Acts 7 - Part B

Get all of the training physically, but God is calling him to a spiritual work. And if you try to do the work of God, a spiritual work in the energy of your flesh, though that can contribute to your gifting, if you try to do it alone in the energy of the flesh, it will be a failure.

So he was refined, but he was not ready. He had the BA degree and the Bachelor of Science degree and the Master of Arts degree, but God gives him the third degree. Today, on Connect with Skip Heitzig, Pastor Skip continues to look at Stephen's speech to the Sanhedrin. But first, here's a resource all about those like Stephen, who gave it all for the sake of the gospel. We are witnessing an escalation in Christian persecution like we have rarely seen since the first century. Many people don't realize that today thousands of Christians are dying cruel deaths throughout much of the world. The New Book of Christian Martyrs commemorates these modern day heroes, highlighting key martyrs of past centuries and featuring stories of contemporary martyrs around the world. This compendium of heroes from the first century to the 21st century, from Europe to Africa and from Asia to the Americas, is sure to inspire you to courageously stand up for your Christian faith, just as they've done for countless Christians around the globe. The New Book of Christian Martyrs comes as our thanks for your gift of $50 or more to keep messages like this one today on the air for you and others, equipping you to know God's word and follow His will with courage and conviction. So request your copy when you give today.

Call 800-922-1888 or give securely online at connectwithskip.com slash offer. Great, let's turn to Acts 7 as Skip gets started with today's lesson. But God spoke in this way that His descendants would dwell in a foreign land and that they would bring them into bondage and oppress them 400 years and the nation to whom they will be in bondage, now quoting, I will judge, says God, and after that they shall come out and serve me in this place. Now he's quoting Genesis 15, just marching through their history, knows it off the top of his head. Then he gave them the covenant of circumcision, and so Abraham begot Isaac and circumcised him on the eighth day. Isaac begot Jacob. Jacob begot the 12 patriarchs, and the patriarchs, becoming envious, sold Joseph into Egypt, but God was with him and delivered him out of all his troubles and gave him favor and wisdom in the presence of Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, and made him governor over Egypt and all of his house.

I don't know if you've ever caught this or not in reading this chapter, but here's what you need to catch. He's drawing some parallels. He's doing it first with Joseph, then with Moses. He's saying, you know, the very person God selected to deliver His people Israel was the very one the patriarchal leaders rejected. The leaders of the nation of Israel, the 11 brothers, rejected Joseph. Joseph was the one God selected. So the one God selected is the one the nation rejected. He's rejected by his brothers.

Now what he's doing is establishing a pattern. Your fathers did this. The patriarchs did this. They killed the prophets. They were against Moses. They were against Joseph. There's a pattern of the nation rejecting the one God sends to deliver them. Now a famine and great trouble came over the land of Canaan, and our fathers found no sustenance. But when Jacob heard that there was grain in Egypt, he sent out our fathers first.

So again, you're going to follow this. You're going to watch this, and I want you to look for some of this language because as the patriarchal leaders, the 11 brothers, treated Joseph, so the nation of Israel treated Jesus. He came into his own, and his own received him not.

Same pattern of rejection. So Joseph heard that there was grain in Egypt, verse 12. He sent out our fathers first.

Now watch this. And the second time Joseph was made known to his brothers and Joseph's family became known to the Pharaoh, then Joseph sent and called his father Jacob and all his relatives to him, 75 people. So Jacob went down to Egypt, and he died, he and our fathers. And they were carried back to Shechem and laid in the tomb that Abraham bought for a sum of money from the sons of Hamor, the father of Shechem.

You hear the language? They came first, but it was the second time that they understood that's Joseph. They didn't recognize him until his second coming.

They rejected him at the first coming. They received him and understood this is our Deliverer at the second coming. So Stephen obviously knows the prophet Zechariah, that they will weep and mourn for those whom they have rejected, and they'll mourn for him as for an only son. So you see that parallel that he is drawing. So verse 16 I mentioned, but I want to point something out. They were carried back to Shechem and laid in the tomb that Abraham bought for a sum of money from the sons of Hamor, the father of Shechem.

Now here's what's a little confusing here. Abraham isn't buried in Shechem, but Shechem was the place that Jacob bought a piece of land from the sons of Hamor, the father of Shechem, in that place. Joseph, his bones were brought back from Egypt and placed in Shechem. Jacob's bones were also taken back, but he was placed down in the cave of Machpelah. Machpelah, you remember from Genesis, was the cave that Abraham bought to bury his wife Sarah. So if you go to that area today called Hebron, you will see the tombs of the patriarchs.

Abraham, Isaac, Jacob are buried there. So what he's doing is he's telescoping two burial events into one because, you know, he's on trial. He could die. He has a lot of pressure on him and for brevity. Just to shorten up his longest sermon in the book of Acts just a little bit, he telescopes it into one, two burial events into one. But when the time of the promise drew near, verse 17, which God had sworn to Abraham, the people grew and multiplied in Egypt until another king arose who did not know Joseph. This man dealt treacherously with our people and oppressed our forefathers, making them expose their babies so that they may not live. Now he's transitioned from the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, to Moses.

Why? Because they accused him of blaspheming Moses and blaspheming the law of Moses. So he takes a little time in going through this period of the giving of the law with Moses because of the accusation. In effect, what he's saying is not guilty. Not guilty for blaspheming God.

He's the God of glory. Not guilty for blaspheming Moses. Moses received the law from God at Mount Sinai.

Verse 20, though, takes us to the time of his childhood. At that time, Moses was born, and he was well pleasing to God. Now, if you were to read the account in the book of Genesis translated from Hebrew, see, he's quoting the Old Testament, but he's quoting the Septuagint version, the Greek version of the Scriptures, because he's a Greek speaking Jew. But in the Hebrew translated into English text of your Bible, it says that Moses was a beautiful baby, a beautiful baby boy. And I've always liked that text because just like the text in the Gospel of John that John wrote and John calls himself the disciple Jesus loved, the book of Exodus was written by Moses. So Moses wants you to know that when he was a baby, he was a good-looking baby. So here's Moses writing, and yeah, he was a very beautiful boy.

Now, because of that text, there are traditions that have been passed down. One of the Jewish traditions says that Moses as a child was so striking in his physical, in his physique, his physical features, that when people, as a child, when he would walk down the street, people would stop and stare at him because he was just so well-formed in fashion. That's just hearsay. We don't know if that's true. The Bible says he was beautiful as a baby.

I don't know what that means as an adult. He could have looked gnarly as an adult, but he was a beautiful baby boy. But here in the Septuagint, and he's quoting that, he was well-pleasing to God, and he was brought up in his father's house for three months. But when he was sent out, Pharaoh's daughter took him away and brought him up as her own son.

Remember, the mom put the baby in that little ark of bulrushes and put him out on the Nile River. And Pharaoh's daughter took him. Moses was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians. So he was raised in an Egyptian home and was mighty in words and indeed. So here's the thing about Moses and the period of history that Stephen is covering.

There was a Pharaoh who did not know the story of Joseph, did not appreciate the background and the contribution of Joseph to Egyptian culture. And so he had a strategy to deal with the Jewish population of Egypt, much like Hitler's final solution. He thought, let's just kill these babies. When they're born, they're babies.

Let's get rid of these baby boys because they're populating so fast. Eventually they'll become slaves, but his final solution was to kill them at birth or shortly after birth. And that's a horrible period of history, but God was stirring up his people in Egypt and raising up a deliverer to deliver them out of bondage. Again, Stephen is drawing the parallel between Moses and Jesus.

You'll see it unfold. Now when he was 40 years old, it came into his heart to visit his brethren, the children of Israel. Moses didn't hear the call or let me pull that back, didn't feel called until he was 40 years old. So he wasn't 20-something.

He was 40 before he said, I've got to do something about this. Now he won't be used by God. He won't really receive God's calling until he's 80. And you can take Moses' life, we've told you this before and divide it up into sections of 40. For the first 40 years, trained in all the wisdom and schooling of Egypt, for 40 years, he was trying to make himself into something. For the next 40 years, God takes him to the backside of the desert and shows him that he's nothing. The last 40 years, God shows Moses that he can take nothing and do something with it. And he becomes the most powerful in his life when he's just at the end of his rope totally surrendered to God at an older age.

But when he was 40, he was 40, it came into his heart to do something about it. When you think of Moses, you probably think of an old guy in a robe with a kind of a tattered headscarf, an old staff and a gray beard. But you have to picture him in his primary years as an Egyptian, that's what he looked like. He probably went to the famed Temple of the Sun, the finest institution in Egypt. There he would have learned Egyptian hieroglyphics, the art and science of language through pictures, Egyptian hieroglyphics. He would have learned all the various Canaanite dialects and languages as well as Egyptian conversation.

So he was taught in that. Now, being in the royal family adopted by the daughter of Pharaoh, some think that it was this Pharaoh that had no son and so that Moses would have been next in line to become the Pharaoh of Egypt. And so what that means is that Moses was used to dough rolling in, man. He had cash on hand. He had all the wealth of Egypt, the writer of Hebrews talked about the treasures of Egypt at Moses' disposal.

So if you want a more accurate picture of Moses in his younger year, you have to think of a young kind of a playboy type with his own boat, his own chariot with his personalized license plate, Pharaoh number two, maybe. You know, this guy is just like the coolest cat on the block, rolling in cash. And he just has it all.

He has what people could dream of, which makes this choice at age 40 all the more dramatic. All the more dramatic. You don't have to turn there unless you feel called to. I already have it pre-marked.

You can see by these little yellow markers, so I kind of cheat before I get here. But in the book of Hebrews, chapter 11, in the Hall of Fame of faith, it tells us about Moses. It says this, by faith Moses, when he was born, was hidden three months by his parents because they saw he was a beautiful child. And they were not afraid of the king's command.

By faith, Moses, when he became of age, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter. Choosing, okay, stop right there. He gave up all of his education, all of his wealth, all of his status, next in line for the throne of Egypt, perhaps. He gave it all up. So we're dying to know, will you give that much up? What do you choose?

What's better than that? Listen to what he chose. He chose rather to suffer affliction with the people of God than to enjoy the passing pleasures of sin. Yeah, why did he do that?

I'm glad you asked. It says, esteeming, he figured, he esteemed, he figured, he thought about it. He esteemed the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt, for he looked to the reward. By faith, by faith he forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king, for he endured as seeing him who is invisible. From a worldly perspective, he gave up everything, got nothing. From a spiritual perspective, he gave up nothing and got everything.

Because he is now, his values are switched. I'm part of the people of God. I want to be in the will of God.

It doesn't matter if I'm in the Midianite desert. If I'm in the will of God, that's better than being in Hawaii on the beach. Being anywhere beautiful or lovely or enriched outside of the will of God is always a step down. Being in the will of God, if it costs you and you suffer for it, is always a step up.

That's the meaning of it. And that's how profound it is when Stephen says, when he came of age or when he was 40 years old, it came into his heart to visit his brethren, the children of Israel. And seeing one of them, verse 24, suffer wrong, he defended and avenged him who was oppressed and struck down the Egyptians.

Now we're going through all the chapter one, two, and three of Exodus. And seeing one of them suffer wrong, he defended and avenged him who was oppressed and struck down the Egyptians. For he supposed that his brethren would have understood that God would deliver them by his hand.

But they did not understand. And the next day he appeared at two of them as they were fighting and tried to reconcile them, saying, Men, your brothers, why do you wrong one another? But he who did his neighbor wrong pushed him away, saying, Who made you a ruler and a judge, over us? Sounds a lot like what they said to Christ. Who made you a ruler and a judge over us?

Do you want to kill me as you did the Egyptian yesterday? Then at this saying, Moses fled. The next 40 years of his life became a dweller in the land of Midian where he had two sons. So he flees from Egypt to northwestern Saudi Arabia. That's Midian on the western shore of the eastern leg of the Red Sea in that area.

And he was there for 40 years in obscurity. Just want to briefly touch on this. Moses thought he was ready. Man, I feel like I need to do this. Man, I'm the guy to deliver these people.

I'm one of them. And so he set out to do it in the energy of his flesh because he figured, look, I've been to school, man. I've been to the temple of the sun. Hello. Best school in town. Thank you. Graduated with honors. Son of Pharaoh's daughter. Thank you very much. Number one or number two.

Eventually number one. He had all of the training physically, but God is calling him to do a spiritual work. And if you try to do the work of God, a spiritual work in the energy of your flesh, though that can contribute to your gifting, if you try to do it alone in the energy of the flesh, you'll be a failure. So he was refined, but he was not ready. He had the B.A. degree and the Bachelor of Science degree and the Master of Arts degree, but God gives him the third degree. And the third degree is the B.D.

degree, the backside of the desert degree. And God has taken him to school old style, and he's going to learn from the Lord what it means to be a leader. I wonder what the headlines of the Cairo Gazette read when Moses fled town. I mean, he was so well known, so renowned, next in line for some government occupation, maybe the Pharaoh, very wealthy, and he leaves and he goes to the desert to become a shepherd. Maybe the headline said, boy born with silver spoon trades it in for wooden staff, something like that.

That's sort of a headline, you know. He trades in the silver spoon status of wealth for the shepherd's staff, the shepherd's crook on the backside of the desert. And when the 40 years had passed, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire, in a bush, in the wilderness of Mount Sinai. When Moses saw it, he marveled at the sight.

I would too. And as he drew near to observe, the voice of the Lord came to him saying, I am the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaiah, the God of Jacob. And Moses trembled and dared not look. And the Lord said to him, take your sandals off your feet, for the place where you stand is holy ground. I can't tell you how that verse has spoken to me over the years. When I complain about my situation or my environment, maybe you woke up this morning and you've recently moved to Albuquerque and go, I hate it here, especially when it gets colder and the brown becomes browner. And you start grumbling and complaining.

Here's the principle. Ordinary surroundings get lifted to extraordinary status when God is present. It's heaven on earth if God called you there.

And I'll prove it to you, just try to go somewhere God hasn't. And you go, oh, man, where's that burning bush? Where's that Midianite desert, man? Nothing looked like heaven as much as that Midianite desert. So he's out in the middle of nowhere, but hey, you're on holy ground, Bubba.

Take those sandals off. It was a time of worship. Now, what's up with the burning bush? Why a burning bush? An acacia bush, I'm guessing, because I was a desert shrub, a very thorny bush. So there's an acacia bush, wispy kind of branches, thorns on it, and there's fire in it, but it's not consuming it, and it's not turning black or brown or dying out. It's just burning and burning and burning. What's up with that? It could be as simple as this, because I don't know, but I'm guessing now.

This is my guess. The burning bush was emblematic of the presence of God, because the voice said, you're on holy ground, take your shoes off. It was the voice of the Lord. It was the voice of the Lord.

You're on holy ground, take your shoes off. It was the voice of the angel of God. A burning fire was sometimes emblematic of the presence of God. Mount Sinai, there was fire and lightning and thunder, and that was all emblematic, symbolic of the glory of God, the glory of the God of glory. So God was present in His pure light, in His holiness, and so fire becomes a symbol. Here is Moses, who has burned out, trying to do God's work in the energy of His flesh.

He has gone up in flames, so to speak, and God is here to say, I'm here to light your fire, dude. This burning bush represents your life, not just my presence, but your life in my presence. You're going to burn and burn and not burn out, because I'm going to infuse you at an old age, and you're going to be called into your older years, and you're going to keep going to 120. You're going to burn but not be consumed.

You're going to burn but not burn out. That's what I think it's emblematic of. I love the symbolism.

I'm going to rekindle your fire. That's Skip Heitegg looking at Stephen's powerful words and witness to the Sanhedrin. It's from his series, Expound Acts. Find the full message, as well as books, booklets, and full teaching series at connectwithskip.com. Now, here's Skip to tell you how you can connect others with the truth of God's Word with a gift to keep these messages you love going around the world through Connect with Skip Heitegg.

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