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Homework for next week, if you should care to do any, would be to read the Acts of the Apostles from chapter nine and verse thirty two to chapter twelve and verse twenty four, that being the extent of the third major section of the Acts of the Apostles. Tonight we are to study the second section of the book, and for that purpose, let us begin by reading from chapter six and verse eight. Acts chapter six and verse eight: And Stephen, full of grace and power, brought great wonders and signs among the people.
But there arose certain of them that were of the synagogue called the synagogue of the Libertines, and of the Cyrenians, and of the Alexandrians, and of them of Cilicia and Asia, disputing with Stephen. They were not able to withstand the wisdom and the spirit by which he spake. Then they suborned men which said, we have heard him speak blasphemous words against Moses and against God. They stirred up the people and the elders and the scribes, and came upon him and seized him, and brought him into the council, and set up false witnesses which said, this man ceases not to speak words against this holy place and the law.
For we have heard him say that this Jesus of Nazareth shall destroy this place and shall change the customs which Moses delivered unto us. And all that sat in the council, fastening their eyes on him, saw his face as it had been the face of an angel. And the high priest said, are these things so? He said, brethren and fathers, hearken. The God of glory appeared unto our father Abraham.
Now some verses from chapter nine of this same chapter, from the same book, chapter uh nine of this same book, beginning in verse one. But Saul, yet breathing threatening and slaughter against the disciples of the Lord, went unto the high priest and asked of him letters to Damascus, unto the synagogues, that if he found any that were of the way, whether men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem. And as he journeyed, it came to pass that he drew nigh unto Damascus, and suddenly there shone round about him a light out of heaven.
God give us good understanding of his holy word. work. This is the second of our six studies of the Acts of the Apostles. In those six studies, we are not attempting, of course, to cover all the detail of this very long book. We are simply taking the six main sections, one section per night, looking to see, uh, uh, one particular theme that the writer of this book has before him. We are looking to see at what point, and over what issues, the early church diverged from Judaism.
And I d- our idea in so doing is simply this, that if we can perceive those points at which the early church diverged from Judaism, then we shall begin to perceive what is strictly and characteristically Christian. For had the early church not felt so strongly about these things, they would not have diverged from Judaism, but would have remained in that religion. The fact is, of course, and Luke emphasizes it, that as the early church grew, it not only grew in numbers, nor only grew in geographical extent, but it also began to diverge, seriously to diverge, from the Judaism in which it began.
And it diverged over points that were considered to be absolutely fundamental to the Christian faith, points over which the early Christians could not possibly compromise without denying both the faith that they held and the Lord whom they worshipped. So that we shall be studying these sections to see those points at which Christianity diverged, and thus to get some clear idea of what basic, fundamental Christianity is. As we do so, we shall find, of course, that it is not a merely theoretical topic.
It will help us to grasp the glories and the wonders, the riches and the wealth of our Christianity, and bring us on out of Judaism and its partial truths into that perfection of which the Epistle to the Hebrews speaks, so that leaving behind the elementary things that God taught his people in past ages, we shall press on towards perfection, towards true, full, adult, mature spiritual growth. And thus our understanding and our enjoyment of Christianity and of the Lord shall be increased, and our effectiveness in our witness for him.
At the same time, it will serve to us as a warning. For as we observed last week, Christendom has from time to time, in the course of long ages, slipped back from what is truly Christianity, and without intending to, has slipped back into what is little better than Judaism. Indeed, as we shall see later in this book, Christianity itself was exceedingly distinct from pagan philosophy and paganism generally. Alas, similarly, in the course of the century, the Christian church has from time to time slipped back into the very paganism of which this book speaks.
We must not imagine that we, in our advanced day, are beyond that temptation. There are tendencies and signs all around us. So Christendom is constantly under this temptation to compromise the fundamental and characteristic things of the faith, and to go back either to Judaism or to paganism. Now, last week we considered the first section together and found the point above all other points in which the early church diverged from Judaism at its very beginning. The point at issue was this, that the Christians believed that Jesus was Lord and Christ, that he was both the Son of God and the Messiah of Israel.
Now, Israel believed in a Messiah, that there would be one day a Messiah. And of course, the Christians did too. But Christians diverged from Judaism in believing and claiming that Jesus was that Messiah, that the very Jesus whom the nation had crucified, God had raised from the dead and made him Lord and Christ, and that the Holy Spirit had come down from heaven primarily for this very purpose, to give witness and evidence that Jesus, being raised from the dead, was thereby demonstrated to be Lord and Christ.
Many of the people in Israel believed that message and came to repentance over their foul murder of the nation's Messiah and God's Son, and professing repentance and faith, were baptized in his name and stood with the apostles and the early Christians. But Judaism officially, alas, set itself to oppose the witness of the Holy Spirit and the witness of the apostles. And that first section of Acts tells us how that the Sanhedrin summoned the apostles before them and forbade them to speak anymore in this name.
They charged them straightly that they were not to preach in the name of Jesus. That immediately precipitated a conflict because Luke tells us in the opening verses of the book that when the risen Christ met his disciples in the course of the forty days, he charged them. He charged them to be his witnesses, beginning in Jerusalem and throughout all Judea and Samaria until the uttermost parts of the earth. He charged them to witness. Now, the apostles were not spiritual revolutionaries.
They made no attempt to put a bomb under the temple. They made no attempt to thrust the high priest out from his office. They were calm and peaceable and law-abiding citizens, as all Christians ought to be. But when the Sanhedrin chose to use its governmental authority to charge the apostles not to preach in the name of Jesus. And Peter made the only answer it is possible for a believer in those circumstances to make. We leave it to you to judge whether we should obey God or man. The risen Christ has charged us to preach.
And if you pit your Sanhedrin's authority against the authority of the risen Christ, we as Christians have no option. We shall go on obeying the risen Christ. That in itself contains an exceedingly important principle. A principle which, in God's mercy, we have not had in this country to consider for many a long, long year, but a principle that lies ever before many of our fellow Christians in other countries, and in particular those who live behind the iron and the bamboo curtains. What would you do?
What should I do? If a government took charge of this province that forbade us to preach, and forbade us to teach our children, and forbid us to do what the Lord commands us to do. As to particular tactics we might adopt, I do not now speak. What our general answer should be on the basic principle, it seems to me there is no doubt. The government commands us not to do what the risen Lord has charged us to do. We have no option but to obey the risen Lord and take the consequences.
And so it came to pass that the apostles went on preaching, and the multitude of the converts grew to three thousand and then to five thousand and then more, until there was in Jerusalem virtually two nations. There were the Jews at large under the Sanhedrin. There was another growing and influential group, the Christians, under the apostles and those seven men which some people call deacons and other people call anything they please. Not just an odd man here or there, but an organized society under its spiritual leaders and its material administrators.
A society of over five thousand strong. You cannot conceal such a society in a, in a city the size of ancient Jerusalem. Virtually two nations, the one within the other, owning two ultimately different authorities. Thus, the early church came into existence, and as we remarked last week at great length, came into existence over this fundamental point that Jesus is the Son of God, the Messiah. In the course of his defense in the Sanhedrin, we saw last week that Peter made the remark that there was no other foundation than the stone chosen of God, elect and precious.
Then the high priests and the Sanhedrin in general, who had the task of guiding the nation in its worship. The Sanhedrin was largely composed of Sadducees and therefore were headed by the high priest and the chief priests and the temple treasurers and authorities. So then Peter charged them that being priests and in charge of the temple and the nation's worship, they were now defying God and refusing the stone that God had set. That stone upon which any worship must be built if it is to be acceptable to God, namely Jesus Christ, our Lord.
We should not be surprised, therefore, when now in the second section of the Acts of the Apostles, Luke turns to consider what the early church's attitude came to be over matters relating to the temple and to the worship of God. In section one, had we noticed the detail, we should have found that Peter and John went up to the temple at the hour of prayer, at the hour of sacrifice, apparently as yet quite oblivious to any difficulty that that might cause in the way of belief and faith.
Of course they trusted Christ. Of course they trusted his sacrifice, but as yet there appeared to be no discrepancy between believing in the Lord Jesus as the great sacrifice for sin and the suffering servant of God on the one hand, and attending the te- worship of the Jewish temple on the other. But now, as the church begins to grow, we find that this whole matter of the worship of God and the status of the temple in Jerusalem comes up for consideration before the early Christians. What is the attitude they're going to take to the temple and the worship of God?
And eventually, as we know, there came another great divergence in the road. As Judaism continued on its way, with its literal temple and sacrifices at Jerusalem, and the early church diverged, and eventually abandoned the temple altogether. But so that we should see the many different sides to this particular topic, let us notice then that this second section of Acts contains four major events, but only four, so that they will be easy to comprehend and to remember.
Beginning in chapter six. and verse eight, and proceeding all the way through chapter seven, and then, uh, the opening verses of chapter eight, we have the story of the persecution of Stephen, of his arraignment before the court, of his condemnation and execution. And in between we're given the account of the defense that he made before the Sanhedrin, before he was condemned and executed. Then there is the story in chapter eight from verse four onwards of the evangelization of Samaria by Philip.
Then later uh in chapter eight, verse twenty six onwards, we have the story of the conversion of the Ethiopian, who was accosted by Philip in the desert. And finally, we have the story of the conversion of Saul. Four stories, the stories of Stephen, of Samaria, of the Ethiopian eunuch, and the conversion of Saul. Look at them for a moment, just a little bit more deeply. When Stephen was arraigned before the court, we are told in chapter six what they s- accused him of.
Verse fourteen, verse thirteen: this man ceases not to speak words against this holy place, that is, against the temple, and against the law. That was the charge leveled against Stephen. And I suspect all of us will begin to see that what Stephen must have been preaching was very much like an early version of what you finally find in the epistle to the Hebrews, namely that the temple was only a temporary arrangement and was soon to vanish away because God had provided for his people something infinitely better.
At any rate, the first major story is going to be about the Christian's attitude to the temple in Jerusalem and its worship of God, and the related topics, of course, of the law of Moses. The second story is going to be about Samaria and the evangelization of Samaria, and of course that immediately, uh, raises all sorts of memories in our minds. Samaria. They too held some very curious notions, didn't they, about the temple in Jerusalem. We remember it from the John- Gospel of John in chapter four, how that the Samaritan woman put it very tactfully but very pointedly to the Lord Jesus, that the Jews and the Samaritans were at loggerheads and had been for many and many a decade precisely over this matter.
Where was the right place to worship? The Jews said that Jerusalem was the place where men ought to worship God. The Samaritans said, nonsense and heresy, Mount Gerizim is the place where men ought to worship God, and for many a decade they had been bitterly opposed to each other with a terrible religious bigotry and strife all over this very matter. Where was the right place where men ought to worship God? It will be interesting to see, will it not, when we come to it, what the early Christians said when they got among the Samaritans.
If they're going to be different from the Jews in their worship of God, if they are going to diverge from the temple at Jerusalem, what will they say to the Samaritans when they get that far about their worship on Mount Gerizim and whose side will they take in all that dispute? In those two stories, therefore, we shall be thinking about the temple in its aspect of the worship and the service of God. When we come to the third story, we shall still be thinking about the temple, because we meet an Ethiopian, and Luke tells us that he had been up to Jerusalem for to worship.
Brought up in a pagan, idolatrous country as he had, the man obviously had grown tired and weary of the absurd idolatry of the ancient pagan world, and of its hopelessness and its disgusting immorality. And for him, the temple at Jerusalem, even in its pre-Christian stage, the temple at Jerusalem had been a brilliant light from God, a witness in the heathen darkness around, not as something to be despised. There was to be found a nation unique among the nations who worshipped an unseen God and declared that the true God was only one, who had in their hands a unique revelation, the Old Testament scriptures.
A nation who, moreover, combined religion and morality and did not leave them separate, as so many pagan nations. And the Ethiopian had come up to Jerusalem to worship. And we notice with gratitude the effective way in which pre-Christian Judaism had witnessed for God among the nations. It wasn't all disaster. Israel had been an exceedingly effective witness among the Gentile world. We Christians shouldn't forget it. But the Ethiopian was going back.
Then the Christians met him, or at least one of them did, by the name of Philip. And what did Christianity have to say to this Gentile that could satisfy him more than Judaism could? How more powerful a witness could Christianity be to the pagan nation than Judaism knew how to be. So that with the third story, we are thinking of the temple, yes, and the Christian's attitude to the temple, but now not so much in the question of worship, but in the question of being the witness of God to the pagan nations around.
And what was the key to the church's evangel? And of course, finally, with the conversion of Saul, we meet the biggest missionary that Christendom has ever produced, barring Jesus Christ our Lord. That bigoted Jew, whose motto was, as he chased up the Damascus road, back to Jerusalem, back to Jerusalem, back to Jerusalem. Then something happened to him that made him leave Jerusalem and become the missionary par excellence, to go outside Judaism, go out to the nations in the four quarters of the earth.
Our four stories then are going to be about the early church, its relation to the temple, first of all, as eh eh related to the worship and service of God. Then in the second two stories, Christianity related to Judaism, diverging from Judaism in the message and in the manner of its witness for God among the pagan nations. And when we've considered it, then we shall have to ask ourselves, if that be true Christianity, are we really and truly respectable Christian.
Christians? So let us come to Stephen a moment, and he's the longest story and perhaps deserves the most time. Let's think for a moment again about the charge leveled against him. He ceases not to speak words against this holy place and against this law. For we have heard him say that this Jesus of Nazareth shall destroy this place, this temple, and shall change the customs delivered unto us by Moses. I shall need not to spend long time pointing out to you what Stephen must have actually said.
He didn't propose, of course, physically to destroy the temple, nor was he preaching that Christ had come to undermine the moral law of God expressed through Moses. But the subsequent epistle to the Hebrews will make abundantly clear what it was that Jesus Christ had come to do away with, and in what sense. And first of all, if God had entered into the old covenant with Israel through Moses, now Stephen would be saying that old covenant given through Moses had to give way, and God was beginning to put into operation the new covenant.
The new covenant, not just a little bit dusted and polished version of the old, but a completely new and a different kind of covenant. Kind of a covenant that instead of being a two-party thing, like the old covenant was, was a one-party thing. A covenant that offered salvation and relationship with God solely by grace. That did not say, look, God will do his bit, but it all depends on your doing your bit, and if you break your bit of the covenant, the whole thing will be ruined. But a covenant that was in the nature of a will.
That to any who care to receive it by repentance and simple faith, God guaranteed to give, guaranteed in the blood of Christ, guaranteed. Or guaranteed that he would write their laws, his laws on their hearts, that their sins and iniquities would never be remembered again. In that sense, Jesus Christ most certainly was changing the covenant laid down through Moses. And then, of course, this place and its institutions, that is the temple and its institutions.
As Hebrews reminds us that under the Old Testament regulations given through Moses, Israel had upon earth a great high priest who was the intermediary between Israel and God. Stephen would be saying that that was now passing away and eventually to be made completely obsolete. The order of Aaronic priesthood given to Aaron and to his sons was coming to an end. Now there was to be another priesthood, not of the tribe of Levi, but after the order of Melchizedek.
Christians would own only one high priest, ascended into the heavens, Jesus Christ our Lord, so far superior to Aaron and his son. Now, whereas they died, this man, by reason of the fact that he ever liveth, hath an unchangeable peace, and because he ever lives to intercede, is able to save to the uttermost them that come unto God by him. By so much the more, so much, uh, uh, superior to Aaron's priesthood again, that their priests were made priests without the swearing of any oath.
Whereas when our Lord was appointed high priest after the order of Melchizedek, his appointment was solemnized by the divine oath of God Almighty. By myself have I sworn, says the Lord, thou art a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek. The point of God swearing an oath at the appointment of our high priest being this, that you might have absolute certainty, that God might make it manifest that his son is not merely the mediator of the new covenant, he is the guarantor of the new covenant. He not only brought it into being by his mediation, he guarantees the fulfillment of every clause by the fact that he is guarantor, and all the expenses involved, and how tremendous they have been.
At what cost has God got out a covenant that can cover all our sins. And here is God saying that however much and great the expense of this new covenant shall be, Christ has gone guarantor and will pay the very last farthing of debt accumulated by our sins. So much greater is he than Aaron's priest. Greater than them as well, because as Hebrews would say, and Stephen was already saying it, that the temple of Jerusalem would become obsolete for the simple fact that our Lord, the minister of the New Covenant, appointed high priest after the order of Melchizedek, doesn't deign any longer to, to minister in some little stone temple in smelly Jerusalem.
He's gone through the heavens, sat down on the right hand of the majesty on high, minister of the ideal tabernacle that the Lord pitched, and not man. With that comes the superiority of his ministry and of the sacrifice that he offers. And Stephen would be saying this as well. Not only would the temple become obsolete, but its sacrifices likewise. For they were but animals, and what can an animal know about the problems of sin?
Poor brute. You may take it if you care, and your conscience be riddled with guilt, your mind be restless every night, and sleep free for- flee from your eyelids because of the torment of guilt. And you can bring your sacrifice of a bullock and a lamb to an altar in Jerusalem, and the priests slay it, and its blood be shed. And God will give you forgiveness. The poor old animal won't even know what it's all about from first to last. They'll know nothing. What can an animal know about moral conscience?
And the torment it can be to have a moral conscience. But then that's part of being human. You can't be human without a moral conscience. How could animals ever cope with that problem? Though you s- though you spilled the blood of a million and a half of them. What they could never do, Christ has done, being human and God combined. The power of the eternal spirit is offered himself without spot to God and wrestled with that problem that lies at the heart of this universe.
The problem of sin and guilt. The problem of fallen man being reconciled to God. And oh, what a lovely thing. No blood, no altar now sacrifices or flame, no smoke ascends on high. Lambs are slain no more, for richer blood hath flowed from nobler veins. Thus would Stephen be saying to them, and he would add, the temple will become obsolete, gentlemen.
Because when a man has found Jesus Christ as the God-appointed sacrifice and knows a conscience at rest, cleansed with the blood of Christ, then that man will perceive that he is fit to enter the very holiest of God. Ah. Not the holiest of God even in, in some sacred temple in Jerusalem. Oh, Jews were afraid and forbidden even to enter that literal, literal physical holy place in the temple at Jerusalem more than once a year. When a man or woman whose conscience has been cleansed by the blood of Christ has boldness not to enter into the holiest in Jerusalem, but infinitely and inexpressibly more wonderful, into the holiest of all in the presence of God.
Now! What man needs a temple, a most holy place built of wood or stone, in which to enter to worship God, who is conscious that he is able to enter the immediate presence of God in spirit. Thus did Stephen preach. If that's what he preached, if that is what they eventually executed him for preaching, then we must be standing, mustn't we, at a point of tremendous importance.
Stephen was prepared to die for this. I don't know if you are, or whether I would be if I were really pushed to it. But according to Stephen, this was true Christianity. To keep quiet about it, to compromise it, to give it up, is to compromise on an essential feature of Christianity. I'm not here to throw stones.
I talk in general. I talk historically. It remains the cold historical fact that Christendom has from time to time given up on all these things. It has gone to unregenerate men and preached them instead of preaching the new covenant. It has substituted as a way of salvation the old covenant, leading men to try and keep the law of Moses, that by keeping it they should, uh, be at last accepted with God.
And some have gone so far as to deny that it is possible to be absolutely sure of justification. And as for the glorious third term in the New Covenant, their sins and iniquities I will never remember against them anymore. Some have denied it is possible for believers on earth to know that it applies to them. And have done it. Alas, in the name of Christianity. I can pass hurriedly by the fact that Christendom eventually invented human high priests on Earth, sometimes one and sometimes half a dozen.
I can hurriedly pass by the simple fact that eventually in Christendom, church architecture took on the form of the ancient Jewish tabernacle and temple, and a big screen was erected between the ordinary holy place and the most holy place, and the ordinary people were not allowed to go inside the most holy place. It is a thing that remains in Christendom, that instead of accepting the fact that the sacrifice of Christ is once for all, and therefore not merely there is no more sacrifice, but there is no more offering of that sacrifice.
Great sections of Christendom have claimed that the sacrifice is to be repeated, and is in fact repeated every time the mass is offered. We are not talking about peripheral matters. We talk of things that are the distinctive characteristic marks of true Christianity. We talk of the very vitals of the gospel. If Stephen stood for them in his day, to show us clearly what true Christianity is and the gospel it preaches, paid for it with his blood.
Let us who have enjoyed the vast and glorious harvest of these wonderful truths of God, let us too in our day seek to understand them and be prepared to stand courteously, kindly, but with rock-like firmness, refusing to give up the sacred glories and wonders of the gospel for a mere obsolete Judaism. For all that, when Stephen began to say these things, perhaps you can perceive how upsetting the Jews found it.
You have been inured to the shock of hearing these things, haven't you? Because you've heard them, perhaps some of you, ever since you've heard anything. So it never appeared to shock you, like it would have shocked you had you heard them for the first time as a Jew. For the Jews, you see, believed the Old Testament was inspired. You say, so do I. Ah, but wait a moment. The Jew believed that all those regulations about the temple and the sacrifices and the high priesthood of Aaron, that was in the inspired word of God. And here was this Nazarene by the name of Stephen, if you please, getting up in Jerusalem and telling the people that you didn't have to do those things anymore.
What would you say in finicky? Or if it's not you, what would your elders say if someone of a Sunday morning got up and proposed that from now on we didn't carry out the Lord's Supper anymore because that was old fashioned? What do you suppose the Jews felt like when the Christians got up and said that now temple was going, the sacrifices were going, the Aaronic priesthood was going, the old incense was going? What? You're denying the Old Testament? You're throwing out the word of God. The Sanhedrin, it must have sounded the height of folly.
Blasphemy, they called it. How then would Stephen prove his case that the Christians weren't absolutely stark mad. How could the Christians still profess to believe that the Old Testament was inspired and say the kind of thing they were saying about the temple and the rituals of Moses' law? We haven't the time to trace every nuance in Stephen's long defense. We can pick out two of its salient points, perhaps.
What he did on this occasion was to read the Sanhedrin a lesson in Jewish history, and point out to them one feature in Jewish history that stands out prominently, and that is this. That under God and God's leading and government, Judaism had never been a permanently static religion. It had been a religion that from time to time moved on to something bigger and different.
And that you can see, uh, and check if you consult the passages to which Stephen refers. It all began, of course, with Abraham. When the God of glory appeared to Abraham in Ur of Chaldees, when Abraham was still a pagan, and said, get you out. And God in his living reality and glory appeared then to this man Abraham, and Abraham came out from the Gentiles and came into Palestine and lived there as a pilgrim and a stranger in Palestine. The direct result of that authentic self-revelation of God within history to Abraham.
So he lived, so did Isaac, and so did Jacob for some many, many decades. When there came a change. And the very God who had taken Abraham out of the Gentiles, if you please, took him back again, didn't he? For now Abraham's seed, who had been told that the promised land was one day to be theirs, were taken by God down to Egypt, to dwell four hundred years among the Egyptians. No good saying to God, look here, dear God, this is silly, this is bordering on blasphemy, you know.
We're in Palestine here because God brought us here, we'll have you know. We're not shifting. Well, so God had brought them there. And now God was taking them somewhere else. For God is not static. And the same God that had brought Abram up from the Gentiles into Palestine and made him the father of the nation now was taking the patriarchs and taking them back among the Gentiles for a long and lengthy stay among the Egyptians. And to refuse to follow God down to Egypt would not have been loyalty to the word of God, it would have been apostasy from the living God.
So they were down in Egypt. The whole time were they down in Egypt, sometimes in the early centuries with great success and glory, and then latterly in hardship, but down in Egypt they were. And then God move. And God brought them out of Egypt. No good now saying to God, look here, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. We are sure God brought us into Egypt, and we're not moving from Egypt. Oh, the time had come to move. Now they must abandon Egypt, or else be left by the living God.
For God was moving on, took them out into the wilderness. So they were in the wilderness then, and God led them, and God proved himself to them in the wilderness. Came the moment when they had to leave the wilderness. Some of them didn't want to go, some of them refused to go, some of them perished. And they were the apostles. For eventually the wilderness had to give way to something next. That was the promised land. In the wilderness, God told them to build a tabernacle. It had to be a portable shrine. It wasn't to be solid.
They took it with them when they went into the promised land. David said to God, God, now I think I'd like to build you a permanent house in this land. God said, no, the time hasn't come yet. We carry on with the, uh, temporary affair, if you don't mind, the portable building. So there it remained, a portable building, until Solomon came. God's purposes moved on again, no longer a portable shrine. Now, at long last, it was to be a stone permanent temple. How wonderful. Just as Solomon's laborers had labored for years and years and years and years, and at last they'd put on the last little bit of gold leaf on that temple there, beautiful enough.
And the masons had chiseled off that corner, that would have looked beautiful. And the wood had been carved, and the door was all ready, and they were having the inauguration service, and everybody said, how marvelous we've arrived at last. Then Solomon got up to preach the inaugural sermon. He said, this won't do. You know, God will, God will never be content with a temple like this. He said, how could the Almighty dwell in a temple made with hands? Well, quite so. Even Solomon felt in his bones that the day would have to come when God had a bigger and a different kind of temple from this. So that a plain reading of the Old Testament shows us that Judaism had never been static.
God's way with Israel had been that over the centuries of the centuries were divided into different ages in which God was doing different things. There would come the great crises when Israel were led further and on into the developing purposes of God. That is theme number one. And of course, Stephen applies it with this idea that what God has done in the past, now he is doing again. In Jesus Christ, God is moving Israel on again. To the full and final stage, for the moment, of his revelation.
You say, what do you mean for the moment? Well, yes, Christ is the final word of God, isn't he? But not all things that Christians do now will they do forever. Will they? You meet around bread and wine, count it one of the most sacred things in your collective experience as a church. You won't do it forever. Oh, thank God. God isn't static. One day the Lord will come. The Lord's Supper will be over and done with, thank God, forever. Now we come before God in these broken bodies of ours and broken minds.
Oh, thank God, that shan't last forever either. Now we live in a world that groans and travails in sorrow together until now, but take courage, that stage isn't going to last forever either. For the Lord shall come. The times of the restoration of all things. Thank God we worship a God who is not static. He is on the move. Oh, how exciting the next move forward is going to be. Doesn't mean he's on the move every Tuesday.
You will get it in proportion, won't you? Half a dozen moves in all the two thousand years of Israel's history? Nonetheless, the God of Judaism was not a static God, neither is the God of Christianity. It is not blasphemy, therefore, to think that in Christianity God will be moving on. And Hebrews sums up the lesson of it. We are to leave behind the elementary things, not abandon them as though they were altogether useless.
The child who in the infant school has learned to count with beads may throw the beads out of the window, but not the principle that one and one make two. Of course, he no longer tie- tie- uh, lifts his brow and worries about this great mystery that why two times three is six and three plus three is six and all those wonderful things. Now he's gone on to compute it, but he hasn't abandoned the elementary lesson. In that same way, we're to leave behind and not lay again the foundation that we shared with Judaism.
But we are to go on to perfection. That is, full-blown. Not an earthly high priest, but a heavenly one. Not a literal temple on earth, but the true tabernacle in heaven. Not animal sacrifices repeated, but the sacrifice of Christ once for all. Not a forgiveness that left you still afraid to come even into the holy place in the temple, but a forgiveness that so fits you that you are able to enter the very holiest of God in heaven right now. Let's move on.
The other point that Stephen made, and made it so powerfully and yet so sadly, it was this, that time and time again, the very men that God sent to lead Israel their next stage forward, the very men they sent, Israel rejected. Joseph was to be their deliverer, bring them down to Egypt. They rejected Joseph. And Moses was sent to bring them out of Egypt into Canaan, and they rejected Moses. And God gave them a tabernacle in the wilderness, and for nearly forty years they wouldn't have anything to do with it and abandoned it and set up their own tabernacle to Moloch.
The generation of the wilderness were an evil apostate people. Which of your father- which of the prophets did your fathers not persecute, says Stephen, and you've done the same thing to the messenger that God has sent to bring you this next stage born, even Jesus Christ. Thus did Stephen plead his defense. And God is the God of progress. Then, uh, Philip went down to Samaria.
We said earlier, Samaria makes a great contrast, doesn't he? As we know from the Gospel of John in chapter four, there had been for many, many years a very bitter controversy between the Jews and the Samaritans. The Jews said that Jerusalem was the place where men ought to worship. The Samaritans said, no, it wasn't, it was on Mount Gerizim. The thing was made all the more grievous by the fact that both Jew and Samaritan accepted the first five books of the Old Testament. To see them arguing and fighting and warring would have made it difficult to understand how they possibly could have, uh, accepted the same Bible, wouldn't it?
Well, at least they accepted the first five books. The Samaritans wouldn't accept the rest of the order. So bitter was the controversy that the really Orthodox Jew wouldn't, uh, even use the same vessels as a Samaritan. And the Orthodox rabbis taught the Jews that Samaritan women were in a permanent state of uncleanness. Anybody who touched them or used anything they used was defiled. Worse than that, the Jews on the time had gone up to Samaria and utterly destroyed the Samaritan temple.
The Samaritans, for their part, they took a lot of dead men's bones, and they went down to Jerusalem, and they scattered them in the temple court, than which you could not possibly imagine a bigger insult or a bigger desecration. To such extent will bigoted religion lead a people. What will Philip say to the Samaritans? Will you try now? I hope you do. You will say John's gospel is very clear. What Philip will say to them is what Christ said to the woman at the well. What's that?
Why did God want her? Stepping over the big religious divide, Christ asked a drink of water of the woman that was a Samaritan. What? Surprised that woman. He thought he would not speak, being a Jew. He would spit at her, maybe, but for him to ask a drink of water from her cup, a cup that she had handled, when he was a Jew. That amazed her. Christ was saying, yes, God loved the woman and wanted her, and to reach her, Christ was prepared to step over that religious divide. And it's absurd.
Rules and regulations. Secondly, he made the point to the woman, didn't he? That whereas they could argue for days on end about which was the right place to worship, the hour was coming, and now i- uh, uh, the hour was coming when, uh, neither in this place nor in Jerusalem shall you worship the Father, for God is spirit, and they that worship God must worship him in spirit and in full. So it wasn't simply as was Jerusalem right or Samaria right. It was rather, whoever you're going to worship God acceptably, you will need the gift of his Holy Spirit that you might worship him in spirit and in truth.
And you say that means, therefore, that you can forget about that old argument about Jerusalem, and no, it doesn't. Does it? For sometimes we forget that our Lord said something else to the woman. He said, my dear woman, you know, you worship, you know not what. We know what we worship, for salvation is of the Jews. Well, that would have been a bitter thing for the woman to swallow, wouldn't it? But our Lord said it, and you won't accuse him of bigotry, will you?
Oh yes, with all his kind and tender compassion, he must tell that woman that the Samaritans were wrong. They had defied scripture. They had defied the word of God. They had disobeyed God's injunctions. Salvation was in fact of the Jews. What would Philip tell us, imagine? Oh Lord, forget the Jews, forget Jerusalem. We don't care anything about Jerusalem ourselves either, you know, we're Christians, we've fallen out with the Jews too, so let's forget Jerusalem. Now let's get on with, with personal relationship to the Lord.
Well, personal relationship with the Lord is exceedingly important, of course it is. And Philip led many of these po- people to the point where they personally trusted the Savior. That was glorious, but they got no Holy Spirit, did they? So why didn't God give them his Holy Spirit? What was wrong? What was missing? Well, you'll see what was wrong and what was missing if you notice what had to happen before they did get the Holy Spirit. And that was precisely this. They got no Holy Spirit. Yes, they had believed on the Lord Jesus. Yes, they had been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. They got no Holy Spirit. Until apostles came down from Jerusalem.
So says Luke explicitly. Apostles came down from Jerusalem, and the apostles from Jerusalem laid their hands on the Samaritans. Well, you can tell now that the Samaritans had really got converted, can't you? Wow, because if they hadn't have got converted, those apostate Samaritans would have spit all the way down Peter's beard. Deniably punched him in the face as well. What man from Jerusalem lay his hands on me? Yes, a man from Jerusalem, and not just anybody from Jerusalem either, but the authoritative man, the apostle from Jerusalem.
For God will make Samaritans, uh, admit that there is no salvation that doesn't come via Jerusalem. Let me stop and ask you at once, are you saved? Have you got salvation? Just be careful, where did you get it from? Does it come via Jerusalem? Or have you got a local variety manufactured by Tom Smith or Mrs. White or somebody like that, a kind of a salvation that Jerusalem never did hear of. So the only genuine salvation is the salvation that comes via Jerusalem.
Why this gospel, says Paul, it's witnessed to by the law and the prophets. It's not a philosophy that Tom Jones thought up in the eighteen nineties or the seventeen sixties or something. Christianity is not, in that sense, a philosophy at all. It's part of God's own self-revelation within history. It has been a continuous spread. As our Lord observed, if you don't believe Moses, you wouldn't believe Jesus anyway. You cannot ditch the Old Testament and suppose you're going to have salvation.
Cut your roots with history, cut your roots with that Old Testament revelation, and what you've got is not true Christianity, for our blessed Lord is of the seed of David. And that is exceedingly important. God will make this announcement admitted. Why it is so important, we shall have to take time to think next week, for by your leave, we shall briefly consider the second half of this day, Judaism as a witness for God amongst the pagans, which will lead us naturally on to our topic of the third section next week.
But for tonight, let us notice it and just sum it up this way. That true Christianity, yes, is the latest in God's great progression. The God that progressed all the way down Judaism's history eventually sent his son in the last of these days, and while the earlier revelations were passable in parts in diverse manners and places, in these last days he's gone the next great stage and spoken to us in his son. God is a God of progress. For all that he's a God of progress, you must not cut your roots with history.
Alas for the number of children in schools, in congregations, in churches that have been told that the Old Testament is not to be trusted. And can be safely disbelieved. In favor of some modern reinterpretation of Christianity. Here finally Paul. Would you know what the true gospel is? It was preached under, to every creature under heaven. And it came through the holy apostles from Jerusalem.
If they didn't know of it, if they wouldn't have approved of it, then it isn't the gospel at all. Do the Lord write these things on our hearts and give us good understanding. Shall we pray? Our Father, we thank thee for these things that exercise our minds and invite us to think clearly and make distinctions in things that look the same but are different. Help us, Lord, as our grateful contribution to thy work, to give ourselves to thee and to thy Holy Spirit, that we may be trained and rigorously trained, that we may think and think hard, that we may understand clearly what thy gospel is, and then stand for it in our day and generation, uncompromisingly.
At the same time, we beseech thee to touch our hearts with a great glory of what thou has revealed of thyself in Jesus Christ, our Lord, so that we give thanks that our eyes see things that kings and prophets would like to have seen, but in ages past did not see them, but we now see them. Touch our hearts with these glories, we beseech thee, that we may not merely stand for the gospel out of a sense of duty, but stand for it out of a sense of wealth and joy and gladness, unashamed of this gospel that is thy power to salvation and the enriching of the world. This we ask through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.
