7:1-50 - If you ever wanna take somebody through a summarized history of God and the Israelite people...there you go.
7:49-50 - Isaiah puts it beautifully (66:1-2), "What kind of house could you build for me?" Is that not so simple and so true at the same time? Nothing a human being could ever make or devise could house God. What kind of arrogance does it take for us to think that we could build something big enough or beautiful enough to contain our own creator? He is the creator of our intellect, how could we ever reason or explain God? We can't, and I like that I can't house him physically or spiritually or intellectually, because then He wouldn't be God...he would be a god that could be constrained within the understanding or abilities of a flawed man...not all that impressive.
7:51ff - Stephen has the guts to do something with his captors that few of us have the guts to do with ourselves; he looks back at what God has done for them and how they consistently turned their backs on Him even in the midst of His faithfulness and he calls them on it. I hope that when I get caught up in doubt and confusion and worry and complaining about the way things are going in my life, that I will look introspectively back at my history with God, see his faithfulness and turn from my stiff-necked obsession with immediately questioning Him. I want to be a man like Stephen, who in the face of lies and violence is completely at peace (See 6:15). He understands that God is in control and even when they are stoning him to death he is following in the footsteps of Jesus and crying out for the forgiveness of his murderers. I want to live in the knowledge of the faithfulness of God and let that dictate my reactions to the circumstances of the world around me.
2 comments:
Something I found interesting was how Stephen included himself as one of them in his Jewishness and their common ground in history by using words like us and our, but after he quoted Isaiah he drew a line in the sand and separated himself from them and started using words like you and yours.
I bet if we really pay attention there are times when we will have to draw a line in the sand and seperate ourselves from others who bear the name christian. I think particularly in our culture today there are many who consider themselves Americans first and Christians second. I can envision that same discussion Stephen had taking place today between a modern day Stephen and "Stiff Necked Americans". The only difference is they would only kill Stephen with words and not with stones.
I hope that I would have the same courage and faith as Stephen if placed in a similar situation.
What drives me crazy about this passage is Stephen's desire to be like Christ till death. Even in the midst of his execution, Stephen desired to be like Christ by quoting what Jesus himself said on his death. I wonder, he probably thought about doing this before or had dreamed of this opportunity. It is difficult for me to imagine that he instantaniously came up with that idea, but the Spirit is known to work that way...
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