On trial for his life and surrounded by false witnesses, Stephen gazed toward heaven and saw Jesus. In this sermon, R.C. Sproul discusses the courageous faith and bold message of the first martyr of the ancient church.

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 Cilicia 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 him speak blasphemous words against Moses and God.” And they stirred up 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 said, “Are these things so?” . . .

“You stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears! You always resist the Holy Spirit; as your fathers did, so do you. 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, who have received the law by the direction of angels and have not kept it.”

When they heard these things they were cut to the heart, and they gnashed at him with their teeth. But he, being full of the Holy Spirit, gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God, and said, “Look! I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God!”

Then they cried out with a loud voice, stopped their ears, and ran at him with one accord; and they cast him out of the city and stoned him. And the witnesses laid down their clothes at the feet of a young man named Saul. And they stoned Stephen as he was calling on God and saying, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.” Then he knelt down and cried out with a loud voice, “Lord, do not charge them with this sin.” And when he had said this, he fell asleep. (Acts 6:8–7:1, 51–60)

Stephen’s False Accusers

Last Sunday, we looked at the portion of the book of Acts having to do with the Apostles’ decision to set apart and consecrate seven men for ministries of mercy and service. These seven, who were called to diakonia, service, were chosen so the Apostles could be freed up to fulfill their vocation to labor in the preaching and teaching of the Word. Luke tells us the names of those seven who were chosen, and included in that list was Stephen. As Luke continues his narrative of the early church, he focuses on Stephen. Luke says, “And Stephen, full of faith and power, did great wonders and signs among the people.”

As Stephen was doing these marvelous things among the people, there was a group from the Greek speaking community among them who rose up in opposition to the teaching and preaching of Stephen. They entered into a dispute with him. But Luke tells us they could not resist his wisdom or the spirit by which he spoke.

The group started by engaging Stephen in honest debate, but their honesty was short-lived. When they were unable to stop his arguments, they turned to corrupt manners to silence him by beginning a program of suborning witnesses against Stephen. One by one, the suborned witnesses came and bore false witness against Stephen, saying, “We have heard him speak blasphemous words against Moses and God.”

Luke continues, “And they stirred up the people, the elders, and the scribes; and they came upon him, seized him, and brought him to the council.” Once again, they set up false witnesses, who said, “This man does not cease to speak blasphemous words against this holy place”—referring to the temple—“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.”

Before we go on, let me just remind you that not a single word of what these witnesses said was true, except that Jesus did indeed say He would destroy the temple. But the way Jesus’ words were twisted in the mouths of the false witnesses was all part of their grand conspiracy against the eloquent spokesman for Christ in their midst.

God’s Radiance Reflected

Luke gives us an almost parenthetical statement: “And all who sat in the council, looking steadfastly at him, saw his face as the face of an angel.”

The French existential philosopher John-Paul Sartre talks about the destructive human situation we experience when we become the object of people’s stares. We know that in polite society there is only so long we can maintain eye contact with a person before we make them very uncomfortable. If you see somebody walking down the street, your eyes meet briefly, you say, “Hello,” and then you look away. Where do we find people staring? When we go to a museum of art, we find people standing and staring at paintings. Or we go to the zoo and stand outside the bars and stare at the monkeys or elephants. But if you stare too long at a person, you will get a hostile reaction because, as Sartre said, you are reducing that person to an object rather than a living subject.

At this point in his life, Stephen was the object of the hostile stare as his accusers and the court watched him while he was accused. We are told they looked at him steadfastly. What they saw was not a monkey in a cage or a picture on the wall, but suddenly they began to see a certain radiance emanating from the face of Stephen. He looked as if he had the face of an angel.

I want to make a brief comment on that image in the text because we see something like that elsewhere in Scripture. We see it in the Old Testament, in Exodus 33 and 34, when Moses went up to the mountain and asked God if he could see His glory. God said: “No, Moses, you know no one can see My face and live. But I’ll carve out a niche in the rock, hide you in the rock, and let My glory pass you by. I’ll let you get a quick glimpse of My backward parts”—the text literally mentions the hindquarters of Yahweh—“but My face shall not be seen.” Moses received an instantaneous glance at the back of God, and suddenly Moses’ face began to shine with such intensity that it was blinding to those around him. That light on the face of Moses did not come from inside of Moses. It was reflected glory, reflected by having been in the presence of God.

The next time we see something like is at the Mount of Transfiguration, where Christ was transfigured. The light that radiated from His garments and face was not a reflection from outside, but it came from within, as for a moment the divine burst through the veil of the human. Those in His presence fell on their faces at this sight.

The radiance shining from the face of Stephen was more like Moses than Jesus. At that moment, Stephen was not reflecting the ugliness and horror in the faces of his accusers. Rather, the grace, loveliness, and sweetness of God poured forth from his countenance.

Back to the School of Redemptive History

Then the high priest asked: “Are these things so? You’ve heard the charges. Are they correct? Are you speaking blasphemous things about Moses, God, and the law? Are you guilty or innocent? What do you say?” Stephen did not just answer, “I plead innocent, your Honor.” He began to give them a lesson in redemptive history.

I cannot help but think that here in volume two of the history of Saint Luke, he was reminiscing on what happened in chapter 24 of volume one with the so-called Emmaus walkers, those two who fell in with Jesus on the road to Emmaus. They did not recognize Him, and they were involved in an animated conversation about all the events that took place so recently in Jerusalem.

Jesus asked, “What are you talking about?” They said, “Are you the only person in Jerusalem who doesn’t know what’s just happened in the last few days?” Jesus said, “Tell Me about it.” So, they told Him about Jesus, who many thought would be the Messiah, and how He was killed, and how now the rumor was running through the city that He had been raised from the dead.

Then Luke tells us that Jesus took the men through the entire Old Testament beginning with Moses and explained all the Old Testament had taught regarding the Messiah. They were listening to His history lesson until they arrived at dinner, and suddenly Jesus was made manifest to them in His identity, and then He left. They realized that they had just heard a course in Old Testament history from the Messiah Himself. They said, “Didn’t our hearts burn within us when we heard Him open the Scriptures to us?”

How could Luke not be remembering that episode when he set down in these pages a similar kind of overview, a reconnaissance of the entire history of redemption from the lips of Stephen while he was on trial by the leaders of the church? These were men who had the equivalent of PhDs in Old Testament history, and Stephen took them back to Sunday school—or I should say Friday school—for a little training in the synagogue.

Stephen went back to Abraham. He essentially said: “You remember Abraham. You want to know if these charges are true? Think about Abraham. Don’t you remember that God called Abraham out of Ur of the Chaldeans and made a covenant with Abraham? In his old age, he was blessed with a son Isaac, and that covenant promise was passed on to Isaac.”

Stephen spoke about how the promise continued to Jacob, and then from Jacob to his sons. The sons of Jacob rose up against their brother, Joseph, and sold him into slavery, where he would then become imprisoned. Finally, after his release, Joseph was elevated to the position of prime minister in Egypt. Stephen was saying, “Do you remember that?”

Stephen recounted that in those desperate times of famine when Joseph was the prime minister, God told Jacob to go down into Egypt with his family and reside there, where there was plenty of food to eat. They would be under the protection of Joseph. So, they went and settled in the land of Goshen. “Remember that?” Stephen said.

Then he recalled how another Pharaoh came to power who did not know Joseph, and instead of treating the people of Israel graciously, he enslaved them. They groaned under the burden of oppression for many years until God heard their groanings. Stephen reminded the leaders of Moses who, defending his own people, became cast out in exile into the Midianite wilderness. It was there that God came to him in the burning bush and said, “Moses, go to Pharaoh and tell him I said, ‘Let My people go.’”

On Stephen went through the exodus. After the people were liberated by God, they began to murmur and complain and wanted to go back to Egypt. Later, God sent them the prophets, and they killed the prophets. This litany went on, and Stephen’s rehearsal of Jewish history was set before the leaders in Stephen’s defense.

Resistance to the Spirit

You would think that Stephen would conclude his overview by saying: “So you see, your Honor, I’m just trying to follow in the tradition of our Fathers. I’m just trying to be an obedient Jew just like them.” But that is not what he said.

Stephen finally came to the incendiary part of the sermon: “You stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears!” It is as if he said: “I know you’re of the circumcision. You know that you have in your body the sign of the old covenant that I’ve just rehearsed, but your circumcision never went beyond your private parts. It never reached your heart. It never reached your neck. It never reached your ears. You always resist the Holy Spirit.”

We have a teaching in Reformed theology called irresistible grace, which is something of a misnomer. It does not mean that we are incapable of resisting the grace of God; we do that every day. What is meant by irresistible grace is that despite our resistance, the power of the Holy Spirit vanquishes our sinful rejection of Christ and gives us ears to ear and hearts to embrace Him. But that was not the response of those present. Stephen said, “You always resist the Holy Spirit.”

Let me stop for a brief word of application. Any time a group of people as large as a church the size of Saint Andrew’s meets, it is virtually inevitable that there are people among them who are unregenerate, who are not Christians. They may be members of the church, but they still resist the Holy Ghost, and their necks have become stiff. They are set in their ways. Their hearts have been calcified. They have become without hearing in their ears for the things of God. They hear the sermons, but it never gets past the outer canal of their ears. There are people like that encountering this teaching right now. I beg you to consider the message that Stephen was giving on this occasion.

The Murderously Furious Mob

Stephen asked a question: “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.” In other words, he was saying, “Don’t you understand? I’m giving you the history of you. I’m telling you that your fathers killed the ones who predicted the coming of the One you just killed, you who have received the law by the direction of angels and have not kept it.”

In a sense, the leaders were now circumcised, but in a strange and different way. Luke tells us that when they heard Stephen speak these inflammatory words to them, directed at their guilt, they were “cut to the heart.” This was not in the sense that their hearts were opened to the Word of God, but rather the Word of God faithfully proclaimed cut between bone and marrow, flesh and tissue. These were stinging words with barbs on them that so cut through the outward appearance of those gathered that it cut to the very heart of the listeners.

But instead of repenting, the listeners’ response was that they “gnashed at him with their teeth.” What an image. They did not show their teeth by smiling, but they started gritting their teeth, clenching their jaws, gnashing their teeth back and forth. They were so angry and so furious at the one who just accused them of killing Jesus unjustly that they were growling at him like a dog.

While the mob gnashed their teeth at him, Stephen, “being full of the Holy Spirit, gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God.” If you have a mob ready to kill you, furious at you, and advancing on you, gnashing their teeth, how can you take your eyes off them? The only way I would take my eyes off a crowd like that would be to look behind me. I would be looking for a place where I could escape from them.

Instead, Stephen looked up. God, in His grace, gave Stephen a taste of heaven. God peeled back the curtain for just a moment for a man on trial for his life before a hostile kangaroo court. God showed Stephen His glory. The teeth of men being gnashed at him were not worthy to be compared with the blessed vision that Stephen enjoyed as he looked up into heaven. As somebody told me after the first service, he saw his escape route. It was not back. It was up.

At the Right Hand of God

I read rather quickly over something else Luke said, which is astonishing. When Stephen looked up and saw the glory of God, Luke tells us that he also saw Jesus. He had just been witnessing about Jesus. The Greek word for “witness” in the New Testament is the word martyria, from which we get the English word martyr. The first person to be martyred in the name of Jesus, at the very moment he was about to be martyred, looked up and saw Jesus.

What was Jesus doing? Stephen saw Jesus standing at the right hand of God. Stephen was overcome with what he saw. He directed his gaze—I do not know how he could take his gaze off that—back to the group and said: “Look! I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God!”

We often say the Apostles’ Creed. As it goes quickly in summary over the life and ministry of Jesus, it says of Jesus that He

was conceived by the Holy Ghost,
Born of the virgin Mary,
Suffered under Pontius Pilate,
Was crucified, dead, and buried;
He descended into hell.
The third day He rose again from the dead;
He ascended into heaven.

Then comes what is called in theology the sessio, where the creed proclaims that Jesus sits at the right hand of God. The great honor that the Father bestows upon Christ is that He goes to His coronation. He is enthroned and given all authority in heaven and earth. He goes and sits in the position of rule, and the Son of Man is the heavenly judge.

The Judge and Defense

In our prayers prior to the sermon, we heard about going before the judgment seat of Christ. I do not know when, but I know for sure that every person will someday stand before the judgment seat of Christ. It is inescapable. As Paul later in the book of Acts tells the Athenians in Acts 17, God has set a date in which He will judge the world by the One He has ordained—that is, Christ. We are all going to stand there.

Believers say, “We have passed from the judgment.” Yes, you have passed from condemnation, but you are still going to appear before the judgment seat of Christ. Each one of us is going to go there at some point. Jesus will be the judge.

When we have a trial today, who stands in the courtroom? It is not the accused; the accused is in the dock, or he sits at the table next to his lawyer. Two people stand in the courtroom: the prosecuting attorney and the defense attorney. What does the judge do? He sits. The presiding judge sits on the bench, and he remains seated throughout the trial.

Stephen was on trial for his life before the highest earthly court of Israel, and he looked up and saw Jesus not sitting at the right hand of God, His customary place. He saw Jesus standing.

Imagine that you are on trial for your life. You come into the courtroom, you are sitting down, and you have already made your plea, arguing that you are innocent. But now comes the opening statement from the prosecuting attorney. He charges you with everything imaginable for the heinous crime that you have committed. When he is finished with his opening statement, the judge asks for the defense attorney to give his opening statement. He looks around, and there is no attorney, no counsel for the defense. What would you think if that happened to you, if you did not have anybody to defend you?

But then suddenly, the judge gets up off the bench, comes down onto the floor, looks up at the vacant bench and says, “Your Honor, I am counsel for the defense.” It does not get any better in a trial than to have the judge be your defense attorney. That was what Stephen saw: “The heavens are open. Look at that. I see the judge of heaven and earth rising in my defense.”

Jesus had told His disciples before He left that He was going to send them another Paraclete. I asked my seminary students, “Who is the Paraclete?” They answered, “That’s the Holy Spirit; it’s the main title for the Holy Spirit.” I said: “Well, almost. He’s the other Paraclete. Jesus is the primary Paraclete.”

The first One to be given the title of paraklētos in the New Testament is Christ, who is our advocate with the Father, our defense attorney. God has appointed Him both judge and defense attorney. If you are in Christ, you have Christ as your advocate before the Father. If not, you will have Him simply as your judge.

First Martyr, First Seed

After Stephen told them what he had seen, the leaders “cried out with a loud voice” and “stopped their ears.” Have you ever seen a small child do that when he does not want to hear something? “Don’t tell me that. I don’t want to hear it. I’ll stop my ears.” This crowd stopped their ears and rushed at Stephen as one person. They grabbed him and took him outside the city.

Pilate had probably already been deposed and removed from office. We do not know if there was a Roman procurator at this time, but the Jews were still not allowed to execute the death penalty under Roman rule. They were so furious, however, and their kangaroo court so illegal, that it did not matter. They grabbed Stephen and dragged him outside of the city to the place of stoning, the traditional place where people were stoned.

The crowd was so angry that they wanted to do the job right. They took off their coats. They laid their coats at the feet of a young man named Saul, who was complicit in this godless act. I am sure he never got over it, as we will see when we take him up in our next study of Acts. But here was the first introduction of the Apostle Paul in biblical history, as part of this mob taking the life of Stephen.

The mob put down their clothes, grabbed rocks and stones, and with all their might they began to throw these rocks into the face, chest, and head of Stephen. He was being cut, marred, and bruised. What a horrible way to be executed, one stone at a time.

During all this pain, Stephen was praying. He called on God and asked for two things. Just like his Savior before him, he said, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit,” just as Jesus had said to the Father, “Into Your hands I commend My spirit.” The second thing Stephen asked was also just as his Lord had before him: “Lord, do not charge them with this sin.” Having said that, he breathed his last.

It has been said so many times, it is almost trite: the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church. This was the first seed sown in the Apostolic community and was watched over by the Lord Jesus. Let us pray.

Father, how we thank you for the courage, faith, and power displayed by this man, Stephen, who was the first one after Jesus to pay for his faith with his life. Let that same faith be a part of our experience, that we may die with our eyes upon heaven. For we ask it in Jesus’ name. Amen.

This transcript has been lightly edited for readability.