Stephen
was charged with speaking against the Temple and against the law of Moses and of
saying that Jesus of Nazareth will
destroy the Temple and change the customs Moses handed down
(See Acts 6:11-14). Because of this he was arrested and brought before the
high council. There Stephen made his final appeal to the elders of his people to
come out, to exit the traditions that
they so zealously defended, and embrace the Christ they had crucified. In a certain sense, Stephen's accusers
were right, for Christ had come to do away with the old temple order, and yes,
even make obsolete the customs and laws that Moses handed down.
Stephen's
response to their accusations is a brief but thorough history of the pilgrimage
of Israel and how God kept calling them out of the tribes of fallen man unto
Himself. To view Stephen's discourse as a mere synopsis of their history is to
miss the point altogether. Did Stephen pretend to teach the elders of Israel
something that they knew quite well already? We can almost hear the ho
hums rising from the yawning mouths, as this elite cast of scholars and
elders sat half-listening to this nobody who dared to instruct them. Stephen's
final words concealed the mystery of the church, not as an institution but as a
sojourning assembly of called-out pilgrims, a people progressing toward a
predetermined destination, having no continuing city. Stephen rebuked the high
council for their failure to assume this nomadic posture and follow their
Messiah, Jesus Christ, in the new exodus. Stephen's final words give us fresh
insight into what Jesus meant when He said, "I will build My Church."
We would
encourage you to read Stephen's appeal (Acts 7:2-52) in its entirety, paying
close attention to words like go out, came
out, sent out, brought them out, come into, and so forth. God is always
calling His people out and on toward
the full restoration of all things. (Acts 3:21)
Stephen
starts his exhortation as follows:
Brothers
and fathers, listen. The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham, when he
was in Mesopotamia, before he lived in Haran, and said to him, "Get
out of your land, and from your relatives, and come
into a land which I will show you." Then he came
out of the land of the Chaldaeans, (Babylon) and lived in Haran. From there,
when his father was dead, God moved him
into this land, where you are now living. (Acts 7:2-4 WEB)
This is the
first time God called a people out instead of scattering them.
God called a man named Abraham out
of his idolatrous homeland to sojourn with Him in a strange land. God intended
to make a covenant with Abraham that would bless the world, something He could
not do while Abraham lived in the land of the Chaldaeans. The
purposes of God could never be realized in Babylon. The song of the Lord cannot
be sung in a strange land. (Psalms 137:4)
He
gave him no inheritance in it, (the land)
no, not so much as to set his foot on. He promised that he would give it to him
for a possession, and to his seed after him, when he still had no child.
God spoke in this way: that his seed would live as aliens in a strange land, and that they
would be enslaved and mistreated for four hundred years.
"I will judge the nation to which they will be in bondage," said God,
"and after that will they come out, and serve me in this place." (Acts 7:5-7 WEB)
Here is
another exodus. God revealed to Abraham that his seed would also be sojourners
in a strange land, kept in slavery for 400 years. In the crucible of Egypt
Abraham's seed became a nation.
In the fullness of time they heard another call to come out! By the mighty hand
of God, the promised seed returned to serve God in the Promised Land.
Toward the
close of that 400 years, a deliverer was born among them. His name was Moses.
After being retrieved from the river Nile as an infant, Moses was raised by
Pharaoh's daughter and educated in all the wisdom of the Egyptians. As a man,
he found himself in an exodus of his own. Like his forefather Abraham, he
sojourned in a strange land. Moses saw the abuses of the Egyptian taskmasters
and tried to deliver his people form the lash of oppression, but his deliverance
ministry went wide of the mark. Beating taskmasters to death one at a time to
set the people free was both tiring and ineffective. Fearing the consequences of
his actions, Moses fled Egypt and became a stranger in the land of Midian.
After forty
years of tending sheep for his father-in-law, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and
Jacob appeared to Moses in the form of a burning bush saying, "I have seen the
affliction of My people in Egypt, and I have heard their groan; and I came down
to pluck them out. And now come, I will send you into Egypt."
(Act 7:34 MKJV)
Through
Moses, God did mighty miracles, defeating all the magicians and gods of Egypt,
climaxing with that great event just preceding Israel's full deliverance,
known to the generations that followed as the Passover.
In
Exodus 12: 1-51 we find the record of Israel's last night in bondage. Each
house chose a lamb without blemish. As instructed by Yahweh, they killed the
lamb and applied its blood to the lintels and doorposts of their individual
dwellings. Then when the death angel came that night, only those houses that had
the lamb's blood applied were passed over. Everyone else suffered the loss of
the firstborn. After cooking their lamb, each family was instructed to eat it,
leaving nothing over. They were also instructed to eat in haste, fully dressed,
with their staves in hand and shoes on their feet.
This
is how you shall eat it: with your loins girded, your shoes on your feet, and
your staff in your hand; and you shall eat it in haste: it is Yahweh's
Passover. (Exodus 12:11 WEB)
The
Passover meal itself is a call to exodus--a call to go out and worship. When
a person is born again and becomes a partaker of the Lamb of God, he must be
ready to travel (John 3:8). We must eat with our loins girded, with our shoes on
our feet and our staff in hand, mobile and ready to follow that holy Wind
wherever and whenever He leads.
As
unthinkable as it may seem, people find security in bondage. They find the whole
concept of exodus frightening. For hundreds of years, Israel lived in bondage
being beaten by the task masters of Egypt. They lived as slaves and had their
children killed by their oppressors, but there is no record that any of them
tried to escape until Moses. It requires faith like Abraham's to leave the
tyranny of the familiar, however oppressing it may be, and journey into the
unknown.
The sound of
great mourning was heard in Egypt that night as the death angel passed over, but
in those dwellings with blood stained door frames there was peace. God called a
remnant out of all the people on the earth and now they would come forth as
distinctively His--a royal priesthood, a
holy nation.
He brought them out after he had worked wonders and miracles in the
land of Egypt and in the Red Sea and
in the wilderness forty years. (Acts
7:36 MKJV)
At this
point Stephen began to reveal the motive behind his history lesson. He now made
an amazing comparison that not only revealed the scope of Christ's ministry
but also defined the nature of the church.
This is that Moses who said to the sons of Israel, "The Lord your God shall raise up a Prophet to you from your
brothers, One like me; you shall hear Him."
(Acts 7:37 MKJV)
This
is He, that was in the church (ekklesia)
in the wilderness. (Acts 7:38 KJV)
"I will build my church" (A
community in exodus)
Here
Stephen described the pilgrim nation of Israel, sojourning in the wilderness, as
the ekklesia in the wilderness. Ekklesia
is a compound Greek word, consisting of, ek,
"out of," and klesis, "a
calling," a called out assembly. Moses
said, "The Lord your God shall
raise up a Prophet. . .like me," referring to Jesus. Was Christ like Moses
in appearance or in function? Christ was like
Moses in that He also led an exodus.
Christ led a people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, out of the bondage of
the world and religion. If Christ is like Moses, leading a great exodus, then
the church is like Israel, traveling to a promised country--seeking a city
whose builder and Maker is God. In that sense the true Church is still the ekklesia
in the wilderness.
Jesus
led the great exodus out of religion (the
old wineskin). He said to Peter, "I will build My church (ekklesia), and the gates of
hell shall not prevail against it." These words were carefully chosen to
communicate this very thought of exodus--"I will build my
called out ones." Ekklesia does imply a gathering together--a congregation--but in
its classical usage it had no religious overtones (See Matthew 16:18). Once
again God realized His greater purposes by calling a people out for His name's
sake. He birthed a chosen generation, a
royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people to show forth the
praises of Him who called them out of darkness into His marvelous light. (See1
Peter 2:9)
The
Synagogues of Men
In the
time of the early church, the synagogue (Greek Sunagoge)
was the closest representation of what is called the church.
However, it is used in scripture only once of the ekklesia.
This one use was by James, who wrote to Jewish believers, who were still gathering in synagogues or in synagogue-like meetings. (See
James 2:2) Either way, they had not yet come out of the old order. The intended
readers of this epistle were apparently exclusively Jewish, since it is
addressed "to the twelve tribes which are
scattered abroad" (James 1:1). James broached the subject of swearing
oaths (James: 5:12), which was part of the Jewish rabbinical tradition,
indicating that these congregations were still attempting to keep the traditions
of their fathers. The tradition of the synagogue came out of the Babylonian
captivity, and when Jesus spoke to the Jews about these gathering places, He
called them "your synagogues," implying that they were not of His Father. In
fact, Jesus warned His disciples that they would be tried and beaten in these
buildings. (See Matthew 23:34). As we can see from the history of the Jewish
exodus, it was one thing to extract the people out of Egypt, but a whole other
thing to get Egypt out of the people of God. Traditions die hard.
Jesus had no
intention of incorporating the old order into this new calling forth. He had not
come to put His new wine in an old wineskin, nor did He come saying the old wine
is better (Luke 5:39). The ekklesia
that Christ builds can never be contained in the old wineskin of Judaism.
Paul further
defined the ekklesia as "the Church which is His Body"(Eph. 1:22). The living, vibrant
Body of Christ stands in stark antithesis to the sociopolitical synagogue-like
institution called the church. The church today represents a radical departure
from the quintessential makeup of the Body, the ekklesia of Christ.
Jacques
Ellul wrote,
There
is in the church no association, according to the usual formula, whereby a
sociological institution may also be the body of Christ, or the body of Christ
may be forcibly put in sociological forms. Once the church organizes and clericalizes
itself, it is intrinsically a transgression of God's order.5
The
translators of the Septuagint, the Greek Old Testament, used the word ekklesia as the equivalent of the Hebrew qahal. Qahal was used in
the Old Testament to refer to the congregation or community of Israel. Ekklesia
or church should not be viewed as a static institutional entity, but as a
growing, sojourning, community of pilgrims.
The
Greek word Sunogoge denotes a bringing together, and in its first century
context would have been perceived as a calling into a consecrated building.
Nowhere in scripture can we find any evidence of God establishing the synagogue
as such. Synagogues were first founded in Babylon during the exile. They were
the creation of religious men, and synagogue leaders lorded over the people who
met there. It is not surprising that the dominant characteristic of the
synagogue is the very thing which Jesus forbids in the ekklesia, oppressive top-down hierarchy. (Matthew 20:25-28, Luke
22:25-26, Matthew 23:10-12)
Two times in
the book of Revelations the Greek word for synagogue
is used in connection with Satan, "the synagogue of Satan" (See Revelation 2:9, 3:9. Christ had not come to build
a synagogue-like institution, with consecrated buildings, chief seats and Chief
Rulers, but to lead a people out of that old religious mentality into a living,
relational body with Himself as the only Head.
Just as Moses was anointed to lead a people out of bondage, so the Spirit
of the Lord was upon Jesus without measure. For God had anointed Him to
"preach the gospel to the poor, heal the brokenhearted, preach deliverance to the captives, recovering of sight to the blind
and to set at liberty them that are
bruised" (see Luke 4:18).
Did Jesus
come to liberate Israel from the Roman occupation? He had many opportunities to
confront them as He spoke to Roman centurions and figureheads. We cannot find
one instance where Christ criticized the Roman Empire. Who were the captors of
the people Jesus came to deliver? The only human agents who fit that description were the religious rulers of that
time.
Jesus did
criticize the religious rulers at every turn, calling them such names as snakes,
brood of vipers, whited sepulchres, etc. The religious rulers were the true
captors of the people of God. They were the taskmasters of their day, not Rome.
They were the ones who bound "heavy
burdens and grievous to be borne. . .on men’s shoulders; but they themselves
will not move them with one of their fingers" (Matthew 23:4). They had
enslaved the people by their traditions and shut up the kingdom of heaven
against men. (Matthew 23:13). Jesus was anointed to deliver Israel from the
tyranny of its religious leaders and He is still doing the same today.
Stephen
continues,
. . .to
whom (Moses) our fathers wouldn't be
obedient, but rejected him, and turned back in their hearts to Egypt,
saying to Aaron, "Make us gods that will go before us, for as for this
Moses, who led us out of the land of Egypt, we don't know what has become of
him." (Acts 7:39-40 WEB)
Without
doubt, religion is the subtlest form of idolatry. Its temples and sanctuaries,
rites and rituals, decorations and priestly robes--which are said to exist for
God's glory alone--become the venerated objects that take His place in the
hearts of men. These are today's idols, the works of man's own hands, which
entice the sojourner to compromise the journey and look
back. This should give you a better understanding of Jesus' warning,"Remember Lot's wife."
Stephen
continues,
They
made a calf in those days, and brought a sacrifice to the idol, and
rejoiced in the works of their hands. But God turned, and gave them up to
serve the host of the sky, as it is written in the book of the prophets, "Did
you offer to me slain animals and sacrifices Forty years in the wilderness, O
house of Israel? You took up the tent of Moloch,
The star of your god Rephan, The
figures which you made to worship. I will carry you away beyond Babylon."
(Acts 7: 41-43 WEB)
The worship
of Moloch was the worship of the sun. In the ancient world the objects of
worship were chosen by one simple criterion. They worshipped what they saw as
the source of life and the sun was their chief object of worship.
For 430
years Israel lived in the midst of an idolatrous nation. They had never seen
anything else. Now in a time of testing, they reverted back to the ways of
Egypt. Nothing except their location had really changed. Up until that time
Israel knew only the works of God. They saw His mighty deeds in Egypt, but knew
little of His nature and purposes. Another Witness was needed to show them the
difference between the profane and the holy and to teach them fidelity to the
ONE true God.
The light
they needed was on the other side of the thick
cloud of darkness, where He declared His name to Moses. However veiled it
may have been, the Tabernacle of Witness provided a place for God to dwell among
His people, for He had originally called them ALL to be His priests.
You
have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles'
wings and brought you to Myself.
Because of
the rebellion of the people, the ark of His presence was veiled inside the
tabernacle or tent of meeting from the people. The pattern of that tent spoke of a
day when, with unveiled faces, we would behold His glory--a day when God would
dwell openly among His people as was always His desire. Every detail of the
tabernacle spoke of Christ, who later came as Immanuel, God with us. His body was referred to as the temple of his
body (John 2:21), and His flesh as the veil. "By a new and living way, which he hath consecrated for
us, through the veil, that is to say, his
flesh" (Hebrews 10:20).
Stephen
continues,
The
tabernacle of witness was among our fathers in the wilderness, as commanded by
God, speaking to Moses to make it according to the pattern that he had seen.
Which also having received it by inheritance with Joshua, our fathers, with
Joshua, in taking possession of the nations whom God drove out before the face
of our fathers until the days of David, who found favor with God and desired to
find a tabernacle for the God of Jacob; but Solomon built Him a house.
But, the Most High does not dwell
in temples made with hands, as
the prophet says, "Heaven is My
throne and earth is My footstool. What
house will you build Me, says the
Lord, or what is the place of My rest?
Has not My hand made all these things?" (Acts 7: 44-50 MKJV)
At this
point you can almost see the hackles rising on the necks of the Jewish high
council. God had abandoned what He once sanctified by His presence. His presence
is no longer found among rebellious men in temples made with hands, but He is
found in the living stones of a new and lasting tabernacle, the body of Christ.
Although He once dwelt in an earthly tent and then in the temple, He no longer
does so. The finished work of Christ changed everything. The perfect displaced
the imperfect, as expressed in 1 Corinthians 13:10, "But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part
shall be done away."
Even Solomon
himself knew that man could not build God a house when he said, "But will God
indeed dwell on the earth? Behold, heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot
contain You. How much less this temple which I have built!" (1 Kings 8:27, NKJV). He knew his best attempts were imperfect.
The author
of Hebrews wrote of the New Covenant,
In
that he says, "A new covenant," he
has made the first obsolete. Now what is becoming obsolete and growing old is
ready to vanish away. (Hebrews 8:13 NKJV).
We see a
common thread of exodus in these scriptures--a call to leave the old and
imperfect that is vanishing away, and embrace the new.
George
Fox explains the transforming effect this revelation had upon him.
At another time it was opened in me that God, who made the
world, did not dwell in temples made with hands. This, at first, seemed a
strange word because both priests and people used to call their temples or
churches, dreadful places, and holy ground, and the temples of God. But the Lord
showed me, so that I did see clearly, that He did not dwell in these temples
which men had commanded and set up, but in people's hearts; for both Stephen and
the Apostle Paul bore testimony that he did not dwell in temples made with
hands, not even in that which He once commanded to be built, since He had put an
end to it; but that His people were His temple, and He dwelt in them.
If
Christ's once for all sacrifice made the Old Testament system with its temple,
priesthood, altars, furnishings, vestments and sacrifices obsolete, why is the
residue of it still evident in Christendom today? Man has done all he can to
preserve this bit of classical antiquity, guarding it as if it were a priceless
heirloom. Some people are even ready to kill to preserve it.
Like Peter
on the Mount of transfiguration, they want to enshrine the moment by starting a
building program. "Master, it is good for us to be here; and let us make three
tabernacles: one for You, one for
Moses, and one for Elijah." Peter's words were mindless. He did not know
what he was saying. The Father was not impressed with enshrining the moment. He
has always had one desire and model for us, "This is My beloved Son. Hear
Him!" (See Luke 9:32-36)
Structures
built to house the works of God are built on a foundation other than Jesus
Christ (1 Corinthians 3:11). Building is the opposite of following God in
obedience. Jesus tried to get Nicodemus to see this when He said, "The wind
blows where it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but cannot tell where it
comes from and where it goes. So is
everyone who is born of the Spirit." (John 3:8, NKJV).
It was this
antithesis or antichrist (instead of Christ) spirit which Stephen was now going
to address:
O
stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears! You always resist the Holy
Spirit. As your fathers did, so you
do.
Which
of the prophets did your fathers not persecute? And they killed those who
foretold the coming of the Just One, of whom you have now been the betrayers and
murderers; (Act 7:51-52 MKJV)
Here Stephen
confronts the root cause behind religious man's refusal to move on with God.
In Christ there was an exodus from the entire temple, sanctuary building, and
hierarchy mentality. Those who truly follow the Lord should not concern
themselves with these things. Like Abraham, they are sojourners, not kingdom
builders or raisers of religious towers. The rending of the veil from top to
bottom as Jesus hung on the cross marked the end of such holy places. It was the
beginning of a new age where the believers themselves are the place of God's
dwelling, the temple of the Holy Spirit. Consequently He no longer dwells in,
nor is He worshipped in temples made with hands, nor has He been for the last
2000 years.
Isaiah
prophesied of a time when God would not be confined to Jerusalem or Mount
Gerizim, but a time in which His glorious presence would make all places sacred.
A time when the earth "shall be full of the knowledge of Yahweh, as the
waters cover the sea" (Isaiah 11:9).
Wherever
Jesus reigns in the hearts of true believers, the kingdom of God exists, but we
still look forward to the day of full restoration of all things.
Then
the seventh angel sounded: And there were loud voices in heaven, saying, "The
kingdoms of this world have become the
kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ, and He shall reign forever and
ever!" (Revelation 11:15, NKJV).
Coming to
the city of Samaria, the site of Jacob's well, Jesus sat down on the well to
rest. A woman of Samaria came to draw water. During their conversation the woman
perceived that Jesus was a prophet. This seemed an ideal time to settle an issue
that had long been on her heart.
Our fathers worshiped in this mountain, and you Jews say that in Jerusalem is
the place where people ought to worship. (John 4:20 WEB)
Jesus
replied,
Woman, believe me, the hour comes, when neither in this mountain, nor in
Jerusalem, will you worship the Father. You worship that which you don't know.
We worship that which we know; for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour
comes, and now is, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit
and truth, for the Father seeks such to be his worshippers. God is spirit, and
those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.
(John 4: 21-24 WEB)
God's plan
from the beginning was for His knowledge and glory to fill the whole earth, NOT
some sanctum sanctorum atop a mountain
or in some holy city. His knowledge and glory are no longer confined to specific
holy sites. Salvation came through the Jews and
Jerusalem was the place of God's glory for a season, but Jesus saw a
time when all that would change. He saw that God was leaving the Holy of Holies
in the earthly sanctuary and He invited man to come into His presence in the
heavenly sanctuary in spirit and in truth.
The temple that had previously contained the glory of God was obsolete.
The ark of His presence had never seen the inside of Herod's temple; it had
been lost for hundreds of years. The Holy of Holies was empty. Jesus knew the
Father would no longer be worshipped in man-made shrines, but would be
worshipped in a manner consistent with His being. His temple is made of living
stones by His Spirit.
Temple
worship has been discarded by God. We must not be like the elders of Israel, who
found their livelihood in the system that God had forsaken. Are we passionate
for His glory or ambitious for our own--promoting my ministry, my gifting, my
church? It is really a matter of the heart. Just as the people of ancient Babel
tried to make a name for themselves in their ambitious building program, so men
today name their ministries after themselves.
Where are
our treasures stored? If we seek to
maintain our vested interests when the Spirit beckons, we will stiffen our necks
and resist Him just as the Scribes and Pharisees did. They were not about to let
Jesus, Stephen, Paul or even an angel cut into their control. They had too much
invested in the temple. It was their power base. If God's glory motivates us,
when He says come out, we will follow on.
Stephen's
objective was to reveal an ancestral failing. Israel resisted the Holy Spirit at
every stage of their journey. The new idol they worshiped was not Moloch or a
golden calf, but a temple constructed by a traitorous king. It was a proud
family tradition; their fathers in the wilderness had also gloried in the works
of their hands. Stephen placed the High Council's devotion to the temple on
the same level as the worship of Moloch. They missed the day of their
visitation. They stopped following the cloud. They were to live just as their
forefathers had, as sojourners--looking for that perfect city whose Builder and
Maker is God. Many believers today also fail to see that the ekklesia of Christ, just like the ekklesia in the wilderness, is always in exodus--always moving on
toward full restoration.
Today the
church is pilgrim in name only. I (George) ran across an article on the Internet
entitled, "Pilgrim Church Gets Ready to Move Again." Out of curiosity I read
further, only to discover that the move consisted of selling one building and
moving to another 18 miles to the east. This is the extent of the pilgrimage of
the average Christian today. Having never abandoned the old order, they simply
move it around from one mountain to another. Where are the sojourners?
Let us now turn to the Epistle to the Hebrews and observe the example of the great cloud of witnesses. Along with Abel, these witnesses walked by faith as pilgrims and sojourners. Their example is used to define faith itself.