Telling the Story: Part 2
Acts 7:1-16
When I was an American school kid in the 70s and 80s I learned that the defining events in the history of the United States were was the founding of Jamestown in 1607; the landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth in 1620; and, of course, the Revolutionary War that began in 1775 and the signing of the Declaration of Independence—well—almost exactly 250 years ago. There were plenty of other events that shaped the story, but those were the events that set the United States on its trajectory: a heritage from Britain with a good dose of religious freedom and Protestant work ethic coming together in a grand expression of the rights of man shaped by the Enlightenment. Were there flaws? Yep. Slavery was a big one. But the way I learned the story, the British mainland colonies of North America were on the fringe of the slave trade. We received a tiny fraction of it. The real slavery problem was in the Caribbean and Latin America. Plus, we dealt with it. The whole Civil War thing—a tragedy. But it was a story to be proud of.
But in 2019, the New York Times began a new publishing project. They called it The 1619 Project. It was subtitled, “A New Origin Story”. Why 1619? That was the year the first African slaves were brought to Virginia. Before the Pilgrims. Before the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. It was a deliberate attempt to reframe the story of the United States. Instead of a story rooted in a proud English heritage and religious liberty and Enlightenment ideals of freedom and liberty, the 1619 Project told the story of the United States as one rooted in racism and slavery and oppression. Instead of a story that makes you stand proud, it’s a story meant to instil shame and guilt. The 1619 Project didn’t come out of nowhere. It made public a story that many people had already been telling, especially to younger generations.
And, as you would expect, this resulted in a great cultural clash. Both sides shouting at the other, basically saying, “How dare you tell our story wrong!” It wasn’t so much a matter of the events themselves. Both versions of the story involved the same events, the same people, and all of that. But it highlights how much how you frame a story, how much you stress certain events and people and ideas over others, that you can end up with stories that are essentially the same, while dramatically different. One instils national pride; the other instils national shame. That doesn’t mean there’s no right or wrong. Framing the American story as if slavery and racism are its fundamental core is dishonest. But at the same time, telling a story that glosses over those evils for the sake of instilling pride, well, that’s a problem too.
And as much as this Postmodern metanarrative dilemma was nowhere on the radar of First Century Jews, I think it’s a good way to understand what was going with Jews in those days and it’s a good illustration of what Stephen is doing in his speech before the Sanhedrin in Ats 7. [It’s page 1087 in the Pew Bibles.] There were different “parties” competing for influence and control in First Century Judaea and as much as they all told the same story of Israel, reaching back to Abraham and Moses and David, to the law and the Prophets, all rooted in the same exodus and exile and the same promises, how they told the story produced very different results, different feelings about Israel’s present situation, different ideas about the future and how to get there—just as how I learned American history makes you smile when you see the Stars and Stripes, but others, having learned The 1619 Project story, feel shame.
For Pharisees, unfaithfulness to the law resulted in exile—one that was still effectively ongoing—and only national faithfulness to the law would get them out of it. For the Sadducees, that was all in the past. God had restored them from their exile, and the temple and its priests were the proof. All was well. For the Zealots, the story said that armed revolution was the only way out of their oppression. For the Essenes, the group responsible for the Dead Sea Scrolls, the story said that the everyone and everything had been defiled by unfaithfulness, even the temple itself. God would wage holy war on the unfaithful, so they—the only truly righteous ones—retreated to the desert to wait and to keep pure. And there was the historian Josephus. A generation later, he told the story—after the disaster had happened—to say that the Jewish revolutionaries had brought God’s wrath on themselves and that God had raised up the Romans to act as his instrument of judgement. Same story, but the different ways they told it, the different parts they emphasised, the way they interpreted certain events like the Babylonian Exile, landed them in very different places. Like I said last week, the story got them to the airport, but they were all waiting at different gates—and none of them the right gate for the God’s real homecoming. That said, all of them held the same markers of Jewish identity dear: the torah, the temple, the promised land, their circumcision. They disagreed on a lot, but attack any of those things and they’d all join in stoning you after charging you with blasphemy.
So what Stephen is doing before the Sanhedrin, backing up all the way to Abraham and telling the story yet again, was in good keeping with what was going on in First Century Judaea. So—in case you missed last week or have forgotten—in the first sixteen verses, Stephen began telling the story of Jesus and the Spirit by going back to Abraham. This was the moment when the God of glory—Stephen wants to stress that he’s here to glorify the God of Israel, not blaspheme him or his holy things—Abraham was the moment when God stepped into the darkness and misery of his broken, fallen, corrupted creation and called to Abraham. In Abraham, God was launching his project to restore rebellious humanity to himself and to set to rights the creation that we broke. Now, there was more to it than this—it’s online if you missed or forgot it—but Stephen’s main point is that the gospel is not a departure from the story of Israel. It’s not something new that has no roots in what happened before. He’s saying to the Jewish elders: When the God of glory, the God of Israel called Abraham out of Ur and settled him in the promised land and established his covenant with him to make him a nation, that was the beginning of the story that brings us to Jesus, to the cross and the empty tomb, to the ascension and to Pentecost. The story of Abraham is the story of the gospel and vice versa.
Remember, they accused him of blaspheming torah and temple and Stephen’s saying, “No way! Torah and temple are good. They’re glorious. They’re how God prepared us and brought us to Jesus.” Like I said last week, when you leave your car and board the ferry, you are in no way saying your car was bad. It got you to the ferry. But you can’t drive on water. Now it’s time do something new—to do the very thing your car brought you to do.
And then from Abraham to Joseph. Stephen tells Isreal’s story in such a way to highlight that when the God of Israel acts to bless and to save his people, it’s often in unexpected ways. Abraham was promised the land of Canaan, but never had any more of it than a little burial plot. And Jacob and his sons were forced to flee the land of Canaan in order to survive a famine. And Jacob’s sons were wicked men who sold their brother, Joseph into slavery after nearly choosing to murder him. And Joseph went from slavery to prison. How was God going to work anything good from any of that? But he did. The sovereign God was at work all along. Slavery and prison led Joseph to the premiership of Egypt just in time deliver his family when they arrived. None of them had ever expected any of that. But God delivered them. And Stephen’s telling of the Joseph story also highlights that gracious forgiveness has always been at the heart of the story of God and his people. There was Joseph, hated, abused, sold into slavery by his brothers, but instead of taking revenge, he welcomes them and throw a party.
This is what Jesus had been doing as the lost sheep of Israel, the tax collectors and sinners, came to him in repentance and faith. And this is the sort of rejoicing that would take place in heaven were the Sanhedrin to see how the story leads to Jesus and repent. God was waiting for them with open arms and a promise of blessing, and they should know that, because that’s how God’s great story has always worked. It’s the key in which this great symphony is written.
So now, Moses. As important as Abraham and Joseph were, Moses stands like a colossus over the story of Israel. Moses was the deliverer who led Israel out of Egypt and parted the sea. It was Moses who went up Mt. Sinai and saw God for himself. It was Moses who came down and delivered the torah to Israel. It was under Moses that God made a nation out of Abraham’s family. And this is where they’ve accused Stephen of blasphemy. They’ve accused him of speaking against the torah and temple and Moses. So look at Acts 7, beginning at verse 17. Stephen highlights three things about Moses. The first thing he stresses is how Moses was raised up by God to be the right man at the right place at the right time—even though no one would have guessed at the beginning that Moses was God’s man for the hour. Stephen says:
“God had sworn an oath to Abraham. [Remember the promise to make him a great nation and to give his descendants the land of Canaan?] When the time drew near for this promise to be fulfilled, the people had increased and multiplied in Egypt, until another king arose over Egypt, one who had not known Joseph. He got the better of our people, and ill-treated our fathers, forcing them to abandon their newborn children so that they would die. It was at that time that Moses was born, and he was pleasing to God. He was nursed for three months in his father’s house. But, when they abandoned him, Pharaoh’s daughter claimed him and brought him up as her own son. So Moses was educated in the full teaching of Egyptian wisdom, and he was powerful in what he said and did.”
Already, in the life of Joseph, Stephen has stressed that God works human evil for good. Nothing escapes his sovereign hand. And just so with Moses. First, this new Pharoah decides to make slaves of the Hebrews. Not good. And then, when their numbers increase so prolifically that Pharaoh fears being able to control them, he hatches a plan to murder all the baby boys. And so Moses ends up in a basket in the river, where Pharaoh’s daughter finds him and decides to raise him as her own. God turns Pharaoh’s hate, prejudice, and injustice against him, sovereignly placing one of those Hebrew boys right in Pharaoh’s own home, raised at Pharaoh’s expense, and tutored by Pharaoh’s own tutors in the famed wisdom of the Egyptians. God ensure the story is full of irony. Pharaoh unwittingly nurtures and educates the very man who will be his downfall. And Moses, himself, receives the training needed one day to oversee, to govern the people of Israel. Again, at the time, none of this made any sense. No one could see any significance to the story as it was unfolding. But God has a plan and one of the things the Jewish people learned from Moses’ story—and so many others—is to trust God. In the famous words of William Cowper, God moves in a mysterious way. It’s another motif in the divine symphony—one that comes back over and over and that God’s people out to recognise when they hear the music.
Second, Stephen stresses the rejection of Moses by his own people. Look at verse 23:
“When he had grown to forty years old, it came into his heart to see how his brothers, the sons of Israel, were doing. He saw someone being wronged, and came to the man’s defence; he took revenge on behalf of the man who was being oppressed, by striking down the Egyptian. He thought his kinsfolk would grasp the fact that God was sending him to their rescue, but they didn’t.
“The next day he showed up as two Hebrews were fighting, and he tried to bring them back together again. ‘Now then, you two,’ he said, ‘you are brothers! Why are you wronging each other?’ But the man who was wronging the other wasn’t having it. ‘Who made you a ruler or judge over us?’ he retorted, pushing him away. ‘Do you want to kill me in the same way you killed the Egyptian yesterday?’ At that word, Moses ran away, and lived as a guest in the land of Midian, where he had two sons.”
Yet another motif in the symphony, another recurring theme in the story. Jesus wasn’t the first of God’s deliverers to be rejected by his own people. The story highlights that this is sometimes how God works. Now, there’s no one-to-one equivalence between Moses and Jesus. Moses was rejected because he wasn’t ready yet. He had a desire to see his people freed, but he hadn’t yet been called by God to that mission, nor had he received instruction on how to do it God’s way. This way of telling the story, this way of looking back to the Old Testament is something we see all through the New Testament. I think of the way Matthew regularly explains how something in the Jesus story “fulfils” this or that thing from the Old Testament. And often we’re left wondering how the connection works. Thanks largely to the Church Fathers, we’ve been taught to see these connections as literal prophecies or as “types”, as spiritual shadows that prefigure Jesus and various events in his life. That’s kind of close, but it’s not quite what Stephen (or Matthew) do. When Matthew, for example says that in the birth of Jesus Isaiah’s words about the virgin conceiving and bearing a child are fulfilled, we wonder how that works. Isaiah was talking about a young woman in his own day bearing a child…and she wasn’t a virgin. What Matthew was doing was pointing back to an event in Israel’s past, in Israel’s story, where the birth of a child to a young woman—maybe a princess, maybe the Prophet’s wife…it’s not clear—but where the birth of this child signalled that God was about to act to deliver his people. Matthew latched onto that. This is how God works, but this time—in the birth of Jesus—it’s not just a young woman, it’s an actual virgin, and this time God’s not just delivering his people from a foreign king; this time it’s deliverance from sin and death. Matthew recognised the motif in the music. It was there in Isaiah’s day, a lone violin telling a story that most people missed, but in the birth of Jesus that motif returned, and this time the whole symphony was playing it.
Stephen’s drawing on the story of Moses the same way. Moses was rejected by his own people. A repeating theme in the story that the Sanhedrin—people who know this story, know this symphony so well already—a theme they ought now to see plain as day in what happened to Jesus. It should be obvious. They were the ones playing the instruments this time, after all.
And then, third, Stephen stresses how through Moses, the God of glory, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God Israel had known for two thousand years, had revealed himself in a new way that no one had expected. Look at verse 30:
“After another forty years, an angel appeared to him in the desert at Mount Sinai, in the flame of a burning bush. When Moses saw it, he was amazed at the vision. But, as he came closer to see, there came the voice of the Lord: ‘I am the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob.’ Moses was very frightened, and didn’t dare to look. But the Lord said to him, ‘Take your sandals off your feet, for the place where you are standing is holy ground. I have looked long and hard at the trouble my people are having in Egypt. I have heard their groaning, and I have come down to rescue them. So, come on now: I’m going to send you to Egypt.’”
Stephen wants to be clear—and we see this all through early Christian preaching—the God revealed in Jesus the Messiah is not new. He is the same God who has been directing this story, this symphony from the beginning. This is the God of their fathers, the God who has been rescuing his people according to his promises for two thousand years. The God they know. The God whose character and ways they ought to have recognised in Jesus.
Yes, Stephen’s saying, Jesus was not what we expected. In Jesus—and now in the Spirit—God is doing something amazing, something astounding, something new. And that’s why you rejected him. But knowing the story, knowing the music, we should have expected God would do precisely this: something new, something wild, something we didn’t expect. Because the story is already full of episodes where God does just that. No one, least of all Moses, exiled to the wilderness, tending his father-in-law’s sheep—expected the burning bush. And yet in that moment, heaven and earth came back together, God spoke, a man was called, and the world was never the same again.
And Stephen’s point is this: You can’t predict the unexpected thing that God will do; but you can be sure—because the story is full of such moments—that God does act unexpectedly to do the things he’s promised and that we expect, the very things in which we hope.
Holy ground, for example, was something Stephen and his fellow Jews understood. The temple was holy ground. It was where heaven and earth met. But it wasn’t the end-all-be-all of holy grounds. It began at Mt. Sinai—not in Isreal, but in the wilderness—where God met Moses in the burning bush, where the plan to rescue Isreal from her bondage began. When the Israelites built the tabernacle and the cloud of God’s glory descended to fill it, God upstaged what he’d done at the burning bush. And then again, with the temple. As if it were the strings playing the motif at the burning bush, and in Exodus 40 as God’s glory fills the holy of holies, the woodwinds join them. And the music was good and it was beautiful, but the Sanhedrin should now be hearing that same motif as, in Jesus and the Spirit the whole symphony comes together to play. Stephen isn’t disparaging Moses. He’s not blaspheming the law or the temple. He’s saying, “Can’t you hear it? Their beautiful theme is now being woven into something far grander and played by the whole symphony. The motifs have been there all along, the story has always been told this way. Don’t plug your ears to this new thing. Listen. And hear how it’s taken up all the old themes into something that is nothing short of glorifying to the conductor, to the God of glory.
That’s as far as we have time to go this morning. Like I said, Acts 7 is long and there’s a lot to unpack. But I think the great take-away for us from this part—in addition to learning to hear the great story of God and his people—I think the most important thing here is to know that God really does do new and unexpected things. As we get to know the story, we ought to expect for God to do the unexpected, for God to do new things that upstage what he’s done in the past. And yet, the story also emphatically tells us that as much as God does new things and upstages the things he’s done before, those new things are always in keeping with what he’s done before. The past always points to the future and the future never undermines the past. As the writer of Hebrews tells us, “God is the same, yesterday, today, and forever.” We live in an age where too many people are ready to do something new themselves—something that breaks from what or how God has already revealed himself, something that breaks from or that disparages or that blasphemes God’s past actions or his past instructions—they take this new human thing and declared that God is doing a new thing. Andy Stanley saying we need to unhitch from the Old Testament so that God can do something new. No! Churches embracing sexual immorality and post-modern notions of identity and sexuality and family and marriage and then saying, “See, God is doing a new thing!” A thousand times, no! Brothers and Sisters, the theme of the story, the key of the symphony doesn’t change. God does new things, but those new things follow from what God’s already done. On the other hand—and I think it’s mostly in response to all the proclamation of “new things” that aren’t godly at all—on the other hand, we can become too fearful, too conservative and we can end up where the Pharisees and Sadducees and the Essenes were: locked down, afraid of the new, and turning away from burning bushes, and unwilling to go where God is actually leading.
This why we need to steep ourselves in the story. This why we need to immerse ourselves in the great symphony and to let the music wash over and through us. Brothers and Sisters, we need to know the themes and the motifs, to learn the key in which God is playing, to be intimately familiar with how they interact, weaving around and through each other, so that as the story continues to unfold, as the symphony bursts into new movements, we can hear God bringing those old familiar themes to new heights, while also being able to recognise when a different story is being told, or a different symphony is being played. I’ve said over and over, Brothers and Sisters: God’s word is life. Know, meditate on it, let it mould you, and then let it pour forth from you to give life to others.
Let’s pray: Lord of all power and might, the author and giver of all good things: Graft in our hearts the love of your Name; increase in us true religion; nourish us with all goodness; and bring forth in us the fruit of good works; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
