The Beginning of the End

Welcome to Verse by Verse. Thank you so much for joining us as we take a look at the book of Acts. We take things nice and slowly as we look and see what God is doing in the big picture of expanding the gospel from Jerusalem to Judea and to Samaria and to the ends of the earth. My name is David Humphrey and I'm the pastoral care and missions pastor here at United City Church in Humboldt, Texas. We're excited to be your church family while you're incarcerated, but we're going to be even more excited when you get out and you can come and be a part of our church in person. We love you very much. Please grab your Bible and a journal, perhaps a pen, and be ready to take some notes and let's learn together through the book of Acts. All right, well glad that all of you are here with us tonight. We have been looking at the life of Stephen and we're going to be looking at him for several weeks now I'm sure because this is quite a lengthy sermon that he's got. One thing that I want you to understand just to kind of get caught up in case you weren't here last week and maybe you weren't reading along, last week Stephen was on trial, okay? It was a short trial as far as the things that they accused him of. Basically he was doing signs and wonders in Jesus' name and they didn't like it because they didn't like it when Jesus did signs and wonders and they don't like it when Stephen can do them and so he was facing some false accusations and when we left him last time, he was sitting there quietly as they accused him and what did they say? He looked like an angel. So he was just quietly taking it in. Well tonight he's gonna open up his mouth. Yes, Greg? You mentioned false witness. That's a violation of Ten Commandments. You shall not bear false witness. Well thank you, these guys are just just missing it. Exactly, Greg. Yeah, violating the Ten Commandments, right? They're just from the from the get-go. So tonight we're actually gonna start by reading chapter 7 in its entirety, which as you can see is I think 60 verses and here's the reason why we have to do that, okay? We're going to take this verse by verse eventually. It's gonna take us a while to even get to the verse by verse of it because we've just got to understand the context and guys, when you are studying

the Bible, let me just say this, I love the Bible app and I use the Bible app regularly, okay? And I know a lot of people who use the Bible app verse of the day as their devotional and I'm just gonna say one verse a day is great. One crumb of food a day is better than no crumb of food per day. But we need more than one verse of Scripture because that one verse of Scripture can easily be misunderstood because it sits by itself. Right, it's out of context and context is always key, so you can't understand the speech that Stephen is gonna pour out if you don't understand the context in which it's poured out. That's why Pastor Chris, if he's going to go to one passage, he tries to give you the broad picture of kind of where we are, you know, where's this in the biblical narrative and all this thing. So tonight we're gonna look at the whole speech, we're gonna take that in, but we're also gonna pick apart some of it and we'll see how far we can go. That's a tip that one of my favorite Bible teachers is a guy that not a lot of people know, but his name is Keith Farrin and I met him at a conference in Southern California a few years ago and he actually spoke at our church briefly maybe, oh gosh, it was under when Pastor Berry was here, so it was a good long time ago. Keith Farrin like memorizes books of the Bible, like he'll just stand up and quote the book of Romans, like this guy is a Bible man, he is so saturated with the Word and he wrote a book that I love, I've given it to many people and I taught it here once, that's called How to Enjoy Reading Your Bible, and one of the chapters of one of his book chapters is that you have to watch the whole movie, and what he's trying to say is none of us go and watch a scene of a movie and think that we've really understood, that doesn't make any sense, okay, that's why it's good to get down deep and go kind of verse by verse and little, little, little, but you've got to start with big, big, big, because you can't understand Stephen's speech unless you've actually read the first six chapters of the book of Acts, and you can't understand the book of Acts unless you've read the Gospels, right, you understand, that's why it's good to have a practice of pulling back into the big picture, now that doesn't mean every single time you read the Bible you pick

it apart verse by verse, sometimes you just need to read it kind of like you read a novel, does anybody like to read novels? I like to read novels, those are stories, guess what, this is a story, right, I don't pick apart the novel that I read and go one line at a time. time to figure out what it meant. That novel is also not the Word of God where we can dig in in that way, but sometimes it's just a really good practice to read a big chunk of Scripture at a time, okay, and not even slow down with it. So I'm just, I'm one of my goals in this time that we have on Wednesdays is for you to learn how to digest the Bible for yourself. I want you to become a self-feeder because I'm growing in my learning to that. So I encourage you to watch the entire movie and always remember that context is key. So before we read Acts 7, one more little moment of the setup. Here's the thing. Stephen's charges were the following, and you can find it right there in chapter 6 where we read. Chapter 6 is also, as you notice, very very short, but the thing is that he was charged with speaking blasphemous words against Moses and God. Okay, you remember that charge? They were like, this is what he's doing and we don't like it. And that doesn't sound like a very good thing to do. I don't think you should speak blasphemous words against Moses and God. He also was charged, says that this man never ceases to speak words against this holy place in the law. And what was the holy place that they spoke of? The temple. The temple. They're like, he is speaking things against the law and against this holy place. That's what they said. And then we have heard him say that Jesus of Nazareth will destroy this place and change the customs that Moses delivered to us. Now these are false charges, and we know that, because we know Stephen was not saying those things. Stephen was saying some things that were related to this, just like Jesus said some things related to this, and they were misunderstood. So that's what made the charges false. It's not that they were just literally putting words into his mouth. They were not understanding because they couldn't see it through spiritual eyes or hear it through spiritual ears. Okay, so now what I want us to do, those are the charges, is I just want us to just take in the

story. So I encourage you to follow along in your Bible, but I'm just gonna read Acts chapter 7 verses 1 through 60. So the high priest said, Are these things so? And Stephen said, Brothers and fathers, hear me. The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia, before he lived in Haran, and said to him, Go out from your land and from your kindred and go into the land that I will show you. Then he went out from the land of the Chaldeans and lived in Haran, and after his father died, God removed him from there into this land in which you were now living. Yet he gave him no inheritance in it, not even a foot's length, but promised to give it to him as a possession and to his offspring after him, though he had no child. And God spoke to this effect, that his offspring would be soldiers in a land belonging to others who would enslave them and afflict them four hundred years. But I will judge the nation that they serve, said God, and after that they shall come out and worship me in this place. And he gave him the covenant of circumcision, and so Abraham became the father of Isaac, and circumcised him on the eighth day, and Isaac became the father of Jacob, and Jacob of the twelve patriarchs. And the patriarchs, jealous of Joseph, sold him into Egypt, but God was with him, and rescued him out of all his afflictions, and gave him favor and wisdom before Pharaoh, king of Egypt, who made him ruler over Egypt and over all his household. Now there came a famine throughout all Egypt and Canaan, and great affliction, and our fathers could find no food. But when Jacob heard that there was grain in Egypt, he sent out our fathers on their first visit, and on the second visit Joseph made himself known to his brothers, and Joseph's family became known to Pharaoh. Joseph sent and summoned Jacob his father, and all his kindred, seventy-five persons in all. And Jacob went down into Egypt, and he died, he and our fathers, and they were carried back to Shechem, and laid in the tomb that Abraham had bought, a fresh sum of silver from the sons of Hamor in Shechem. But as the time of the promise drew near, which God granted to Abraham, the people increased and multiplied in Egypt, until there arose over Egypt another king who did not know Joseph. He dealt shrewdly with our race, and forced our fathers to expose their infants so that they would

not be kept alive, and at this time Moses was born. He was beautiful in God's sight, and he was brought up for three months in his father's house, and when he was exposed, Pharaoh's daughter adopted him and brought him up as her own son. Moses was instructed in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and he was mighty in words and deeds. And when he was forty years old, he came into his heart to visit his brothers, the children of Israel. Seeing one of them being wronged, he defended the oppressed man, and avenged him by striking down the Egyptian. He supposed that his brothers would understand that God was giving them salvation by his hand, but they did not understand. And on the following day he appeared to them as they were quarreling, and tried to reconcile them, saying, Men, you are brothers, why do you wrong each other? But the man who was wronging his neighbor thrust him aside, saying, Who made you wrong? you a ruler and a judge over us. Do you want to kill me as you killed the Egyptian yesterday?" And at this retort, Moses fled and became an exile in the land of Midian, where he became the father of two sons. Now, when forty years had passed, an angel appeared to him in the wilderness of Mount Sinai in a flame of fire in a butch. When Moses saw it, he was amazed at the sight, and as he drew near to look, there came the voice of the Lord. I am the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, and of Isaac, and of Jacob. And Moses trembled and did not dare to look. Then the Lord said to him, Take off the stables from your feet, for the place where you are standing is holy ground. I have surely seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt, and have heard their groaning, and I have come down to deliver them. And now come, I will send you to Egypt. This Moses, whom they rejected, saying, Who made you a ruler and a judge? This man, God said, as both ruler and redeemer by the hand of the angel who appeared to him in the bush. This man led them out, performing wonders and signs in Egypt and at the Red Sea and in the wilderness for forty years. This is the Moses who said to the Israelites, God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your brothers. This is the one who was in the congregation in the wilderness, with the angel who spoke to him at Mount Sinai, and with our fathers. He received living oracles to give to us. Our fathers refused to obey him, but they thrust him aside, and in their hearts they turned to Egypt, saying to Aaron, Make for us gods who will go before us. As for this Moses who led us out from the land of Egypt, we do not

know what has come of you. They made a calf in those days, and offered a sacrifice to the idol, and were rejoicing in the works of their hands. But God turned away and gave them over to worship the host of heaven, as it is written in the book of the prophets. Did you bring to me slain beasts and sacrifices during the forty years in the wilderness of the house of Israel? You took up the tent of Moloch and the star of your god, Rephan, the images that you made to worship, and I will send you into exile beyond Babylon. Our fathers had the tent of witness in the wilderness, just as he who spoke to Moses directed him to make it, according to the pattern that he had seen. Our fathers in turn brought it in with Joshua when they dispossessed the nations that God drove out before our fathers. So it was until the days of David, who found favor in the sight of God, and asked to find a dwelling place for the god of Jacob. But it was Solomon who built a house for him. Yet the Most High does not dwell in houses made by hand, as the prophet says. Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool. What kind of house will you build for me, says the Lord, or what is the place of my rest? Did not my hand make all these things? You stiff-necked people, 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 announced beforehand the coming of the Righteous One, whom you have now betrayed and murdered. You who received the law, as delivered by angels, and did not keep it. Now when they heard these things, they were enraged, and they crowned their teeth at him. But he, full of the Holy Spirit, gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. And he said, Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God. But they cried out with a loud voice, and stopped their ears, and rushed together at him. And they cast him out of the city, and stoned him. And the witnesses laid down their garments at the feet of a young man named Saul. And as they were stoning Stephen, he called out, Lord, Jesus, receive my spirit. And falling to his knees, he cried out with a loud voice, Lord, do not hold this sin against them. And when he had said this, he fell asleep. Thanks be to God for his powerful, powerful word. I think it is important with a speech like that to just hear it. Because he didn't share it one verse at a time. He shared this as a body of information. He shared this in such a way that these people can take this in. And this is powerful, powerful truth. Now I want to start quickly at the very end, just because I think you probably realize,

when the scripture says he fell asleep, what does that mean? It means he died. Okay, so I just want there to be no lack of clarity that he died. And the fact that he died, and the reason he died, makes him the first Christian martyr. Okay, so a martyr is one who is killed for his religious beliefs. Now I think this is an interesting question. Was Jesus a martyr? He was our Savior. Right, he was our Savior. I've already kind of answered it, because I said Stephen was the first Christian martyr. Well, the question is did Jesus die for his beliefs? No, he died for us. Okay, well let's look at a couple of scriptures, because I want to clear this up before we kind of dig in here. Isaiah 53-6 is an important scripture related to that question, and the other is John 10-17. There are others, but we're just going to hit these two. Would someone read Isaiah 53-6 when you get there? Okay, it says, That is speaking of whom? That's speaking of us, right? We are the sheep who have gone astray. And when it says the Lord laid on him, the Lord there is speaking of whom? It is God the Father, and the him is speaking of whom? Jesus. So this is a prophecy hundreds of years before the crucifixion. That is, we all know, we can read it through the right lens, we understand, even though they may not have understood in the beginning when it first came out. It is saying that the Father laid on the Son the iniquity of us all. So, the question then remains, the people, I'll kind of make a statement and then a question, the people certainly were the instruments through which Jesus was killed. However, it was the Father who chose for the Son to bear the sin of us all. So Jesus' death is certainly different than Stephen's death in a variety of ways. The Father determined to put his Son to death to pay for the sins of all of us, to pay for the sins of the world. Okay? So that's what that Isaiah 53, 6 is saying. The Lord laid on him the iniquity of us all.

He certainly could have stopped it, we all know that. Jesus could have stopped the whole project, but the Lord allowed that. Now look at John 10, 17, which gives us a New Testament perspective on the crucifixion of Jesus. For this reason the Father loves me, because I shirked down my lives that I may take it up again. So, there are other places in the New Testament where I could see this spoken, but I think that's as clear as anything. Jesus' life was not taken from him. Jesus laid down his life. That's different. Okay? He laid himself down like a lamb before its shearers, it's silent. He opened not his mouth. And so, those two verses are helpful in understanding that Jesus wasn't a martyr. It's totally different. Jesus was a Savior. Stephen was a martyr. And I want you to understand that, in fact, he was the first martyr, but he is the first in a long line of martyrs that continues to 2026. There are plenty of martyrs dying for their faith right now. So, I want you to understand that's a line that Stephen is at the front of the line, but that line is still going. We live in a nation where we don't, I don't know if any of us are feeling threatened that we're going to be dying for our faith anytime soon at this moment in history. But guys, there is no guarantee that we might not ever reach a point in our nation. Okay? So, I'm not trying to be gloom and doom or scary or anything like that. I'm not trying to say anything like that. What I want us to realize is be thankful for the freedom that we have. But know that we've got brothers and sisters around the world who are dying because they own one of these. And they are quiet as mice hiding underground. You know what's happening right now in Iran? We could talk about the bombs and all that sort of stuff. But the Church of Jesus Christ that's been growing stronger and stronger and stronger for decades underground, is now coming out from underground because they have a freedom to express their faith.

And they're not excited about killing or death or all the sad things that are happening, but they're excited that they are not under the oppression of the government that was persecuting them for their faith. So, persecution is real. And if we're going to look at Stephen, we need to understand that this is not just old antique things that happened a long time ago. This is current events on the planet Earth in 2026. So let's look at the big picture of the speech a little bit before we take it more of a verse by verse approach. I think it's interesting to contrast Stephen's speech with Peter's because they actually are, they take totally different approaches, okay? They both were on trial. They're both speaking and making some sort of a defense, but the way it works is Stephen's speech isn't a defense at all like Peter's. Peter was asked, by what power or what name did you heal the man? And then Peter goes very direct. And what did he say? In what power did he do it? Yeah, it's in the name of Jesus Christ. That's how I did it. Stephen, I don't know if you noticed, did you notice the name of Jesus in Stephen's speech? Not one time did he say the name Jesus. He calls Jesus by a name at the end of the speech. What was it? Toward the very end, he finally mentions Jesus. You see it? The Righteous One. The Righteous One.

That's what he's talking about. It's Jesus. But Stephen takes a very different approach. Now, a couple of things that I found interesting in some of the literature that I was reading and preparing for this. Stephen actually answers the accusations just like Peter does. But Stephen answers them indirectly, whereas Peter was very direct in his defense of himself. So this is also interesting to me. Stephen was a Greek-speaking believer. His more indirect approach was much more aligned with those that would have understand kind of his way of thinking. Peter was a Jew and took a very Jesus-centric approach. Stephen still pointed to Jesus, there's no doubt about it, but he just kind of went around the block to get there in the way that he did it. Now, I like the different approach, and we're gonna see a little bit more with that. But one thing that's interesting about it right here is because the book is actually, the entire book of Acts is actually about to turn a big page. Do you remember we said the outline of the book is which verse? The outline of the book of Acts is in one verse at the beginning. Acts 1.8, okay? You'll receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you,

and you'll be my witnesses in where? Jerusalem, and Judea, and in Samaria, and to the ends of the earth, okay? So remember, it's like, I like to, as the missions pastor, I like to say our Jerusalem is like the stuff that we do like right here. If we're not faithful right here, then we're not faithful to the mission. And our Judea is a little bit further out, like Texas. It's not an exact representation, but I like our Judea and Samaria, I kind of think about the United States and the work that our church is doing in Colorado and in all the places in the United States where we work, and then to the ends of the earth are the places like Egypt and South Asia and other places where we serve around the planet. We're responsible for getting the gospel to places all around the world. So what's gonna happen in the book of Acts when we move over to chapter eight, which who knows what we're gonna get there, but that's not the point. When we get there, we're actually turning a page in the story and the focus is gonna move towards reaching the Gentiles. Whereas the first seven chapters are much more about, I would actually say the first six chapters are much more about reaching the Jews. Chapter seven is a transitional chapter.

And so what Stephen is doing with his Greek speaking believer background, Stephen is actually helping us turn the page and he's going to handle this in such a way that helps them see. Now it's gonna make more sense as we go along, but it's a really, really interesting approach. So the book of Acts is gonna shift in chapter eight and we'll get there eventually if Jesus doesn't return. But let me say this before we do. This is my favorite time of year. It's a little more forward. This is all gonna come together in a second. I love the springtime. I love it because it's new life everywhere. It's the greenest green of the whole year, isn't it? Oh, I just love it. And the flowers everywhere. Don't you just love the little flowers are just popping up everywhere. And I don't know if you've ever stopped to gaze at a specific flower. I mean, it's one thing to look at, you know, like there's some flowers out there and it's like, oh, those are pretty. And that's nice. That's a beautiful thing to do. We praise the Lord for it. But have you ever stopped and just like, I mean, you pick up a flower

and I mean, you just look at it and you're like, look how intricately woven together this thing is. This is amazing. Like this is a little work of art that God chose to do. Well, I think when you. Stop and take a close look, even at a blade of grass. Hasn't looked at a blade of grass. I mean, well, just grass, just green. It's actually, you're gonna think I'm crazy. Pick a blade of grass and just look at it really close. And you're gonna see that God is in the tiniest details. He is a detail oriented God. He could have just made plain grass. But no, no, no, right? It's just all the nuances. Well, I think that's how scripture is. It's laid out with unbelievable order and beauty, but sometimes we just look at it kind of like we look at a flower, you know, and that's pretty, I like it, it's very nice. But sometimes I'm trying to teach us an approach of stopping and pondering and looking at it and looking at the entire Bible in that. I'll tell you guys a lot, the Bible project has helped me probably more than any other group of people to understand a beautiful flower of God's word, especially as one story. So did you notice that Stephen took an approach

of telling the Bible as one story? Now, when I first moved to Houston, we trained Southern Sudanese guys to go back to South Sudan as missionaries. And we did that using a story approach because most of the people in South Sudan couldn't read if you had a little Bible in the Dinka language or the New Era language, they couldn't even read the words. So you had to tell it to them in stories. And so we would sometimes learn the story of the Bible in the big picture, like how can I tell the story of the Bible in five minutes as one story? You ever tried to do that? No. Well, Stephen came fairly close to doing that. I timed myself when I read it and I was about six or seven minutes. And I know that he left some things out. That's what you do when you tell the Bible as one story. It doesn't mean you tell every story. You get the highlights of big stories and you weave things together. So I would just say an interesting thing for you to try sometime is grab a friend and try to tell the story of the Bible. You can do it. It can be told at a high level because it's helpful to see this is not a book of stories.

This is a book of, the book of a story. Well, I've said a few things. Oh, you want me to take that in seven minutes? Leave it to Mildred. She's real good at calling people out. I like that. I like that. Yeah, guys, that is, I want you to see. That's what Stephen did. You understand Stephen did not roll out a scroll and start reading off his speech. He was full of the Holy Spirit. So certainly he was inspired by the Holy Spirit. But guys, how do you think he learned all of that? Holy Spirit. He studied it. I have a feeling he probably sat under teachers in a different way, you know, kind of like how you sit under a teacher and other teachers, so he learned. I have a feeling he probably did sit down with scrolls. He probably sat down and was learning it, but then God was helping him to see it as a unified story that points to Jesus. And so I think one of the treasures of this speech that we're gonna look at over the next several weeks is how unified it is and how we can see, oh, yeah, that's how it strings together. Oh, that's how I get from Abraham to Joseph. Oh, Abraham had Isaac, and Isaac had Jacob,

and Jacob had 12, and we get to Joseph. Did you notice also, and this is what we're gonna do in the coming weeks, you're gonna see, there's some stories that he gives a lot of attention to, and others, like he just glances over 40 years, just like he said, and then 40 years happened, and then we're like, wait, a lot of stuff happened in there. But he chose very specifically which things needed the most attention. And some of that, what we're gonna see in the next few weeks is he was choosing it as his answer to their accusations. He indirectly chose stories that illustrated why what he was doing, he was doing, that he was doing nothing wrong. So we're gonna see that in the coming weeks. But I want us to sort of look at it this way, and Amildur, I won't take you up on your challenge one of these days, okay, but not tonight. Tonight, I just did it by reading Stephen's speech. That's all right. But I love that, but I challenge you to do it. But let's look at it this way. If you take notes, this might be awful, but you can see it in your own Bibles. Basically, if you look at verses two through eight, that's the story of Abraham. He hits a few stories, but obviously we know Genesis chapter 11 is where the story of Abraham starts, and it just takes a large portion of the book of Genesis. It's the stories of Abraham, right, and his offspring,

all the things that happened. We got a lot of information about Abraham in the book of Genesis. But he tells a few stories, and he gives it about seven verses, two through eight. The next big character, starting in verse nine. and you go into verse 16, who was it? Joseph. So now he hits another, one of my favorite characters of the Old Testament, which is the story of Joseph. Remember, this is not Joseph the father of Jesus, Joseph, this is Joseph the son of Jacob. Okay, so we know that in the code and all the whole stuff. So he hits some highlights from him, verse 9 through 16. Now, the person who gets the most, verses 17 through 43, it's Moses. I mean, Moses is really gonna kind of share a lot of stuff about Moses. I think I kind of heard something in the accusations, you know, that were related to something about Moses. But anyway, we'll get there, just so happens he's gonna talk a lot about Moses. Then we get to 44 through 50, and it's not about a person, but it's about a place. And he contrasts two places, the tabernacle and the temple. Okay, I seem to also remember that there was something that they were telling him that he was, they were criticizing him about some things that he was saying about the temple, but anyway, there's a reason why he chooses that. And then verses 51 through 53, it's when he really starts kind of getting hot. Y'all remember this? This is when he starts criticizing the uncircumcised of heart and ears, and man, he's really getting with it. They shut him down pretty fast at that point. It's only three little verses that he, where he starts criticizing them specifically. So that's sort of the outline of the speech that we're gonna be working with over the next several weeks, and so I wanted you to just see the big picture before we dive in for a few minutes into probably a verse or two here, because there's a lot to see. Does anyone have a question? I don't want to stop for just a second, because I really have had a lot to say, and I've had less input tonight, because I hadn't even stopped to talk and ask. Does anybody have a question or a

comment regarding what we've said so far, kind of the larger structure of the speech? They find it sort of that way, but if you're a student who's following this, with the praise and all, and going, we know all this stuff. Yeah, I know it was weird. Yeah, yes. Well, let's just review that. We know all this stuff. Yeah, it was all to get to that person's 51 minutes. It was. You're right. He's setting the table, and I like it how that it leads into verse two, where, well, let's just let's just look at how he addressed them. Stephen said, brothers and fathers, hear me. I hear, I don't know what his tone of voice was, but when I see the way the story is beginning to unfold, I think he was taking a gentle approach in the beginning, and by the end, it's just kind of ramping up. That's what I perceive. I can't say it with certainty, but to me, when someone says brothers and fathers, those are terms of endearment. Those are also terms of respect, right? He's trying to get on common ground with them. He's trying to help you see, no, like, we're all part of the same family here. Won't you just hear me? Brothers and fathers, hear me. Look, we all have Yahweh as our father. Can't you just hear me out as I try to help you understand? I think that's what he's trying to get at, and then he says something, which at first glance, when I read it, I just kind of glanced over it. The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia, before he lived in Haran. Well, that's one of those things that, just like so much in the Bible, it's easy to just slip right over that. Let's just get past that detail and get to the good, good, good interesting stuff, but there's actually a lot there. First of all, I think it's important that he calls Abraham our father. Why do you think it would be important for Stephen, who just called them brothers and fathers, to call Abraham our father? Yeah, okay, that's right, like a spiritual father, like a father's figure. And why is it important that he says our? He's being inclusive. He's being inclusive, like we have the same father. Like, I'm just trying to say, I have tremendous respect for Abraham, right? I believe in Abraham, the father of our faith, and just like the greatest hero to them, Stephen is

trying to get to common ground in the beginning, before he launches into some sub pieces where we disagree. So he says, again, the God of glory appeared to our father Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia, before he lived in Haran. So again, I said it, but somebody remind us, where do we find Abram's story? Genesis starts about chapter 11, okay, toward the end of chapter 11, and we all know that kind of the first few chapters in Genesis are the creation, and fall, and the kind of the subsequent things that were happening with the sons of Adam and Eve, and all that was happening there, but I don't know if you noticed this, because I didn't, it took somebody else to point this out to me. Stephen, when he said, as our father Abraham, had an appearance of God when he was in Mesopotamia, before he lived in Haran, what God is actually doing, the Holy Spirit of God, is actually filling in a detail that the Old Testament doesn't tell us. You can dig down into the details of the Old Testament, and what we think, what we see in the Old Testament, is that God spoke to Abram. It does not say in Genesis chapter 11 or 12, whichever one it is, that God appeared. So we get a little detail there. Remember the details of where the fun stuff gets for me. Oh, not only did God speak to Abram back then, he actually appeared to him, but the first account in Genesis of God speaking to Abram was in Haran, and Stephen just said God appeared to Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia. Well, I'm not going to get out the maps, you could do that, you probably got one in the back of your Bible, because those two places obviously are different places, different regions, different portions of the area. So that doesn't mean that Stephen is refuting Genesis. What it means here is that God is actually not just the God of speaking in Haran, God is speaking to Abraham perhaps before it's even recorded in the book of Genesis. You see, what's happening, as I've already said in this speech in chapter 7, is we're trying to make a transition to God's love not just for the people of Jerusalem, right, not just the people who live in the Promised Land, God's love for all. So I think that God is making a point here through Stephen that Yahweh isn't just the God of this particular geographical area, he's the God of the entire world,

and he loves all people, and that's consistent with everything that we see. He calls him our father Abraham. He says, fathers, brothers, hear me, God was speaking to Abraham before we even had it recorded in the Old Testament scriptures. So God's revealing something here that we did not see before it, and then what he says in verse 3 of chapter 7, that what God said to him when he spoke to him was, go out from your land and from your kindred and go into the land that I will show you. So God gave Abraham, because I know we keep saying Abraham and Abram, I hope you guys know that the clarity is, if you look at it in Genesis, he's actually Abram in the beginning, and later God renames him, he calls him Abraham, because he adds that H in there, like from the name Yahweh. So that's another story for another day. However, God gave Abram a mission that required him to leave everything that he needed to follow God, walking completely with faith. God did not say, hey Abraham, here's the map, here's where you're going, just follow this map, and if you follow the treasure map, you're gonna get to the treasured land, the amazing land. No, God says, just start going and I'm gonna show you where you're going, but I'm gonna redirect a moving target. So I've heard Pastor Chris and others say, sometimes we need to stop just sitting around asking God to tell us what to do. We need to get to doing the last thing told us to do, and that's when we'll get the next direction. Not just sitting and soaking and just wondering and hoping. No, no, God directs a moving vehicle, and so Abram had to be a moving vehicle in order for God to direct him to the next thing, and he eventually got there. We know the story, okay? And so what we're gonna do, and next week when we sit down with this, is we're gonna look, we're gonna dive down deep into the story of Abram, and look at what happens here. But that verse 3 is key to the whole thing. God gave Abram a mission that meant he had to leave everything that he knew to follow God and to walk completely by faith. And God spoke to Abram even before the Genesis account tells us the first story of God calling to him. So that's a lot. We've covered a lot of ground, and there's a lot of ground, a lot more ground to cover, but I want to give you two questions to talk about at your table, and if you are

watching us online, I encourage you to talk about these. If somebody else that you know that may be watching these, or maybe somebody else, you've got another inmate that's near you that watches, sit down and talk with these about this, but here's the two questions. Number one, this is quite simple, we'll probably use this one most every week, what did God say to you tonight through his word? Because probably the thing that stood out to Nels might be different than the thing that stood out to Michael. And so what is the thing that God spoke to you tonight through his word? And my next question is, how does Abram inspire you to walk by faith? So two questions. What did God say to you tonight through his word, and how does Abram inspire you to walk by faith? Here's what I'm gonna do, I'm gonna say a brief prayer, and then I'm gonna come sit at a table too, and I want to encourage you that please don't pack up your stuff and leave. Take about five or six minutes and talk with the people at your table. If you don't know them yet, introduce yourself. If you're at a table by yourself, get at the table with somebody else, and let's have a good conversation, okay? Father, we just thank you so much for your word that is powerful, it is effective, it is sharper than any two-edged sword. God, it is piercing our very hearts tonight. I pray you would just reveal yourself to us through your word, and help us to listen and obey. In Jesus' name, amen. Thanks for joining us. Thanks again for joining us verse by verse through the book of Acts. I hope that you have learned a lot. More importantly, I hope that you'll apply these things to your life this week. Share it with a friend. Great thing for you to just have some discussion with the other people around you, share the things that God is doing in your life. Again, remember the Bible is a book about God, far more than it is a book about us. So let's learn about him, let's grow to love him more and more. Here at United City, this is not the only thing that we have on the Pando app. We would love for you to follow some of our other content, watch some of our worship services, along with music and the messages, as well as podcasts. We've got a lot of great content we would love for you to follow

that. Also, if you would like to be in touch with us here at United City, the best way to do that is by writing us a letter. You can address that to We'll read that, we'll pray for you, and somebody will write you back. God bless you, and we'll see you in the Word.