Stephens testimony — Acts 6-7

0:00 Acts six and verse... Beginning in verse eight. And Stephen, full of faith and power, did great wonders and signs among the people. Then there arose some from what is called the synagogue of the freedmen, Cyrenians, Alexandrians, and those from Sicilia and Asia, disputing with Stephen, and they were not able to resist the wisdom and the spirit by which he spoke. Then they secretly induced men to say, we have heard men, we have heard him speak blasphemies, words against Moses and God.

0:38 And they stirred up all the people, the elders and the scribes, and they came upon him, seized him, and brought him to the council. They also set up false witnesses who said, this man does not cease to speak blasphemous words against this holy place and the law. For we have heard him say that this Jesus of Nazareth will destroy this place and change the customs which Moses delivered to us. And all who sat in the council looking steadfastly at him saw his face as the face of an angel. Then the high priest, chapter seven, verse one, said, are these things so?

1:21 And he said, brethren and fathers, listen. The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia, before he dwelt in Haran, and said to him, Get out of your country and from your relatives and come to a land that I will show you. Then he came out of the land of the Chaldeans and dwelt in Haran. And from there, when his father was dead, he moved him to this land in which you now dwell. And God gave him no inheritance in it, not even enough to set his foot on.

1:59 But even when Abraham had no child, he promised to give to him for a possession and to his descendants after him. But God spoke in this way, that the descendants would dwell in a foreign land and that they would bring them into bondage and oppress them four hundred years. The nation to whom they will be in bondage, I will judge, said God, and after that, they shall come out and serve me in this place. Then he gave him the covenant of circumcision, and so Abraham begot Isaac and circumcised him on the eighth day. And Isaac begot Jacob, and Jacob begot the 12 patriarchs.

2:42 Verse nine, the patriarchs, becoming envious, sold Joseph into Egypt, but God was with him and delivered him out of all his troubles and gave him favor and wisdom in the presence of Pharaoh, king of Egypt. And he made him governor over Egypt and all his house. Now a famine and great trouble came over all the land of Egypt and Canaan, and our fathers found no sustenance. But when Jacob heard that there was no grain in Egypt, he sent out our fathers first. And the second time Joseph was made known to his brothers and Joseph's family became known to the pharaoh.

3:22 Then Joseph sent and called his father Jacob and all his relatives to him, 75 people. So Jacob went down to Egypt and he died, he and our fathers. They were carried back to Shechem and laid in the tomb that Abraham bought for a sum of money from the sons of Hamar, the father of Shechem. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for this opportunity to be here today.

3:49 We thank you for your word, Lord, written long ago with messages for here today. We pray that you will guide as we learn together. Help my words to be those that are honoring to you and informative. And Lord, may they fall on ears that are able to hear them. We pray these things in your son's name, amen.

4:28 Right? We're gonna trust him to pick it up in the middle and and carry on from here next week. We'll we'll see what he has to say, what the lord's put on his heart. But how is it that I got here today? You know, between Mason last week and Tim this week, it's like two pieces of fresh bread and this old ham in between or something.

4:48 Right? So I hope it makes a good sandwich overall, but we'll see. But it is kind of fitting that we're talking about this today. I mean, we should know what this day in history means, right, to us. If we were to say that, what is today special?

5:05 Anybody under 30 understand what today's history lesson is? Oh come now. Okay, between thirty and forty. Okay, there you go. What is it?

5:19 Yeah, Pearl this is the day that Pearl Harbor was attacked and a greater part of the fleet, Pacific Fleet was sank. And so it... What's that famous saying? This day in infamy, or this day shall live in infamy. When President Roosevelt broadcast that across the radio waves.

5:38 So it's really important, I think, to remember some history, and unfortunately, you probably get too much of that when I'm talking. But here's here's a quote that sort of sums this up a little bit. It's from Maya Angelou. She's a civil rights activist, guess you call it, a singer, whatnot. But she says, I have great respect for the past.

6:00 If you don't know where you've come from, you don't know where you're going. It's important for us to remember that. If don't know who you are today based on what you were yesterday and those that went before you, you're gonna have a hard time knowing where you're headed going forward. Okay? At least that's a principle I've tried to understand in my life.

6:21 Okay? Of course, there's another philosopher and famous logic teller, if you will, called Yogi Berra who says it kind of like this. He says, If you don't know where you're going, you'll end up somewhere else. So I figured I had to throw that in for Laura. He was a famous Met if you will.

6:42 He played on the Mets. He was catcher, right? So... Okay. Thank you for straightening me out.

6:53 Yankee catcher went for the Mets. That would have been a hard transition to make. But anyway, there he is. You can take that home with you today. But Stephen sort of says it like this, listen.

7:04 And I appreciate that comment in Stephen's testimony, if you will. He's before all the elders and scribes and the the powers to be, if you will, in the Jewish nation. And what does he say? Listen. And then he starts down this historical narrative.

7:22 It's almost as if he's punching him in the face. This, of all the people, these are the folks that should know what he's about to say. But he does boldly say, listen. So let's talk a little bit about Stephen. Now this is just a short little passage we have here related to Stephen.

7:40 So we could conclude, you know, there's a lot more written about... We'll talk about Abraham, for example. There's a lot more written in the scriptures about Paul. A lot more script written in the scriptures about the Lord Jesus, of course. And we we could conclude, we don't know much about Stephen.

7:55 Right? I'm not so sure that's the case. Let's look at this. If we were to go back and read some of what Mason talked about before, we could conclude these things. Right?

8:04 We know he was a Jew. Right? He was of the, you know, the Jewish faith, for sure. He was a Greek, his name indicates that. And he was involved with the Greek widows.

8:16 We heard about that, right? So we can assume he was a Greek. He had a caring heart, one that cared for widows. Now why are widows so important? Really, why are they so important?

8:31 Particularly in this day and age. Today too. But widows at that time had nothing to give. They were of all people, some of the, if not the most needy. Okay?

8:46 If you didn't have a son or a husband to care for you at this time, you needed help. Okay? And they could not give anything back. So if you gave to them, you were giving. There was no taking, no giving, getting back.

9:00 Okay? He served tables, a low a low position, if you will. He was helping those widows get what they needed. And you saw the apostles say, no, it's not good for us to go back and serve tables. Let's let Stephen and these other six guys do that.

9:17 Okay? He was recognized amongst the body. Right? He was clearly known amongst us because they said, hey, pick from among you seven. And they said, oh, Stephen's one of those guys.

9:28 We know this guy. We trust him. We think he could help us, or he has helped us. He was chosen by the church. Those that knew him chose him and said, we put this guy forward.

9:40 Okay? He was approved by the apostles, so they either had known his reputation or knew him personally, and they approved of his participation in this and recognition therefore. Clearly he was highly esteemed. And also it's important to note, particularly in our progression of Acts, that he was not an apostle. Okay?

10:05 Remember we talked a few weeks ago when I I was up here and I said, you remember Peter stood on behalf of the other, of the 12, all apostles, and said, this is what we have seen. Well here's here's Stephen standing up saying, I am my own person, not an apostle. Okay, so things are broadening out here. So we know something about Stephen, don't we? I think we know a little bit more because this section goes on to say, he was full of faith and power.

10:37 Said that he had great wonders and signs and he was full of wisdom and spirit. Now we don't know what those wonders and signs were or what the power was that he demonstrated. However, it appears to be in the sense that he would... His mind was thinking in a way that was beyond what others had been thinking. It was a special way that he was able to present things.

10:59 We know this for sure. It may be in some other wonders and signs that he could have done. We don't know what those were. We know that the apostles had wonders and signs that they did, healing folks, getting broken out of jail. I don't know exactly what here happens here, but but certainly he's doing that.

11:19 He was also a witness. He was witness to those apparently that he appreciated or that he knew or that he hung with. Okay? And some of them may have been former slaves. How do we know that?

12:01 But this was synagogue of the freedmen, a local gathering of freedmen. Apparently those that had formerly been enslaved in and amongst the Roman Empire and it had been freed. Okay? So these folks, I mean, let's look at this map. This sort of lays the groundwork for the known world at that time.

12:21 Right? If you look, here's the Mediterranean Sea. You guys, you know this very well. Right? We've we've seen this a lot.

12:28 Rome's up here in the middle of Italy. Greece is down here in this archipelago. Turkey, what would we call modern day Turkey lays in here. Africa's down here with modern day Libya, Egypt. And then over here these folks are all in Jerusalem at this time.

12:44 They're in Jerusalem when this action is happening. Okay? And it said they had folks from here, from Asia, which was probably eastern what we call Turkey, Cilicia, southern area. Alexandria, which was a port here at the... On the Northern Coast of Egypt, and then Cyrene.

13:04 So there are folk from all over. You could imagine maybe they were enslaved, drugged to Jerusalem for a different reason or another. Part of the Roman enslavement, who knows, but here they are in Jerusalem and they're gathering together. I mean, don't we do that? We gather with like minded folk.

13:22 We we like to be together with like... These were like minded folk, But this is the group that Stephen is witnessing to. I would like to believe those folks that he hung with. Those folks that he knew. Or those folks, he didn't just charge out to look for them.

13:39 I'd to think he was there and witnessing to them. And they're having this discussion saying, now wait a minute. I'm not sure we understand. I'm not sure I agree with you. Those kind of things, okay?

13:49 So he was clearly a preacher, a teacher, if you will. More things we know about him. He's given a persuasive message. It's obviously persuading some. It's it's causing a response amongst the people.

14:04 A skilled debater, certainly we could consider him to be bold. He's saying this in spite of folks pushing back against him. He ends up being persecuted and he knows a lot about the Old Testament and the promises contained therein. So are you with me so far? Do we know quite a bit about Stephen?

14:25 It's interesting that there is so much that we could dig out of here about Stephen. So eventually, if you read ahead, you skip ahead a little bit, he ends up seeing the face of an angel says. He saw into heaven, which really interesting you know. We know that we believe the scriptures to say that the Lord Jesus went to heaven and he sits at the right hand of the Father. Well, this particular case, says that Stephen looked up into heaven and he saw the Lord standing.

14:59 I'd like to see, I'd to say this was something the Lord was ready to stand up to look for. Oh, now wait a minute. Let's, I wanna look at Stephen. Right? He was watching.

15:09 He was willing to die. He didn't run away when he got... When things got rough here. Right? He ends up becoming the first martyr, if you will.

15:18 And he ends up becoming a great example for us. I'm gonna just drop that mic and come back to it here in a minute. Not to say we all need to die, not to say we all need to be martyrs, but he ends up becoming a great example because of all that we know about Stephen. So what were they accusing him of? Blasphemy.

16:01 He's not saying anything that's not true in history. So what is... What are they accusing him of? Well, they're accusing him of speaking against the customs of Moses, or we could say the Mosaic Law, the law that was given by Moses that they were working very hard in the Jewish faith to follow. Okay?

16:22 And this is what they were accusing him of. Let's... That's an important point that we need to remember as we go forward. Now we're not going to talk a lot about the Law of Moses today. Okay?

16:33 There's some precursors to that, and that's what we're going to address today. And Tim's gonna have to pick that up next week. So we'll we'll leave some of that for coverage next. So let's talk about the next character in the play, if you will. The drama here talks about Abraham.

16:53 Okay? Now when we read a few verses, it's like three or four verses right here that talk about Abraham. If you were to talk... If if if we were standing there in Stephen's day listening to him, we would know a lot more about Abraham. So just having dropping a few verses and not really unpacking it would be a disservice to that.

17:16 So let's talk about Abraham in a little more depth. Okay. You remember Adam, the first man, Eve, the first woman, they have two in... Two children. First two are Cain and Abel.

17:30 Everybody with me so far? Right, what happens first? Cain kills Abel. Because of the sacrifice that Abel gave versus Cain. Cain kills Abel, it's not a good thing.

17:42 Cain leaves and they in a sense start over with Seth. Okay? Seth is their next born to Adam. Seth, fast forward seven generations later, we get to a guy by the name of Noah. Okay?

18:02 Y'all heard about Noah, right? Noah in the flood, Noah in the ark, that sort of thing. He has three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Okay? Trying to put it up there where we can, you know, catch up to where Abraham is.

18:21 It says that, the Bible says that things were so bad in the time of Noah that the Lord says, you know what, we're going for a reset here. We're gonna save Noah and his wife, his three sons, and their wives. That's it. Eight folk, through the flood, come out of it. Okay?

18:38 Shem, Ham, Japheth, Noah, and all their wives. Everybody else wiped out. At the end of that, he says to Noah and his family, populate the earth. That starts with, in this line, Arphaxid. How come nobody ever names their name Arphaxid?

18:59 Maybe that's on one of y'all's list someday. You know, Jen is that at the top of the list? But so Arphaxad was the first from Shem. Six generations later and then comes this guy named Terra. Okay?

19:14 You all with me? Terah has three sons as well. Three, Abram, Nahor, and Haran. These are very important folks in this story. Alright?

19:27 Abram ends up becoming Abraham. We'll get to that in a moment. But his two brothers are Nahor and Haran. Haran dies early, or apparently dies young after he has a son. His son's name is Lot.

19:42 Okay? I thought this was an interesting point that Abram essentially, or Abram cares for Lot. Okay? You could imagine your brother dies. He's got a son.

19:56 Somebody has to put into that guy. He adopts him in a way, if you will. It appears that his grandpa did as well, Terah. I thought that was interesting. And then the other one is, keep in mind this name Nahor.

20:10 Okay? Put a little heart up there because as wives are needed for the generations to come, this is where they go back to find wives, is to the family of Nahor or Abram's brother. So that's something to keep in mind as we go forward. So let's talk about a timeline. What happened to Abram?

20:33 Okay, who eventually becomes Abram. The Lord comes to him and says, Genesis chapter 12 verse one says to him, hey, I want you to move. I want you to have faith, to move from here to the Canaan area. Okay? He takes Lot and his wife, whose name is Sarai.

20:53 Okay, and they move. He obeys and said, okay, I'm ready to go. He gets to that land and he, know, the land is promised to him by the Lord. He gets there, but he pitches his tent and lives there as a stranger in the land. Right?

21:10 It wasn't given over to him. He was in and amongst those that were living there at that time. Okay? And this promise is that this land is going to be yours and to those of your seed. It will inherit it.

21:26 And Abraham's, or Abram says, I believe you, however, there's only one problem. A wife hasn't had any children. Now this is many years have gone by, but she is, they would say, barren, okay? What, I don't have an heir. The heir to my house is somebody that was born in my house and not somebody that was born to me, not one of my sons.

21:51 So I appreciate the point, but I got a problem. He has a problem here. And the Lord says, we're gonna take care of that problem. Don't worry about it. I assure you that you will have a son.

22:04 And so Abraham goes for a little while longer. Nothing happens. It's still not coming. And he decides to take things into his own hands. Now you remember this story, right?

22:15 He takes it into his own hands, and what does he do? He complains to Sarai. She says, look, I've got this maid named Hagar. Why don't you have a son through him, or through her? And that's where Ishmael comes from.

22:32 Okay? Tracking with me so far. The Lord says, no, that's not gonna be your son. Okay? Matter of fact, I am gonna make you a father of many nations.

22:44 I'm gonna change your name, means father Abraham. Father is going to be... I'm giving... I'm making you this promise. This will not be your son, but I will provide a son through Sarai.

22:58 Okay? He makes a promise to him. We'll call that a covenant, and he gives him a sign. What's the sign that he gives? Of all things, circumcision.

23:07 Okay? Now, we could all add, you know, debate as to why. I think it was a reminder to them to say, be careful about the way you populate going forward. Be careful about the inheritance that you're passing along. So eventually, they promise him a son.

23:26 Sarah catches on and says, I now believe, when she's 90 years old and Abraham is a 100. She's given the new name of Sarah and at 90 years old she conceives and has a baby. What do you think about having a baby at 90? What do you think about chasing a toddler around at 92? They made them tough back then, guess.

23:55 No, it says that the Lord gave her strength to do just what she was asked to do. And they believed, okay? And that was important. A little while later, Abram had asked this awful question. Sacrifice your son.

24:15 Take him up on the mountain and sacrifice him. And Abraham says, okay, if you say so Lord, I'll do it. Even though he had promised him that in his seed would be many generations, yet he's asking him to sacrifice him. Says that he concluded that the only way this was gonna be true was that the Lord could have brought him back to the dead if he had been sacrificed. And so he moves forward as if he would.

24:41 The ram is provided. He doesn't have to sacrifice Isaac, and the rest is history. Right? But I skipped an important part in the middle here. When it says that the Lord promised him that he would have a son and that his seed would be many nations going forward, it says that Abraham believed him and was accounted to him as righteousness.

25:09 That's really important. He believed and it was accounted to him as righteousness. Okay? Now, we could say this is just a, you know, one of those old stories from the Old Testament. Right?

25:23 What does it matter to us today? Is this important to us today in our faith today? Yes, as Christians, do we think this is important? Is it part of the New Testament? What do you think?

25:39 I say yes, in a big way. We can't go pi... Best in Romans four, right? Talks all about Abraham. And what does it says there?

25:48 It says, what does the scripture say? It says that Abraham believed and it was accounted to him or credited, reckoned to him as righteousness. Okay? Quotes this exact verse here, fifteen:six from Genesis. It's important, according to Paul, and he builds this whole argument around Abraham's belief.

26:09 It was before circumcision. So before, if you will, the Jewish race, the Israel nation was born, was formed, was started. That's an important point. It was because of his faith, not the law that he was he was credited with righteousness. Okay?

26:31 It was by grace. It was a gift, not something that he had earned, not by works. It says that he envisioned things, this is the God that brings things that were dead to life. He gives life to the dead. It speaks as though things that didn't exist actually do exist.

26:52 So here we have these folks here that are 90 and a 100 as the scripture say, they were as good as dead. And yet, he brought life from that. And that's the point. Okay? In spite of the fact that they were this old, in spite of the fact that they had no reason to believe that they would have a child, the Lord promised and they believed him.

27:19 And the Lord credited him with righteousness. Okay? And it concludes in chapter five verse one. It says, therefore, this is chapter five verse one of Romans. In the New Testament says, therefore, having been justified by faith, we justified by faith.

27:41 Don't go past that. This is an important foundational principle of our faith today. Even coming from an old story. I could go on and you could go to the hall of faith here in Hebrews chapter 11 and I could read to you what it says there too. But for the sake of time, I'm just gonna let you take that as homework.

28:02 Okay? You can read about Abraham here in that hall of faith verses one eight through eleven seventeen to 19. Okay. So we understand that Stephen speaking first of Abraham. But to remind ourselves, what was he accused of?

28:24 Blasphemy. Right? He was accused of blasphemy speaking against the Mosaic Law, the customs of Moses. Have we dealt with that yet? Nothing.

28:35 We haven't dealt with any of that. But still, this is important for us to remember. Okay. So then he goes on to tell about the patriarchs. Right?

28:45 Who are the patriarchs? Another endless genealogy. I'll try and paint it up here for you to make sure that we understand them clearly. Because, and I'll say it tongue in cheek, these patriarchs did wonderful works of righteousness. I'm gonna just drop that because I think you'll find out not exactly the case.

29:03 So here we had Abraham and Sarah. Their son was named Isaac. Okay, this reminder from the page before, right? And Isaac goes back to the family of Nahor, there's the little heart, and he finds, or is found for him, one of Abraham's servants, finds Rebecca, okay, for a wife for Isaac. It's a wonderful story.

29:29 And they have this guy named Jacob as a son, as part of the lineage that we're following here, okay? And he goes back, or he actually travels back to this family of Nahor again, generations later, and finds another wonderful woman in a wonderful story named Rachel whom he loves. This sounds like just a wonderful family, doesn't it? I mean, here we have this family that is going on forever and the Lord is now going to bless. Right?

30:03 That's what we know, isn't it? I'm being sarcastic. You can say or oh no, come on. What are you trying to say? Or I'm not sure I know where you're going.

30:13 Because this family is known for what? I don't know if you can read that with the pink, but it says dysfunction and heartbreak. That's what I would say. Because because if you really read through the whole, you know, story, what do we find? Well well, we we did skip over this part.

30:30 There was this idea of they took things into their own hands, right, and had a baby through Hagar instead of the way that he he had promised. And that was the result of that was Ishmael. Right? So it wasn't exactly right, but okay, we can move on past that. Everybody has a little little stuff in their closet, right?

30:49 Let's move on. Was there anything else? Well, what about Esau? He was the older brother, actually twinned to Jacob. Alright?

30:57 Jacob deceives him and steals the birthright. In a sense, Esau gave it up because I'll sell it for a pot of stew, right? And well that doesn't sound so good. You could go on because Jacob's mom, Rebecca was in on it and the whole thing. Not sounded so good for this happy family.

31:22 Okay, what about Laban? Oh, well who's Laban? Well, Laban was Rachel's brother who apparently had the say over whether or not his sisters could be married or who to whom they would be married. And he happily accepted Jacob and said, come work for me. When you are done with the seven years of work, you can happily have this woman to be your wife.

31:48 And so what happens? He works for seven years and gets the wrong wife. They disguise her, her sister Leah as Rebecca and Jacob inadvertently marries Leah. This is like stuff you see on TV today. Right?

32:09 Say say it isn't true. This actually happened. This is what the Bible says. Okay. So, alright.

32:15 Well, now Jacob's got two sisters for wives. Don't ask me to talk about that. I can't imagine. But still, here he is with two wives, two sisters in this relate and they start having kids. Okay?

32:30 The sons are recorded as 12. Can anybody count them in order to me? Name them off right quick. I don't see any heads nodding. So who's the first one?

32:44 Give me the first. Reuben. Who's the last? Okay. There's a 10 in between there.

32:50 Not bad. Not bad. But this is why we go through a reminder why I'm digging in more in-depth because this is what people would have known like off the top of their head. They knew their history well. They knew what was happening.

33:01 Okay? So here are the first four sons that were born to Leah. Okay? Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah. Okay?

33:10 That sounds okay. Now they have children. The the lineage is continuing on. Isn't that all great? Well, not so much in Rachel's mind.

33:19 In Rachel's mind, she's saying, about me? You know, I'm I'm jealous. I I should have babies through me too, but she's not having children. So what does she do? She said, I have this maid named Bilhaw.

33:32 How about if you have children through her, which will be to my lineage? Okay. Well, which will be from my blood. What do you think of that? This is not this is, you know, we've we've heard of this happening before.

33:43 So she does it again and true to form, two sons are born to him or to them. Okay, so now Jacob and Bilhah have Dan Naftali. Not to be outdone, Leah said that I still need more children to my name. They argue back and forth. What happens?

34:05 She offers up Zilpah, her maid, and Zilpah gives birth to Gad and Asher. In an unexplained occurrence, all of a sudden Leah's having children again. She has Issachar and Zebulun. Pretty good, Good stuff. And finally, Rachel has a son.

34:29 Now don't forget, Jacob loved Rachel. He worked fourteen years. Fourteen years, the Bible says, to claim her as his wife before he could have her as his wife. And Joseph comes out and Joseph is a favored one. You don't wanna favor any of our children, right?

34:47 But you could kinda imagine why this happens, right? I've been waiting for so long, Rachel's been so upset. Here we have Rachel. Rachel bearing a son and eventually she has another one and she dies at childbirth. What do you think that made Abraham feel like?

35:07 Or I'm sorry, Jacob feel like? Awful, right? A terrible thing to have this happen. The history goes on and to make matters worse, all the brothers, like these 10, are so upset with the fact that Joseph is being favored, what do they do? They sell him into slavery.

35:43 The family had heartbreak. There was difficulties along this family line. But there was also the Lord blessing them along the way. In comes a famine. They need grain.

35:52 They can't live. So what do they do? They head to Egypt to get grain. We know this story. Right?

35:58 And what do they find? They find that Joseph has been promoted. He's like the head guy. He's the one giving them the grain. He's the one providing for them.

36:06 And and eventually he says, hey, come on in and move in with my two sons now, by the way. They're Ephraim and Manasseh. I'd like you to meet them. Come on in. We're gonna move to Egypt in 7075, depending on which number you pick from the scriptures, move to Egypt.

36:24 And Joseph says, not only if I'm gonna feed you, I'm gonna give you a land and you're gonna be able to be here for four hundred years. And for the most part of that four hundred years, it's not a bad place. Right? They prosper. They grow.

36:38 And you know what? Here's the growth. They grew into tribes. These are the knuckleheads that were heading up the tribes. I call them knuckleheads because they end up walking through the wilderness for forty years because of decisions they made.

36:50 But at any rate, these are the guys that are in the scriptures saying these are the ones that were part of these tribes leading them at that time. And here's the number of men fighting age, 30... 20 to 30 years old. Right? That ends up...

37:03 I'll total it up for you, a 612,130 person army and priesthood that they're coming out of Egypt with. So in this period of time, they've grown dramatically into a nation, you will. They've gone from a family to a nation now. A dramatic change, okay? A dramatic blessing.

37:27 Eventually oppression happens in a sense, so they wanna leave and Moses is provided as the leader to take them out. And that'll lead you into where we're talking about next week a little bit. But here's the point, throughout this family history, this is what we continually hear in the New Testament. You've heard this before. The family of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

37:55 Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and this family as it grows into these tribes and this nation is known well up to the times of Christ. This huge body of people. Okay. With the faith and and a background. Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, he blesses in spite of or through all this.

38:17 This is a time where he concentrates not on everybody but on this one lineage, okay? To make a point, to make a number of points. But this is a big change. So, not to leave you hanging, what should we take away from this? Okay, I'd like to have just a minute or two to talk about the Stephen's testimony, if you will, and what my testimony, our testimony, maybe your testimony might be.

38:51 Okay? The first thing is that Stephen, kind of a regular guy. Kind of a regular guy. What was he doing? He was helping care for the widows.

39:04 He was doing what was the nesting in front of him. I'm talking to my buddies. I'm witnessing to these former slaves and and just having a debate. Right? He he in a sense you get the idea that he's just this guy.

39:18 He's just doing what comes to him next. His faith is strong. He wants to tell people about it. And he's just a regular guy doing extraordinary things. He takes the next step and what happens?

39:34 Look at what we see of him today and the example that he set for us. I don't know about you. I know I am. Mostly regular people. Right?

39:48 I mean, we're not famous. I'm not on TV. Shoot, I don't even know. I have a hard time even getting on YouTube, let alone starring on YouTube. Right, we're not famous or influencers or that kind of thing.

40:02 Most of us are just regular people. But there's extraordinary potential when a regular person does what the Lord would ask him to do, the next thing. The Old Testament is important. This is a side note, I just want you to know, we can concentrate and I don't know if you ever picked up your Bible, close it up, and then hang it and look at where the wrinkled pages are. I'll bet most of them are in the New Testament.

40:49 Okay? Now we have the historic faithfulness demonstrated by the Lord in the Old Testament scriptures. We should study it. We should know it. We should be able to make a defense of it.

41:04 But we still have to relate it to our times. See now, in Stephen's times, this was current events. This is what he was talking about. Our recent history. What we're looking for is the Messiah.

41:15 Here he is. Okay? We are talking about current events then. We can talk about current events now relating to them to the old ways that are tried and true. Abraham demonstrated his faith.

41:30 His faith justified him. He was accounted to him for righteousness because he believed. That's us too. We don't have anything to add to that. We have just that.

41:43 We have faith. We can see that the patriarchs were given a provision. The Lord sent Joseph ahead to care for them. Isn't that a weird way of thinking about things? He was sold into slavery.

41:59 But, when his brother showed up, what did he say? You meant it for evil, but the Lord meant it for good. Now here, let me do good for you. That was a provision, if you will, of the Lord. All that Joseph went through, and we didn't even get time to talk about that.

42:19 But, I think God is providing today too. He is providing. Not, we can say that he did provide. We can say that he has provided. Look at...

42:31 We can look at our past. But we can also feel confident that he is providing today. What we have is enough. What we have is what he understands, what he knows. We don't have to doubt that.

43:12 Let's remember this. Let's remember Abraham. Let's remember the patriarchs because you can't get to God by trying to fulfill the law. It's not possible. And that's been told to us from eons.

43:26 Okay? It's not by works for us either. We can't fulfill the law. We shouldn't try. We can never do it.

43:36 It's only through faith that we can be saved. To be continued. Father, we're so thankful again that you have given us your scriptures, you've given us an opportunity to learn from them. Lord, help us to take these principles, these stories, these truths from old and apply them as best we can today. Lord, help us to take that next step towards doing that which you would have us to do.

44:08 Help us to be a witness to others. Help us to understand where we've come from so that we can also know where we're headed. We pray these things in your son's name. Amen.