https://youtu.be/f3_49hbvuIs

Deliberate Disobedience

– Stephen has been testifying to the High Council, using their own scriptures & history against them.

– He is rebuking them for following in their father’s foot steps by rejecting and persecuting every messenger that God has sent to them.

– These pharisees, experts in the laws, should know better, and Stephen is now exposing them!

Acts 7:51-53, 51“You stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears! You always resist the Holy Spirit; as your fathers did, so do you. 52 Which of the prophets did your fathers not persecute? And they killed those who foretold the coming of the Just One, of whom you now have become the betrayers and murderers, 53 who have received the law by the direction of angels and have not kept it.”

#1. God’s chosen people are being deliberately disobedient.

Verse 51,“You stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears! You always resist the Holy Spirit; as your fathers did, so do you.”

– The behavior of the pharisees is willful and deliberate. They are being more than stubborn.

– “Stiff-necked” is to resist the leading of the master.

– Oxen were used to plow the fields. When an ox did not want to move, he would stiffen his neck muscles to resist the direction he was being pulled in.

– Or the ox would not bow his head to receive the master’s yoke.

– Circumcision was the seal of God’s promise, and the symbol of His people being “set apart”.

– Looking and acting like God’s people on the outside, doesn’t make up for deaf ears and a wicked heart on the inside.

– Saying their “hearts and ears are uncircumcised” is saying that they are no different than a non-believer or heathen when it comes to listening to God or doing what He says.

– It’s as if they never knew God at all.

– Romans 2:25-29, 25 For circumcision is indeed profitable if you keep the law; but if you are a breaker of the law, your circumcision has become uncircumcision. 26 Therefore, if an uncircumcised man keeps the righteous requirements of the law, will not his uncircumcision be counted as circumcision? 27 And will not the physically uncircumcised, if he fulfills the law, judge you who, even with your [f]written code and circumcision, are a transgressor of the law? 28 For he is not a Jew who is one outwardly, nor is circumcision that which is outward in the flesh; 29 but he is a Jew who is one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart, in the Spirit, not in the letter; whose [g]praise is not from men but from God.

– They are being fake, and Stephen is calling them out for it! Example: Stolen Valor

– When you are “one”, you can tell when someone is not “one”!

– This is the word of God through their hero, Moses, spoken to their fore-fathers in the desert:

– Exodus 19:5, Now therefore, if you will indeed obey My voice and keep My covenant, then you shall be a special treasure to Me above all people…

– These Jews have wear the symbol of the covenant, but don’t keep its meaning and purpose in their hearts. (Example: A husband looking at porn…)

– Their fathers disobeyed God then, and they disobey God now by ignoring the Holy Spirit.

#2. Don’t follow a bad example, and don’t set a bad example.

Verse 52,