Acts 7:53-8:3

The Stoning of Stephen
54 When the members of the Sanhedrin heard this, they were furious and gnashed their teeth at him. 55 But Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit, looked up to heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. 56 “Look,” he said, “I see heaven open and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.”
57 At this they covered their ears and, yelling at the top of their voices, they all rushed at him, 58 dragged him out of the city and began to stone him. Meanwhile, the witnesses laid their coats at the feet of a young man named Saul.

59 While they were stoning him, Stephen prayed, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.” 60 Then he fell on his knees and cried out, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.” When he had said this, he fell asleep.

1 And Saul approved of their killing him.

The Church Persecuted and Scattered
On that day a great persecution broke out against the church in Jerusalem, and all except the apostles were scattered throughout Judea and Samaria. 2 Godly men buried Stephen and mourned deeply for him. 3 But Saul began to destroy the church. Going from house to house, he dragged off both men and women and put them in prison.




Dig Deeper
There are only a few times in my life where I could honestly say that I felt something deep down in my core that caused me to action. Oh, it’s easy to feel strongly about something and desire to act on it, but how many times have you ever really felt something so strongly that you felt compelled to act immediately and felt no other option than to act right at that moment? When you feel something that deeply, whether your reaction is a positive or negative emotion, you almost feel as if you have no choice but to act. When we feel something that deep down in our soul, we usually say that we just felt it in our heart. Our heart is the deepest part of the “real us.” It is the seat of our emotions and will that directs our actions. So when we are cut to the heart or moved in our hearts, that is serious stuff. That means that whatever happened has connected with the deepest and strongest part of our our will and caused us to take actions that demonstrate what our true will and desires are. When something connects with our hearts, though, it usually says more about our hearts and where they are at, quite frankly, than it does about that particular thing that has moved our hearts.

In the early chapters of Acts, Luke has been developing a theme which is easily lost in many modern English translations that has to do with the hearts of the people of Israel. In Acts 2, the apostle Peter gave a stirring sermon concerning the fact that the people of Jerusalem had rejected and put to death God’s Messiah. Peter declared that God had proven that Jesus was his Messiah by raising him from the dead and now it was up to them to act. In Acts 2:37, Luke tells us that the people were “pierced to their heart,” using a word for “pierced” that meant to prick in and cause great anguish. The people had been challenged and their hearts were moved. They quickly asked what they should do and when Peter responded that the proper response was to repent and be baptized they did so.

But later in chapter 5, Peter and the other apostles are brought in to answer to the Sanhedrin for their repeated efforts in continuing to preach the gospel of the crucified, resurrected, and glorified Messiah, Jesus. As Peter boldly declared that he would not stop his activities and that Jesus was indeed the Messiah that was sent to deliver Israel and the whole world, Luke tells us in 5:33 that the members of the Sanhedrin were “cut to the heart.” This is often rendered as “furious” or something similar in modern translations which is basically correctly, but loses the theme of words that Luke was carefully creating. The Sanhedrin heard Peter’s words, the same core message that pierced the men and women in chapter 2 to their hearts, and they were also moved in their hearts. But it wasn’t so much of a wound of anguish, but a cut of vexation. They were moved very deeply just as the people at Pentecost were and by the very same words, but their response was ultimately very different.

In this passage Luke has just concluded giving us a summary of Stephen’s speech to this group of religious leaders. His message consisted of much of the same content as Peter’s in the two previously mentioned examples. Israel had strayed from God’s plan and had rejected his Messiah. When the members of the Sanhedrin heard this, says Luke, they were “furious.” But Luke uses the same word for “cut” (diaprio) that he used in 5:33 and the same word for heart (kardio) that he had used in 2:37. Once again, the religious leaders of Israel had heard the message of the gospel and it had moved them in their hearts. But it had not moved them to humility and repentance as it had some. It moved them to anger and violence. How could the same message have such a different outcome in the hearts of the people?

What it really boils down to is not the message. That was the same. What Luke was showing us was the content of the heart. That’s what determines how it is effected. This is contrary to what most people nowadays think. We tend to believe that people are basically the same and are effected by their environments and what goes on around them, but Luke is showing us differently. People that lived in the same place and time, hearing the same message, were moved quite differently in their hearts because their hearts were different. Just as the same sunbeam can harden mud into brick or melt chocolate into goo based on the unique make-up of each item, so hearts that were sincerely humble to God were pricked to repentance by the message of the gospel. But those who had hardened themselves to God and desired their own gratification, well those hearts reacted quite explosively to the message of the early Christians.

The hearts of the Sanhedrin leaders had already turned against the possibility of Jesus being the Messiah, so Stephen’s words aroused rage, not humility. His words brought out the rebellion and rage that was already entrenched in their hearts. But Stephen’s reaction stood in stark opposition. Perhaps he was there during the events of Acts 2 and watched as many had their hearts pierced with the truth of the gospel. It is clear, though, that his heart was filled with the Holy Spirit rather than his own will. As he looked up, he saw the realm of heaven breaking into the present reality as though a curtain was being pulled back to reveal what is always there but can’t be seen.

His statement that he could see into heaven would have been significant and even more offensive to the Jewish leaders on two grounds. The first was that the standard Jewish belief was that the Temple was the place where God’s realm of heaven broke into the present physical age. This was further evidence that Stephen and the early church were claiming the place of God’s Temple over and above the physical structure of the Temple. The second was that it had not been very long since Jesus stood before this same Sanhedrin and declared that they would “see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Mighty One and coming on the clouds of heaven” (Mk. 14:62). Stephen was now standing in the same place, making the same claim for Jesus, and verifying that he was right, which would also have meant that they were wrong about Jesus and wrong about God. In addition, Luke may have seen some significance in the fact that Stephen declared that Jesus was standing in heaven rather than sitting. It is probable that Luke understood Jesus to be standing as a witness and advocate in Stephen’s defense. As Jesus had promised, “I tell you, whoever publicly acknowledges me before others, the Son of Man will also acknowledge before the angels of God” (Lk. 12:8). Stephen and Jesus then were serving as witnesses to the truth of one another’s words.

The response of the Sanhedrin was as quick as it was vitriolic. The Sanhedrin saw Stephen’s words as clear blasphemy and dealt with such behavior in what they felt was a biblically prescribed way (Lev. 24:14). There is some debate as to whether the Romans gave the Sanhedrin the right to execute capital punishment in certain cases of blaspheming the Temple or whether this was a somewhat illegal action, but either way, they covered their ears to symbolically stop their exposure to his blasphemy and took Stephen out it a hurry and began to stone him outside of the city.

As Stephen faced his last moments, something rather amazing happened. There was a long tradition in Judaism of Jews who were facing their own death for God to boldly denounce their persecutors in no uncertain terms and to declare that God would one day vindicate their death and strike down with great vengeance those who were killing them. Stephen would have been well aware of that and likely raised to do just that if he ever had to face his own death to uphold the honor of his God and truth. But none of that was evident here. Stephen had no interest in denouncing his persecutors or declaring their judgment in the hands of God. He had had entered into a group of believers that would share in the sufferings of their master. They knew that Christ had called them to share in his life and that meant to take up suffering willingly for the sake of others. Like Christ, Stephen asked that the sins of his killers not be held against them (cf. Lk .23:34).

There was one more important parallel between the death of Stephen and Jesus that we should take note of. As Stephen was taking his last breaths he asked that his Spirit be received. Jesus requested that God would receive his Spirit (Lk. 23:46), an act that would vindicate his own death but would not call for judgment on those who had killed him. Stephen also asked for vindication of this type, but rather than asking God the Father to receive his Spirit, Stephen prayed that Jesus would receive his Spirit. This is evidence that within a period as short as a few months, the early church was already understanding an equality between God the Father and God the Son.

As Stephen fell asleep (a standard Jewish figure of speech that simply meant “death” and should not be used to try to force some concept of “soul sleep” that was unknown to the Jewish people or the early Christians into the biblical framework), Luke records that Saul (later the apostle Paul) was there giving his approval to the affair, an act that would stay with him for the rest of his life (cf. Acts. 22:20). These Christians were not some mere nuisance in Saul’s eyes and he clearly did not take the same “wait and see” approach that his master Gamaliel had prescribed. Saul would show his zeal by wiping these blasphemers from the face of the earth. The early Christians could not be viewed as sincere but misled souls. They were claiming that they were eyewitness to Jesus’ resurrection, and ascension and exaltation to heaven. Saul believed that Jesus’ death on a cursed cross demonstrated clearly enough that he was not the Messiah. Saul believed that his mission from God was to go to house to house and destroy the church. He would soon find himself becoming a fulfillment of Gamaliel’s words (Acts 5:38-39) and would find that he was not fighting for God but against him.


Devotional Thought
Where is your heart at? Do you ensure to the best of your ability that your heart is soft to God’s word and willing to be pricked, motivated, convicted, and moved to action by it. Or do you find that your heart is often already set and rather unwilling to be truly moved by God’s word? Take some time today to truly meditate on that and be open to the truth.