We had an October birthday to celebrate.

In the trilogy of films ‘Back To The Future’, time travel enables a character to obtain a sports almanac from the future and make bets with certainty on the results of matches. This demonstrates a very human tendency to want to make plans for the future and be in control of what happens in the future, even though this is actually not possible!

From a young age when we’re urged to study hard to look after and plan for our futures, we tend to enjoy planning ahead and so when we read in the Bible that God has good plans for us (Jer 29:11), our tendency is to want God to reveal those plans to us instantaneously. We can be so concerned about the future plans God has for us that we fail to live in the now or understand that His plans also encompass the now. We can become impatient and not understand that God has times and seasons for us all and waiting for Him to reveal His plans is part of the journey of faith.

Jesus reminded us that the birds of the air do not sow or reap or store away in barns; they make no plans for tomorrow and yet are provided for by the Lord. (Matt 6:25-27) In the same way, we need to understand that God looks after us on an everyday basis and is wanting to work out His purposes in the now. Don’t be so concerned about future plans that you fail to appreciate God’s love, care, provision and guidance in the now.

God is often doing new things, as Isaiah reminds us (Is 42:9, Is 43:19), something which we generally find rather frightening. Many of us are creatures of habit and we like the familiarity and comfort of routines. It’s this tendency to find change uncomfortable and threatening which explains much of the opposition to the gospel we find in the Bible and in our society today.

Stephen faced opposition because he was accused of speaking blasphemous words against Moses (revered by Jews as the law-giver) and God (Acts 6:11), of speaking against the holy place (the temple) and the law (Acts 6:13). The charges brought against him were false, but it is clear that, through his preaching, he was forcing people to re-think their traditional views on these subjects, something they found infuriating and were unwilling to heed. Jesus Himself had been arrested and tried for these same things (see Mark 14:57-59, Matt 26:60-61) and He had certainly talked in radical terms about the temple (John 2:19-22) and about the law (Matt 5:17-48). Religious leaders had failed to understand what He meant by these things, and this same lack of understanding was present with Stephen.

Jesus taught that the temple and the law would be superseded, meaning not that they had never been divine gifts in the first place, but that they would find their God-intended fulfilment in him, the Messiah. Jesus was and is himself the replacement of the temple and the fulfilment of the law. Both the temple and the law pointed forward to Jesus and are now fulfilled in him, as the book of Hebrews make explicit. (Heb 10:1) It was this resistance to the ‘new thing’ God was doing in Jesus which led to both Jesus’s crucifixion and Stephen’s death by stoning.

We need to be careful not to be just as stiff-necked and resistant to the changes God’s Holy Spirit wants to bring into our lives and into our churches. God’s ‘new thing’ will always stretch our faith, our understanding and our willingness to change, but we must be open to what He is saying and willing to bend with the wind of the Spirit. As Garry’s children’s song puts it, ‘are you a wall or a windmill?’ We need to allow the Holy Spirit to work in us and through us and not be like those who opposed Stephen’s challenging ministry.

Opposition has become a familiar theme in our Bible studies in Acts; this was something the early church had to contend with from the outset, and this is not surprising, given the opposition that Jesus Himself had to face. Jesus warned His disciples frequently about this (e.g. Matt 10:16-20, Matt 24:9-14, Luke 21:12-19) and gave strategies for dealing with opposition which, as Garry recently reminded us, can only be fulfilled as we live in the Spirit (Matt 5:11-12, Matt 5:38-48, Rom 12:17-21), so revolutionary are they!

Stephen faced opposition to his preaching. Initially, his opponents tried to debate with him (as they had with Jesus – see Matt 21:23ff), but when they failed, they resorted to false charges (Acts 6:11, 13; see also Matt 26:59) and personal slander. This is often the way the enemy works; as Tom Wright wryly comments, “People today often find real debate about actual topics difficult, and much prefer the parody of debate which consists of giving a dog a bad name and then beating him for it, and lashing out too at anyone who happens to associates with the dog you happen to be beating at the time.” (Tom Wright, ‘Acts For Everyone Pt 1’, P 103)

Paul tells us that ‘everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted’ (2 Tim 3:12), a verse we would prefer to ignore. Stephen was the first Christian martyr, but he shows us how to bear opposition with grace and poise. We are told ‘they could not stand up against the wisdom the Spirit gave him as he spoke’ (Acts 6:10), and all through this account, we see the grace of Christ shining through him: his face like an angel (Acts 6:15), his courage when being stoned (Acts 7:55-56) and his ability to forgive others even as they were killing him. (Acts 7:59-60) Stephen, this man of the Spirit, full of faith, wisdom and grace, gives us a living example of how to deal with opposition. We may wonder why God allowed this man to die, why his ministry was cut short, why suffering has to be such an integral part of life, but in living out his faith to the end, Stephen fills us with hope and shows us that God’s plans cannot be thwarted, even by death.

God wants us to be zealous for Him; Paul urges us never to be lacking in zeal, but always to keep our spiritual fervour, serving the Lord (Rom 12:11). Zeal is that fire and passion which keeps us serving, keeps us persevering and refuses to let us give up, however discouraged we may be at times. Nonetheless, it is a stark, sobering fact of life that zeal can be misguided. Paul himself knew that, for there was none more zealous than he as a Pharisee in persecuting the church: ‘If someone else thinks they have reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; in regard to the law, a Pharisee; ⁶ as for zeal, persecuting the church; as for righteousness based on the law, faultless.’ (Phil 3:4-6)

Much of the opposition faced by the apostles and early Christians could be said to come from misguided zeal, from religious tranches in Judaism who cared passionately about the law and the temple. Stephen aroused such condemnation because he was said to ‘speak blasphemous words against Moses and against God’ (Acts 6:11); ‘This fellow never stops speaking against this holy place and against the law.’(Acts 6:13) It is a frightening fact that the religious leaders could not cope with the radical teaching of Jesus and His followers and genuinely believed they were doing God’s will in opposing them.

Jesus had been arrested and tried on much the same grounds as those now being used to question Stephen; He had challenged traditional scribal interpretations of the Law, saying that He had come not to abolish the law but to fulfil it (Matt 5:17), and had prophesied not only the destruction of the temple but that He would raise it again in three days. (John 2:19-22; see also Mark 14:57-59.) John makes it clear that the temple Jesus was talking about was the temple of His body; Paul would later go on to remind believers that our bodies are now the temple of the Holy Spirit. (1 Cor 6:19) The law and the Temple all pointed ahead to the radical work Jesus would complete on our behalf; the book of Hebrews makes it very plain that Jesus is the fulfilment of all the sacrificial system that preceded Him and that ‘the law is only a shadow of the good things that are coming—not the realities themselves.’ (Heb 10:1)

Stephen was the victim of misguided zeal, stoned to death as the first Christian martyr because of his bold proclamation of Christ’s teaching about both the law and the Temple. It’s ironic that those sitting in the Sanhedrin looked intently at him and saw his face shining like an angel (Acts 6:15), just as Moses’s face shone after his encounter with God when he was given the law (Ex 34:29-35). They did not heed the Light which had come into the world and they did not heed the light shining from one of His followers. Misguided zeal is a dangerous thing indeed.