Day 162

2 Samuel 16:15-18:18, Acts 7:20-43, Psalm 72:1-20

I think that Stephen’s speech is one of the most powerful sermons that I have heard. It comes straight from the heart and it speaks to the heart. For the Sanhedrin, the people that he was pulled in front of, this would cut straight to the core of everything that they believed. We already know how much emphasis the Jews put on Abraham, Moses and the others and so here Stephen cuts right to the chase and speaks about the things that are important in the faith of these people.

We need to wait until tomorrow for the culmination of it, but Stephen knows how to speak. It goes back to what we were saying recently though, about the inheritance that we have from our forefathers (and mothers) in the faith, the things that we should never forget. Stephen though goes on to challenge the Sanhedrin, that they hold these people in such high regard and yet they ignore the teaching of the past so disastrously. The Sanhedrin were probably guilty of what people today often do, we live in an enlightened time, with our iPhones and iPads, and we forget of the passage of faith that has spanned all time.

A couple of hundred years ago a bloke said that there is “no holiness but social holiness”. There are two ways of seeing this, some believe that it was about the fact we are called to social action, although what he was actually on about was more the fact that we are called to be social beings in community. Either way, the early church, that Stephen is part of, felt the call to both of these things and it was evident in the way they lived their lives, just look at what we have read so far in Acts.

In the Psalm, David has one final prayer, that his son will lead such a nation of people. David prays that the people will be one behind Solomon and that he will lead with justice a nation that lives by justice.

What about us today, do we learn from the past, looking to the Kingdom of God in the future. It may have been a couple of hundred years ago that the quote above was said, but it is something that has marked a certain part of the church for a long time. What is God saying to you today and who is he saying it through?