A Young Man Named Saul – Acts 7-8

Joy: You’re listening to Season 2 of the Lifting Her Voice podcast.   This is Episode #319 and today we’ll read Acts chapters 7&8 together.   And the witnesses laid their garments at the feet of a young man named Saul.

Welcome

Welcome to the Lifting Her Voice podcast, Season 2!  I’m your host, Joy Miller, and I invite you to grab your Bible and join me – from the beginning – simply reading God’s word together.  We built some spiritual muscles in 2020 with just the New Testament.  But this year we’re going all out, cover-to-cover, Old Testament and New.  So, whether with your first cup in the morning, your commute to work, or as the last thing on your mind before sleep, God’s Word will equip you for every good work.  I’m really glad you’re here!

Acts Chapter 7

Stephen’s Sermon

“Are these things true?” the high priest asked.

“Brothers and fathers,” he replied, “listen: The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia, before he settled in Haran, and said to him: Leave your country and relatives, and come to the land that I will show you.

“Then he left the land of the Chaldeans and settled in Haran. From there, after his father died, God had him move to this land in which you are now living. He didn’t give him an inheritance in it — not even a foot of ground — but he promised to give it to him as a possession, and to his descendants after him, even though he was childless. God spoke in this way: His descendants would be strangers in a foreign country, and they would enslave and oppress them for four hundred years. I will judge the nation that they will serve as slaves, God said. After this, they will come out and worship me in this place. And so he gave Abraham the covenant of circumcision.

“After this, he fathered Isaac and circumcised him on the eighth day. Isaac became the father of Jacob, and Jacob became the father of the twelve patriarchs.

The Patriarchs in Egypt

“The patriarchs became jealous of Joseph and sold him into Egypt, but God was with him and rescued him out of all his troubles. He gave him favor and wisdom in the sight of Pharaoh, king of Egypt, who appointed him ruler over Egypt and over his whole household.

“Now a famine and great suffering came over all of Egypt and Canaan, and our ancestors could find no food. When Jacob heard there was grain in Egypt, he sent our ancestors there the first time. The second time, Joseph revealed himself to his brothers, and Joseph’s family became known to Pharaoh. Joseph invited his father Jacob and all his relatives, seventy-five people in all, and Jacob went down to Egypt. He and our ancestors died there, were carried back to Shechem, and were placed in the tomb that Abraham had bought for a sum of silver from the sons of Hamor in Shechem.

Moses, a Rejected Savior

“As the time was approaching to fulfill the promise that God had made to Abraham, the people flourished and multiplied in Egypt until a different king who did not know Joseph ruled over Egypt. He dealt deceitfully with our race and oppressed our ancestors by making them abandon their infants outside so that they wouldn’t survive. At this time Moses was born, and he was beautiful in God’s sight. He was cared for in his father’s home for three months. When he was put outside, Pharaoh’s daughter adopted and raised him as her own son. So Moses was educated in all the wisdom of the Egyptians and was powerful in his speech and actions.

“When he was forty years old, he decided to visit his own people, the Israelites. When he saw one of them being mistreated, he came to his rescue and avenged the oppressed man by striking down the Egyptian. He assumed his people would understand that God would give them deliverance through him, but they did not understand. The next day he showed up while they were fighting and tried to reconcile them peacefully, saying, ‘Men, you are brothers. Why are you mistreating each other? ’

“But the one who was mistreating his neighbor pushed Moses aside, saying: Who appointed you a ruler and a judge over us? Do you want to kill me, the same way you killed the Egyptian yesterday?

Moses Led Them

“When he heard this, Moses fled and became an exile in the land of Midian, where he became the father of two sons. After forty years had passed, an angel appeared to him in the wilderness of Mount Sinai, in the flame of a burning bush. When Moses saw it, he was amazed at the sight. As he was approaching to look at it, the voice of the Lord came: I am the God of your ancestors — the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob. Moses began to tremble and did not dare to look.

“The Lord said to him: Take off the sandals from your feet, because the place where you are standing is holy ground. I have certainly seen the oppression of my people in Egypt; I have heard their groaning and have come down to set them free. And now, come, I will send you to Egypt.

“This Moses, whom they rejected when they said, Who appointed you a ruler and a judge? — this one God sent as a ruler and a deliverer through the angel who appeared to him in the bush. This man led them out and performed wonders and signs in the land of Egypt, at the Red Sea, and in the wilderness for forty years.

Israel’s Rebellion against God

“This is the Moses who said to the Israelites: God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your brothers. He is the one who was in the assembly in the wilderness, with the angel who spoke to him on Mount Sinai, and with our ancestors. He received living oracles to give to us. Our ancestors were unwilling to obey him. Instead, they pushed him aside, and in their hearts turned back to Egypt. They told Aaron: Make us gods who will go before us. As for this Moses who brought us out of the land of Egypt, we don’t know what’s happened to him. They even made a calf in those days, offered sacrifice to the idol, and were celebrating what their hands had made.

“God turned away and gave them up to worship the stars of heaven, as it is written in the book of the prophets:

House of Israel, did you bring me offerings and sacrifices

for forty years in the wilderness?

You took up the tent of Moloch

and the star of your god Rephan,

the images that you made to worship.

So I will send you into exile beyond Babylon.

God’s Real Tabernacle

“Our ancestors had the tabernacle of the testimony in the wilderness, just as he who spoke to Moses commanded him to make it according to the pattern he had seen. Our ancestors in turn received it and with Joshua brought it in when they dispossessed the nations that God drove out before them, until the days of David. He found favor in God’s sight and asked that he might provide a dwelling place for the God of Jacob. It was Solomon, rather, who built him a house, but the Most High does not dwell in sanctuaries made with hands, as the prophet says:

Heaven is my throne,

and the earth my footstool.

What sort of house will you build for me?

says the Lord,

or what will be my resting place?

Did not my hand make all these things?

Resisting the Holy Spirit

“You stiff-necked people with uncircumcised hearts and ears! You are always resisting the Holy Spirit. As your ancestors did, you do also. Which of the prophets did your ancestors not persecute? They even killed those who foretold the coming of the Righteous One, whose betrayers and murderers you have now become. You received the law under the direction of angels and yet have not kept it.”

The First Christian Martyr

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

They yelled at the top of their voices, covered their ears, and together rushed against him. They dragged him out of the city and began to stone him. And the witnesses laid their garments at the feet of a young man named Saul. While they were stoning Stephen, he called out, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit!” He knelt down and cried out with a loud voice, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them!” And after saying this, he fell asleep.

Acts Chapter 8

Saul the Persecutor

Saul agreed with putting him to death.

On that day a severe persecution broke out against the church in Jerusalem, and all except the apostles were scattered throughout the land of Judea and Samaria. Devout men buried Stephen and mourned deeply over him. Saul, however, was ravaging the church. He would enter house after house, drag off men and women, and put them in prison.

Philip in Samaria

So those who were scattered went on their way preaching the word. Philip went down to a city in Samaria and proclaimed the Messiah to them. The crowds were all paying attention to what Philip said, as they listened and saw the signs he was performing. For unclean spirits, crying out with a loud voice, came out of many who were possessed, and many who were paralyzed and lame were healed. So there was great joy in that city.

The Response of Simon

A man named Simon had previously practiced sorcery in that city and amazed the Samaritan people, while claiming to be somebody great. They all paid attention to him, from the least of them to the greatest, and they said, “This man is called the Great Power of God.” They were attentive to him because he had amazed them with his sorceries for a long time. But when they believed Philip, as he proclaimed the good news about the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ, both men and women were baptized. Even Simon himself believed. And after he was baptized, he followed Philip everywhere and was amazed as he observed the signs and great miracles that were being performed.

Simon’s Sin

When the apostles who were at Jerusalem heard that Samaria had received the word of God, they sent Peter and John to them. After they went down there, they prayed for them so that the Samaritans might receive the Holy Spirit because he had not yet come down on any of them. (They had only been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus.) Then Peter and John laid their hands on them, and they received the Holy Spirit.

When Simon saw that the Spirit was given through the laying on of the apostles’ hands, he offered them money, saying, “Give me this power also so that anyone I lay hands on may receive the Holy Spirit.”

But Peter told him, “May your silver be destroyed with you, because you thought you could obtain the gift of God with money! You have no part or share in this matter, because your heart is not right before God. Therefore repent of this wickedness of yours, and pray to the Lord that, if possible, your heart’s intent may be forgiven. For I see you are poisoned by bitterness and bound by wickedness.”

“Pray to the Lord for me,” Simon replied, “so that nothing you have said may happen to me.”

So, after they had testified and spoken the word of the Lord, they traveled back to Jerusalem, preaching the gospel in many villages of the Samaritans.

The Conversion of the Ethiopian Official

An angel of the Lord spoke to Philip: “Get up and go south to the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.” (This is the desert road.) So he got up and went. There was an Ethiopian man, a eunuch and high official of Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, who was in charge of her entire treasury. He had come to worship in Jerusalem and was sitting in his chariot on his way home, reading the prophet Isaiah aloud.

The Spirit told Philip, “Go and join that chariot.”

When Philip ran up to it, he heard him reading the prophet Isaiah, and said, “Do you understand what you’re reading?”

“How can I,” he said, “unless someone guides me?”

So he invited Philip to come up and sit with him. Now the Scripture passage he was reading was this:

He was led like a sheep to the slaughter,

and as a lamb is silent before its shearer,

so he does not open his mouth.

In his humiliation justice was denied him.

Who will describe his generation?

For his life is taken from the earth.

The eunuch said to Philip, “I ask you, who is the prophet saying this about — himself or someone else?” Philip proceeded to tell him the good news about Jesus, beginning with that Scripture.

The Lord Carried Philip Away

As they were traveling down the road, they came to some water. The eunuch said, “Look, there’s water. What would keep me from being baptized?” So he ordered the chariot to stop, and both Philip and the eunuch went down into the water, and he baptized him. When they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord carried Philip away, and the eunuch did not see him any longer but went on his way rejoicing. Philip appeared in Azotus, and he was traveling and preaching the gospel in all the towns until he came to Caesarea.

Close

Stephen’s was the first Christian martyrdom. The first, but certainly not the last.  We know from chapter 6 that he was a Hellenist.  A foreign-born Jew who spoke Greek.  He certainly knew his Scripture.  No doubt that is why he was among the seven to be chosen to taken care of the physical needs of the church.  A deacon.  Anyone who could quote Jewish history the way he did, and on top of that, culminate that history to pointing directly toward Jesus, knew his stuff.  However, Jesus made it very clear that the disciples – and we – were not to worry about what they would say; that the Holy Spirit would fill their mouths.  

Either way, the Jews did not like what he was saying, nor that he accused them of not listening to the Holy Spirit.  It seems that pride and arrogance hasn’t changed too much in the last 2000 years.  I loved how Stephen became more and more humble and loving as the name calling and rage grew.  I’m sure that Stephen was present at Jesus’ crucifixion, aren’t you?  He must have been profoundly impacted when Jesus cried out to the Father to forgive his persecutors and that they didn’t know what they were doing.  To look upon Christ changes us.  It obviously changed Stephen.

Prayer

Let’s pray.  Father, to read about Your Power manifested in everyday ordinary humans, is incredible.  Thank You for Stephen’s example; his obedience and devotion to Christ.  We can learn much from this early church, Lord, and I pray we stay alert.  Don’t think that we have missed Saul’s appearance, Lord.  We noticed him making his mark.  A mark that he would be forever ashamed of.  But we’ll pray about Paul tomorrow, won’t we?  Thank You, Jesus.  Amen.

Just one closing point.  It may sound harsh, but think about what the persecution that started the day of Stephen’s martyrdom, initiated.  People were driven from Jerusalem, scattered all over.  What do you think happened to the spread of Christianity when that Ethiopian eunich was saved?  Tell me your conclusions at Lifting Her Voice.com, Facebook, Instagram or Twitter.

Thank you for joining me here today.  I pray that by spending time in His Word every day, you will be changed.  Visit me at Lifting Her Voice.com with your comments and questions.  And don’t forget to visit the Blog page while you’re there.  If you like the podcast, it would be great if you’d give it a five-star review and share it with everyone you know.  Don’t forget to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.  See you tomorrow!

Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture quotations are taken from the Christian Standard Bible(r), Copyright (c) 2017 by Holman Bible Publishers. Used by permission. Christian Standard Bible(r) and CSB(r) are federally registered trademarks of Holman Bible Publishers.