of. I mean, kind of in the New Testament. We're in the very earliest, earliest of the New Testament. We're going to be in Acts chapter 7, where we're going to talk about the first deacon who has set the impossibly high standard for all deacons to follow. I know there's pastors here, and your deacons aren't like this, I'm sure. Or else they'd be doing the preaching. Yeah, they'd be taking your job. Yes, yeah.

Acts is pretty cool, too. I read it for the first time, getting ready for the podcast. I was proud of you, Chad. Pretty neat to see the way the church grew. I saw you doing it last night. I was helping you with the Greek, you know. you got through it yeah yeah let's just spend more time there so what's the background of seven because it kind of starts i was looking at it we said we're like oh we're going to go through act

seven and it starts with uh and the high priest said are these things so which is kind of a weird way to start what things are we talking about yeah you need a little bit of background so you have these deacons shows and steven is one of them steven is part of the kind of the greek speaking part of of the jews a lot of jews in the first century spoke greek including him he gets in trouble, though, because he's preaching Jesus. And he's got a couple of basic accusations that level against him. One, that he's speaking against Moses. And the other, that he's speaking against God slash the temple. Kind of sound familiar? Same kind of accusations they level against Jesus, too. So keep that in mind as he's talking about against Moses, and he's talking against the

temple, the holy place. Because as Stephen replies, often subtly, he's going to begin to develop his argument throughout the process of this sermon. And I'll go ahead and say this up front because I think it's good to keep in mind when you're hearing the whole thing. This is not the trial of Stephen. This is the trial of the Sanhedrin. And the Sanhedrin are not the judges. The judge is the son of man who, as you hear at the end, is standing at the right hand of the father, standing because he's about to deliver a verdict in which he vindicates the righteous and he condemns those who have condemned this innocent one to death. So it's not the trial of Stephen, it's the trial of the Sanhedrin.

And you know the outcome out of that, or you will discover anyway the outcome of that. So maybe that's kind of the setting. Like you did last night. Yes, exactly. For the first time. All right, so you want me to get going? Yeah, let's go. We've got a lot of verses.

So he's in front of the Sanhedrin. High priest says, is this true? Are these things so? And Stephen said, I love how he starts. You think it's going to be like a very comforting, brothers and fathers. He's going to end by saying, you stiff-necked, uncircumcised in heart and ears. But he starts out, you know. He starts out very Minnesota nice.

Yeah, brothers and fathers. Yes. Hear me. And then he just starts going through the history of Israel. He says, the God of glory appeared to our father Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia, before he lived in Haran and said to him, go out from your land and from your kindred and go into the land that I will show you. And then he went out from the land of the Chaldeans and lived in Haran. And after his father died, God removed him from there into this land in which you are now

living. Now, one thing to notice right away is that as he retells this story, one of the things Stephen is doing is he's going to pinpoint how God was at work outside the land of Israel. God appeared to Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia, when he was not in the promised land. God of glory appeared to him there. And as you hear the rest of his sermon, that's one of the things you're going to pick up on, how God is not handcuffed to geography. He's not just bound himself to the temple or to the land of Israel. He's always worked outside those borders because he's not a local deity,

as many of the, all the deities really were in the ancient world. He's the God of gods. He's the Lord of lords. He's the God of all creation. Yeah, and even, I mean, in the case of Abraham, as Joshua tells us, it's not as if he was worshiping Yahweh when he was in Mesopotamia. I mean, so he's not even locked to specific theological systems at the time. If he's going to grab someone, he's going to pull them out regardless of where they're at at the time.

This is the God who pursues lost, sinful people. Yeah, even though later Jewish traditions like to describe Abraham as this pious youth who, like, burned down the house where his dad kept all his idols. All of this is just making up excuses for why God would have chose Abraham because he was such a righteous guy. Yeah. As if that's the way God works. He looks at, oh, look, there's some righteous people in the back row. I'll choose them. No, that's not the way that God works. Yeah. Never has been. Okay, I'll keep moving. We've got a lot to cover. So, verse 5, yet he gave him no inheritance in it, not even a foot's length, but promised to give it to him as a possession and to

his offspring after him, though he had no child. And God spoke to this effect, that his offspring would be sojourners in a land belonging to others, Egypt, who would enslave them and afflict them for 400 years. But, God said, I will judge the nation that they serve, and after that they shall come out and worship me in this place. And he gave him the covenant of circumcision. So Abraham became the father of Isaac and circumcised him on the eighth day. And then to like summarize multiple chapters in Genesis, he said, and then Isaac became the father of Jacob and Jacob, the father of the 12 patriarchs. So he's like blazed through this history. So what do we got so far? We got eight verses. He's kind of setting the scene here. He's going to tell the people the story of their

own people. And this isn't the first time this has occurred. You have this happening all over the Old Testament. You have it happening in the Psalms, multiple places. You have it happening in Nehemiah 9, where the speaker will recount the history of Israel as to emphasize a certain aspect of Israel's life. We would call it the bondage of the will. They'll often call it the hardness of the heart or how stiff-necked that they were, over and over and over, repeat offenders. Well, one of the things that you have to remember as he's going to continue, and even as he started, he's not really answering the question yet of course like hey did you say these things

he's like let me tell you about Abraham and he's talking of two people who's he's acting like they don't know their history which is insulting from the jump like these are the religious leaders and he's like hey remember Abraham

let me tell you how he became what he was and they're like yeah I mean yeah we teach this too and he's going to keep going And one of the things that's amazing about this speech, I think, is how long they let him go. Yeah. Do you have a point?

There's no interrupting. They're just like, what is... Well, and they can't disagree with anything he said. I mean, it's picture-perfect historical record. They can't be like, wait, wait, wait. Until the end. Until the end, they just go, right? Uh-huh.

Yeah. Until he lays that hammer down. And they're like, then at the end, you're going to die. Yeah. Or maybe they're waiting. I don't know if they're waiting for him to get to Moses, and he's like, I was good until Moses, but man, Moses is where this goes off the rails, but they're waiting for that moment. Yeah.

I think it's really only at the end when he finally becomes very explicit in his accusation. Then you go back and you listen to a sermon again, and you're like, oh, so you were dropping these hints all along as to your main point. And then when you get to that main point, there's this, you come around the corner and just like guns blazing. Yeah, yeah. Okay, so where are we at? We're at verse 9.

And the patriarchs, jealous of Joseph, sold him into Egypt. I'm just going to pause there for a second. Notice he doesn't call them, this is one of these other little subtle hints. The pillars of Israel, the patriarchs, the guys that are, you know, the 12 tribes are named after, they were jealous of Joseph, all right? Sold him into Egypt. but God was with him and rescued him out of all his afflictions and gave him favor and wisdom before Pharaoh, king of Egypt, who made him ruler over Egypt and all his household. One quick pause

there too, unless you guys want to add something. So you got two main leaders of Israel that are highlighted in the sermon, Joseph and then Moses. And notice how both of them are going to be rejected. So you have this pattern of rejection that's going to come up. God is going to elevate Joseph, so he's basically the savior of Israel during the famine. God is going to elevate Moses, so he is the rescuer, the redeemer of Israel. And how did you treat Joseph, the patriarchs? How did they treat Joseph? How did the people of Israel treat Moses? And then how did they treat the righteous one? So he's telling the story, but he's telling it with a certain slant as he's preparing to drop the bomb. Okay, I'll keep going. All right. So there was a famine throughout all Egypt

and Canaan, great affliction, and our fathers could find no food in the promised land. No food in the promised land. But when Jacob heard that there was grain in Egypt, there's your theme of God working outside the borders of Israel, he sent our fathers on their first visit. And on the second visit, Joseph made himself known to his brothers, and Joseph's family became known to Pharaoh. Joseph sent and summoned Jacob, his father, all his kindred, 75 persons in all, and Jacob went down into Egypt, and he died, he and our fathers, and they were carried back to Shechem and laid in the tomb that Abraham had bought for a sum of silver from the sons of Hamor in Shechem. These details have nothing to do with anything, and I love that he includes it. That's just you

flexing, but that's, that's just like, I know, I know this, I know the details of this story really well. I'm just going to throw them out. I know how much money, I know like where these guys were from. Yeah. Yes. Yes. I've been to Sunday school before. I know these, I know these details. So one thing that maybe if you were listening and you, you know, Genesis well, you're like, what? But it sounds quite the same. And that's because there are some differences here between the Hebrew text and the Septuagint, which is the Greek translation. So if you read your English Bibles translated from the Hebrew, you'll hear that there were 70 persons that went down. But if you read your Septuagint, as most Jews in the Roman world did in the first century,

it has 75. Well, who's he addressing? He's addressing people who know the Septuagint, and so he just says 75. But anyway, just some details there. There's a few things. We're not going to get into those scholarly weeds, but Stephen's speech is kind of a famous speech for scholars who look at various Samaritan traditions and Septuagint traditions and Hebrew traditions to see how Stephen's details often agree with Samaritan traditions or Septuagint traditions and not necessarily the Hebrew. Okay, now we're in Egypt. Everything's been good. Joseph saves everybody, and we have the patriarchs dying and being buried. What happens next? Verse 17. Look, we're 12 minutes in. We're doing good. Verse 17. But as the time of the promise drew near,

which God had granted to Abraham, the people increased and multiplied in Egypt until there arose another, over Egypt, another king who didn't know Joseph. He dealt shrewdly with our race and forced our fathers to expose their infants. This is the whole casting them, of course, into the Nile, so they would not be kept alive. At this time, Moses was born, and he was beautiful in God's sight. And he was brought up for three months in his father's house, and when he was exposed, Pharaoh's daughter adopted him, brought him up as her own son. And Moses was instructed in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and he was mighty in his words and deeds. So just a couple things that are interesting here. He was beautiful in God's sight. So that's another Septuagint

detail, this really broad word can mean a lot of different things contextually. But that's what the Septuagint has. He was beautiful in God's sight. And then also another detail we don't have from the Old Testament was that he was instructed in all the wisdom of the Egyptians. So you would assume that, I mean, if he's raised as royalty, of course he's going to be instructed in the wisdom of the Egyptians, but that's not included in the Old Testament. Yeah, it's oftentimes if somebody's teaching through the story of Moses that they'll mention that and not reference the fact that that is taken from this sermon. Yeah. Yeah. There's all kind of wild. If you've ever looked at the writings of Josephus, when he retells the history of Israel, he includes these details that are in

the Old Testament too. Like Moses was this fantastic general who conquered some of the countries around Egypt, and he was well known for that. In fact, the Pharaoh was afraid of the popularity of Moses, and that's why Moses had to flee. That's Josephus' version of these events. It's not biblical, but that's how he comes up with this. So you have all kinds of different ideas about Moses' youth, especially. You know, how proficient he was in warfare and how smart he was and invented the alphabet and all these kind of things. And Steve has some of this color from first century Jewish text. When he was 40 years old, it came into his heart to visit his brothers.

That visit is a particular word. We get our word like Episcopal from that. it's like a special kind of visit, an official visit, or a saving visit is often used in that way. He came into his heart to visit his brothers, the children of Israel, and seeing one of them being wronged, he defended the oppressed man and avenged him by striking down the Egyptian. Now listen to this. This is 25. He supposed that his brothers would understand that God was giving them salvation by his hand. But, of course, they did not understand. And on the following day, he appeared to them as they were quarreling and tried to reconcile them. And he said,

men, you're brothers. Why do you wrong each other? But the man, the Hebrew, who was wronging his neighbor, thrust him aside, saying, who made you a ruler and judge over us? You want to kill me like you killed the Egyptian yesterday? At this retort, Moses fled and became an exile in the land of Midian, where he became the father of two sons. Well, this is really the foreshadowing of where he's going with the righteous one, with the Messiah. Just as you thrust Moses aside, just as you did not understand that by his hand you would be delivered from Egypt, but so too you did not understand who your true and better king is. And so you can see, especially if you know the end,

all the foreshadowing going on here, that just like they did to Moses, you did to Christ. And he's going to use that same verb for thrust out or thrust aside later. When they're at Sinai and they make the golden calf, they thrust him aside. So twice we're going to have reference to the thrusting aside. and I love the background music. Yes, yes.

I was ready for football. That's good. So, yeah, you had this idea emerging here explicitly that Moses is the redeemer that God has raised up. And he's like, don't you guys realize this? He supposed that they would understand. God is giving them salvation by his hand. But they didn't.

They thrust him aside. This one individual does thrust him aside, who then becomes a type of the entire nation of Israel who will lay the thrust aside Moses again and then eventually the Messiah himself. And prophet after prophet. And prophet after prophet. Verse 30.

I hope we don't run out of time. Verse 30. Another 40 years pass. I love how biblical teaching just like passed four decades. So 40 years go by. And a messenger, your Bibles will say an angel, in Hebrew as well as in Greek, whether it's malach or it's angelos, both means a messenger.

So a messenger appeared to him in the wilderness of Mount Sinai in a flame of fire in a bush. This was the son of God, the messenger of Yahweh who appeared to him in the bush. When Moses saw it, he was amazed at the sight. And as he drew near to look, there came the voice of the Lord who said, I'm the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham and of Isaac and of Jacob. and Moses trembled, didn't dare to look. And then the Lord said, take off your sandals from your feet for the place where you are standing is holy ground. I have surely seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt and have heard their groaning and I've come down to deliver them. And now I will send you to Egypt. A little detail here that's easy to miss. The place you're

standing is holy ground, a holy place. That's the exact same language that's used back in chapter 6, where it said, where he's accused, even is accused of preaching against this holy place. That's important because here we have God appearing outside the promised land. That's right. It's a holy place. Why is any place holy? Because it has some sort of natural sanctity? No, because God's there. The holy, holy, holy God. Any place is holy because the holy one of God is there. So this is important because what's... Well, there's other holy places, like the burning bush, like wherever God shows up, there is holy ground. And so God sends him into Egypt. The cat's head is out of the bag, right? His body's not all the way out, but it's getting there. Stephen says,

This Moses, whom they rejected, saying, Who made you a ruler and a judge? This man God sent as both ruler and redeemer by the hand of the messenger who appeared to him in the bush. This man led them out performing wonders and signs in Egypt, at the Red Sea, and in the wilderness for 40 years. This is the Moses who said to the Israelites, God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your brothers. This is the one who was in the congregation of the wilderness with the messenger who spoke to him at Mount Sinai and with our fathers. He received living oracles to give to us.

So this man we've heard all about, our fathers refused to obey him. But, here's our verb again, thrust him aside. And in their hearts, they turned to Egypt saying to Aaron, make for us gods who will go before us. As for this Moses who led us from Egypt, we don't know what's become of him. And so they made a calf in those days and offered a sacrifice to the idol and were rejoicing in the work of their hands. Stop, stop there. You're starting to get the feeling that he's like,

I wasn't really talking bad about Moses, but I was using Moses to talk bad about you. And you heard it wrong, right? Yes. Yes. This is exactly what's going on. Yeah, this Moses that you claim I'm talking about, have you looked at your own history and the history of our fathers, what they did to him? So he was thrust aside by that guy that he was trying to help back in Egypt. He was thrust aside when they finally got to Mount Sinai. This guy that God raised up as ruler, judge, redeemer,

the one that's going to lead you out, performing wonders and signs, this Moses, our fathers refused to obey him, and they turned back to Egypt. Well, and there's a big, 37 is really important too, because you don't really need to include this unless you're really going somewhere. This wouldn't just be part of naturally the narrative, right? But when he says, this Moses, he was the guy that said, God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your brothers yeah he's gonna let you know who that is yes so he throws it in there but if you were just summarizing the life of Moses you wouldn't include oh yeah he did he did say this one thing this one time yeah yeah yeah it's significant and this only occurred to me recently

when Moses says that God is going to raise up a prophet like me from among you what does that what does that simile imply like me in what way is the messiah like moses and it struck me at least in this there's a lot of ways that jesus is like moses sure but in this context how is the messiah like moses what did they do with moses rejected him just like they're going to reject the one who is the prophet like unto moses so as far as the parallels go between moses and and the messiah that's a big one yeah you reject moses you reject the messiah i feel i feel like these aren't and these aren't like stupid men uh that he's talking to i think i think it is at this moment where they're uh i think i know where he's going like you know like i can see the end of this argument

they're not like that naive or they're like oh man he's gonna once you say that you're like he's coming down that he's coming back to that yeah definitely well even just just the note here about Moses receiving, quote, living oracles to give to us. And then what do they do? They reject it. They instead choose an idol. This is all exactly what they do when the living word in flesh shows up. I mean, this is all not so subtle hinting at what he's going to indict them for.

And you've got to believe that they see what's coming. They're about ready to pick up some stones already before he's really laid the smack down. Yeah, this is when members of the Sanhedrin start looking at each other like, are you listening to this? Did you hear what he just said? Yeah, yeah. The chutzpah.

Yeah. And one other thing that's important here, at the end of verse 41, they offered a sacrifice to an idol, the golden calf, and were rejoicing in the work of their hands. That phrase is important because in the New Testament, when you hear about something made with hands, now we talk about handmade things, right, as if it's higher quality. not in the new testament anything made with hands that's always always pejorative meaning it's not

of god it's against god so obviously here you have a golden calf that is the work of a man's hands but i want to say that now because in a minute in a minute you're going to hear that same phrase applied to something that when you know what he's just said in application to this verse 2, then you're going to be like, oh, yeah, he's done for. There's no way he's surviving this. Although as a side note, it is hilarious that Aaron tries to imply that the golden calf came out without being made by hand. He just threw it in there and it just came out. I don't know what happened. Out came this calf. And then he's like, Moses, he just, Moses is like, and Aaron's like, you know the way the people are. You know them. Okay, I'm picking up verse 42.

But God turned away and gave them over. Now, where's that language from? Gave them over, handed them over. That's Romans 1, right? God hands people over to their sin. Oh, you like sin? Let me hand you over to more of it. So he handed them over to do what? To worship the host of heaven. Astral idolatry. Worship the host of heaven, which of course was all over the ancient world. And then he's going to drop some Bible on him, as it is written in the book of the prophets. So the minor prophets, which would have been, they were all short, and so they were all included in one scroll. So that's why it calls it the book of the scroll of the prophets, and the minor prophets, the book of the 12. So here's going to quote, did you, this is God speaking to his people,

Did you bring to me, emphasis on the me, did you bring to me slain beasts and sacrifices during the 40 years in the wilderness, O house of Israel? Implication, no. What did you do? Verse 43, you took up the tent or tabernacle, tent or tabernacle, that's a loaded word, of Moloch and the star of your god, Rephon. So, just a couple of idols in the ancient Near East. You have the sun god, and then you have Rephon is the equivalent of Saturn. So, you took up the tent, the tabernacle of Moloch and the star of your god, Rephon, the images that you made to worship, and thus I will send you into exile. You know, this was not just merely like, well, we're just going to go to church and sing some songs. This was, we're going to sacrifice our

infants on an altar that is burning hot to death in worship to Moloch. This is dreadfully evil stuff that they're being indicted on here. Yeah, this is the kind of thing that I believe Jeremiah where it says that God says, it did not even enter into my heart. Yeah. To that. So, I I mean, in the class of horrific things that were happening in Israel in the days of the Old Testament, nothing was more horrific than that. Okay, so God gives him over, indicts him, and says, even in the wilderness, in this honeymoon period, you weren't really sacrificing to me. And you had this tabernacle of this false god.

Okay, verse 44. Our fathers had the tent, that's why I brought that up, tabernacle of witness, They had that in the wilderness, just as he who spoke to Moses directed him to make it according to the pattern that he had seen. So they had this tabernacle that you can read about in Exodus. Our fathers, in turn, brought this tabernacle with them, with Joshua, when they dispossessed the nations that God drove out before our fathers. And so it was until the days of David, who found favor in the sight of God and asked

to find a dwelling place for the God of Jacob. Because what does David want to do? He wants to build a temple, right? but it was Solomon who built a house for him. Verse 48, yet, now remember what I told you earlier about hands? Listen, yet the Most High does not dwell in houses made by hands, as the prophet says, and then he goes on to quote Isaiah, heaven is my throne, the earth is my footstool. What kind of house will you build for me, says the Lord? And what is the place of my rest? Did not my hand make all these things? Now, when Stephen said, the most high does not dwell

in houses made by hands, and he had just talked about the golden calf as made by hands, that's when the hands of the Sanhedrin reached for rocks. I can't think of a more insulting thing to say about the temple than to equate it with a golden calf. He's accusing him of making the temple an idol. Yes, exactly. You have made the temple of God into a golden calf.

You've spoken against a holy place, but they have no idea what makes something holy, obviously. And they're not offended that you've spoken against God. It's just this particular building. I love it when David wants to make God a house, and God thinks it's cute. He's like,

let me make you a house. And God's like, what? A what? Are you going to build me a house? We'll need a house. I kind of like my tent. Yeah, so it's the, that for me is like, that's it. After that point, Stephen's not going to make it.

Well, you know that, Stephen knows that's it too, because he's about to be like, and let me just wrap up here, and he just goes absolutely ballistic. Yes. If you're reading this just kind of at a cursory level, it seems like he turns really fast. but reading it like we have here you're seeing these hints that he's dropping so you're not as surprised when verse 51 smacks you right in the face yeah yeah i mean it makes all the sense in the world and it is a smack in the face for sure so having just quoted isaiah where he says heaven's my throne the earth's my foot quoting their beloved scriptures yeah did not

my hand make all these things i imagine there's a slight pause and steven takes a breath and he's like, okay, this is it. And he launches, he goes into full prophetic mode. You stiff-necked people, uncircumcised in heart and ears, you always resist the Holy Spirit. As your fathers did, so do you. Which of the prophets did your fathers not persecute? And they killed those who announced beforehand the coming of the kingdom, the coming of the righteous one, whom you have now betrayed and murdered, you who received the law as delivered by angels and did not keep it. That's great. Amen.

Amen. Sanhedrin are like, yeah, you're right. We repent. Yeah, yeah, exactly. You know, you're making some pretty good points. I've talked about it that way before. I can see how we agree. Yeah, it's a new perspective for me. To say uncircumcised in heart and ears is like, you don't understand who he's talking to.

This is an incredible insult. Like, you've got the wrong thing, circumcised, is wild. Yeah, yeah. It's wild behavior. And then to say, you always resist the Holy Spirit as your fathers did. And then to say, hey, which of the prophets did your fathers not persecute? Because that would be like a lot shorter list than the ones they did. So I can't think of any.

Do you have one? Name one. I'd love to hear about one. There's also, you know, I was a pastor for 15 years, did a lot of marital counseling, that sort of thing. And one of the things that you're advised to do in conflict resolution is sort of avoid totalizing words to each other. like always never always at all you always resist the holy spirit like literally always yeah

no exceptions and this and the second thing you know we talk a lot about uh preaching law and gospel here you know you're going to hear this all weekend long um if you want to hear a great example of what it sounds like to preach the law. Oh, yeah. Boom. That's it. There's no wiggle room here. Totalizing words are appropriate. You always resist the Holy Spirit. You stand condemned. He is here now revealed that he believes Jesus to be the brother like Moses, and this is the righteous one. And he said, yeah, congratulations. All your prophets that came before, your fathers, the patriarchs they were all like leading you to this one person and he came and you betrayed and killed him like that's that's my that's what i'm actually out there saying so it's actually way

worse than just talking smack on the temple or like you know maybe not being saying the right things about moses i'm actually accusing you of murdering god and this crowd that prides themselves on trying to keep the finer points of the law the sanhedrin especially the pharisees in their midst and the scribes. He says, you received it and you don't keep it. Well, it's hard to be a law keeper and be a God murderer at the same time. That's right. The line from the gospels always gets me is when the Jewish leadership, they don't want to go into Pilate's residence because they're afraid they're going to make themselves unclean for the Passover. At the same time, they're handing over the Son of God for crucifixion. I think your priorities are slightly

out of line there. The good thing about this is this is the moment when they were like, where's the sackcloth? Where's the ashes? Go find them, get them. We're going to all repent and believe. Yeah. That's not what happens. Yeah. If you want the conclusion, we can give it to you. Yeah. We'll give you the conclusion here. We got a few verses left here. Verse 54. Now, when they heard these things, no shock here, they were enraged and ground their teeth at him. This is the same image of gnashing of teeth that you have throughout the Gospels, which you probably heard me talk about before, is not connected with pain. It's connected with anger. The Old Testament has examples of gnashing of teeth. Which, incidentally, for those of you who

will preach the law in such a full-throated way, yes, there could be the response of somebody saying, have mercy on me, a sinner, like the tax collector. But also, don't be surprised if this is a response that you get to the totalizing preaching of the law too yeah oh yeah you know you will deal with rage and defensiveness and gnashing of teeth also if you go full-throated in this people people start growling at you yeah you know you've really brought the law our old nature desperately wants to contribute just something to our salvation and when you take that away it can be it can be rough Yeah, when you don't say, sometimes you resist the Holy Spirit. No, no, no.

When you use that totalizing language. Always, the totalizing, yeah. There's no part of your life that's beyond the accusation of the law. And that's what he's just laid on him here. So they're enraged. They grind their teeth at him, a very bestial image. Yeah. But he, full of the Holy Spirit, I wonder what spirit they were full of,

full of the Holy Spirit, gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. This is that judgment scene. So the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God that comes from Daniel 7. And here he's taking the posture of a judge. And he said, after saying all of that, he knows he's dead.

So he's like, well, I'm just going to keep going. Also, isn't this interesting? I don't know if this is anything, but I've always thought it was something. So I'll say it in front of a bunch of people. uh the like you have a lot of times where you hear about people like seated at the right hand of god right here you have jesus standing yes and i know that part of that is like in judgment but like there is something weird about like stephen delivers this and they're about to kill him

and and stephen looks up and sees christ like stand up yeah right which is kind of awesome right like it's like that's standing to greet him yeah like he's like he stands up for like for steve and and that is uh that is pretty dope and he said behold i see the heavens opened and now he's the only person in the entire new testament to use this language jesus uses it self-referentially but steven's the only one who actually calls him the son of man See, the heavens open, and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God. Now, Jesus himself would use that language in his trial. So Stephen echoes that.

And so if they weren't angry already, well, that was it. In fact, they can't even keep it in. They basically scream at him. They cried out in a loud voice. Stop their ears. You have fingers in your ears. I can't hear anything else. La, la, la, la, la, la.

Just imagine someone so enraged at you that they're screaming at you and at the same time closing their ears because they can't hear another word from you. Man, this is furious, murderous rage. A crowding loud voice stopped up their ears and rushed him, rushed together at him. They cast him out of the city and they stoned him.

Now, I think this is later Jewish tradition, but in later Jewish tradition, when there was going to be a stoning, one of the things you did is you stripped the one who was going to be stoned. And then you pushed him off of a small cliff and then started throwing big stones down on him. I think that's important because here they don't strip Stephen. It says the witnesses laid down their garments. Interesting detail that Luke includes there. Witnesses laid down their garments at the feet of a young man named Saul. And as they were stoning Stephen, He called out, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.

And falling to his knees, he cried out with a loud voice, Lord, do not hold this sin against them. And when he said this, he fell asleep. Now that's the way to go. I love that it ends with, he fell asleep. Yeah. Forgiving those who killed him sounds familiar, doesn't it? Yeah, Father, forgive them for they don't know what they do.

Lord, don't hold this sin against him. While they're gnashing their teeth and screaming in rage and hurling stones upon him, he says, Father, absolve them. Yeah. Yeah. And then he closes his eyes. No, it's great, too, because the response is, we're going to have to kill this guy.

And God's response is like, I don't think so. So all through the New Testament, you have Jesus do this, and then Paul picks this up, a whole bunch, where Jesus will always refer to death as sleep. and then Paul referred to death as sleep and here you have Luke and Acts saying yeah he fell asleep they were going to kill him

they're going to end him but he's not endable because he's in Christ Christ is literally standing up at the right hand of God like ready for him so like no you will not kill this man I think we're out of time that's it we are out of time so there it is there's some Old Testament

New Testament combined thank you guys so much for coming out enjoy the rest of the conference Thank you.