220 - History: Abraham to Joseph

You pick up your Bible and wonder, is there more here than meets the eye?

Is there anything here for me? I mean, it's just words printed on paper, right? Well, it may look like just print on a page, but it's more than ink.

Join us for the next half hour as we explore God's Word together, as we learn how to explore it on our own, as we ask God to meet us there in its pages. Welcome to More Than Ink. Hey, don't you hate it when people make false accusations about you? Oh, it makes you want to defend yourself. I didn't do that. I said this. I didn't say that.

Right. You refute everything they say. Well, today, accusations are leveled against Stephen. And what does he do?

He has a completely different direction. We need to find out what that is today. Let's read it today on More Than Ink. Well, hello. Here we are again. I'm Jim. And I'm Dorothy.

And this is More Than Ink, as you just heard. And we are delighted that you've joined us. So we're reading the Bible together. And we're in the book of Acts, which I've always said is just a great ride.

There is just so much dynamic stuff and actions that happen from page to page. And we are in a section pretty well known early in Acts about a guy by the name of Stephen. And he was appointed to serve some of the Hellenistic widows, the Greek widows. But he did more than just serve food. He was a man of great prominence. And the Holy Spirit used him in powerful ways. And he was doing signs and wonders and all that kind of stuff.

And he got in the radar of the religious leaders who were jealous of the crowds that he was building. So they grabbed him. And today we're going to see what happens after they grab him and after they confront him. But before we read what we're going to read today, we need to do a little bit more set up than normal.

And here's the challenge for you today is we're going to be investigators kind of like Sherlock Holmes. Because what he does in this, probably for the next two weeks as we look at this, is Stephen is going to, off the top of his head, tell the story, the entire story of the nation of Israel in response to the trouble that he's in. So let's wind back a little bit into chapter six. And we'll look at his arrest and we'll look at the accusations made against him.

And then today for new stuff, we'll talk about what he says in defense. Well, and he makes this defense in response to some accusations against him that came from some religious leaders from what's called the synagogue of the freedmen. So if you look back in chapter six, you can see who these guys are in verse eight, nine, around there in chapter six. But it says that they could not withstand the wisdom and the spirit with which Stephen was speaking. So he wasn't just speaking from his own abilities.

This is the spirit speaking. And we were told earlier when Stephen was first appointed that he was a man full of faith and full of the Holy Spirit. And it affected everything he did.

He was out there among the people doing great signs and wonders, it says in chapter six. So he wasn't just organizing the table service in the group meeting. But it's interesting that these men who come against him had to trump up secret charges. They secretly decided to make some false accusations because they couldn't meet his arguments with logic or with truth. Because he wasn't doing anything illegal according to the law of Moses. Well, and they couldn't contradict him.

Right, right, right. So it says that they accused him of speaking blasphemous words against Moses and God. And that's why they seize him and they drag him before the same hatred.

And here's what they said. And this is in verse 13 of chapter six. This man never ceases to speak words against this holy place and the law.

For we've heard him say that this Jesus of Nazareth will destroy this place and change the customs that Moses delivered to us. Okay, so those are the charges they bring against him. That's all the charges. Which were all lies. All lies. None of that was true.

Yeah, yeah. They're all lies. And so they're claiming that Stephen is unabashedly opposed to Moses, the laws that God gave through Moses, and to the temple itself.

To the temple itself, which is where they're doing a lot of this discourse. And those are all just total lies. So here's the challenge we put before you today. Say you were saying these things and these are all trumped up charges.

There's none of this that's true. How would you defend yourself if they ask you to give an account about whether or not these witnesses are telling the truth or not? What would you say?

How would you defend yourself? And as we go through what Stephen's response is, which is what we want to do today in chapter seven, starting in chapter seven, I want you to ask yourself all the way through this, what does this have to do with anything? Why does he start here and go this way? Yeah, because what you're going to find is he's not going to be speaking in any way of trying to gain an acquittal against these charges. Because if it was you or me, we'd hear people say these things and say, well that's a lie. That's a lie.

That's just not true. And then try and rectify that. But we don't see him doing that. Instead he takes off on a completely different path. So what I want to challenge us to do today, and we'll probably do it next time as well, is find out why he's saying what he's saying. And how is that relevant to the moment of being accused of these false charges? And to challenge you just one more step beyond that, it could very well be that what Stephen is saying is not Stephen himself speaking, but it's the Holy Spirit taking the opportunity of this moment, this time where he can speak directly to the leadership of all of Jerusalem. Maybe this is the Holy Spirit which has a wholly different purpose than Stephen defending himself.

Than Stephen's defense, yeah. So why say these things? So we're going to look at what he's going to talk about today and see how it fits in that question. So you're challenged and we're challenged and we're going to leave a whole bunch of open-ended conclusions here, but think about this as you're going. Don't just think about what he says. Think about why he's saying that and think about why the Holy Spirit would want to present this to the leadership in Jerusalem.

Okay? Okay, I just want to give you one more little thing before we start because right before Chapter 7, the end of Chapter 6 says, �And gazing at him, all who sat in the council saw his face was like the face of an angel.� So there was something radiant about the face of Stephen. Well, since we've been talking about Moses and the accusations against him were that he speaks against Moses, well, as far as I can think, Moses is the only other person in Scripture that we're told that his face literally glowed. I think so. Now, if you are listening to this, you can find that.

Go and mark this down. Look up in Exodus 34 verses 29 to 35 because it says actually that Moses' face glowed when he was speaking the testimonies of God. Yep, that's right. So I wonder if that's not an important thing to have in mind here because we're told right at the beginning of this speech that Stephen's face looks like the face of an angel, so it is radiant. Okay, okay.

All right, are we ready? So we're turning into chapter seven, and we actually read this last time in verse one. The high priest, probably Caiaphas, the high priest said, �So are these things so?� Which means the accusations we just read.

Right. �Are these things so?� And then Stephen said, �And here we go.� This is a great speech, �Brothers and fathers, hear me, 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 are 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 sojourners in a land belonging to others who would enslave them and afflict them 400 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.� Do you want to stop there or shall we keep going?

You know, let's stop right there. That's a good place. Yeah, because he has said several times, �This place, this place, this place.� And remember the accusations against him was that he was going to speak against this place. Right. This place. This place for talking the temple specifically. Right. This place.

Yeah, this place. So in Stephen's response to are these things so, he goes all the way back to Abraham. To Abraham, the God of glory appeared to our father Abraham while he was in Mesopotamia. And then he recounts very accurately the life of Abraham starting around Genesis 11 and 12 and makes it, well as far as we read, up through 13. Actually up through 15.

Through 15. Well at that point. But you know, it's a totally orthodox history. He says nothing that any of them could disagree with. Yeah, yeah.

Well and let me remind you the obvious. During the time of Abraham there was no temple. Right.

And the temple's got a lot of time to come before the temple shows up. There was not even any view of any religious structure. Abraham was not a Jew. It was. Exactly. You know, exactly. And Paul makes big light of this fact when he talks about some of his issues about righteousness in Romans. But so here, let's just recount just softly what he says here. He's talking about the fact that God appeared to Abraham. There's a personal appearance to Abraham and said, leave where you live. It's Mesopotamia.

It's present day Iraq. Leave where you live and go and go to a land I'm going to show you. And that's what he says in three, go into a land I'm going to show you. So he's saying, leave where you live and go to some place I'll show you but you're going to have to leave home first. Right.

And I'll tell you when you get there. That's right. And then he leads him in the way they stop in Haran. His father's with him. His father dies there.

It doesn't say that but if you read back in Genesis 12 you see that. And so then from that point he went out and after his father died, it says in verse four, he got into this land where God led him to. And so there he is out in the middle of nowhere. Well that middle of nowhere is today what you know as the land of Israel. So he's out there and yet although he's on this land that God's showing him, he brought him there, in verse five it says he doesn't promise him any pieces of that land. No, he lived there as a sojourner. Right.

As a visitor. And in five it says not even a foot's length. So just nothing. I mean nothing. But he does go on and say but this land will be a possession for your offspring. Well that's an interesting thing in Haran in verse five because he's got no children. He's got no children. He's pretty old. He's pretty old.

Then that argument comes up somewhere else. But this land will be given to his offspring. And so he says you know he's going to be a sojourner which means this is not his home in a sense.

He's sort of traveling through. But then he includes in a very little piece in verse six the fact that that's not going to happen until his descendants actually are enslaved somewhere else and they're enslaved for 400 years. So this is indisputable Jewish history. Yeah. Right.

They all know this. And I would encourage you all to go back and read this conversation that occurs in Genesis 15 when God says very specifically to Abraham they're going to go somewhere else. They're going to be enslaved there for 400 years but I will bring them out. Right. I'll bring them back to this very place. Yeah.

It's a very curious thing because it's way out of the ordinary. You would expect God to say to Abraham look you're going to go to this land. Boom.

Here it is. You're standing on the land. You're going to have your children and have your children and have some children and have some children and children's children and you guys just set up your tents wherever you're standing and you're there. It seems like one contiguous kind of thing.

But he's saying no it's going to be a little choppier than that. There's more history involved than just that simple thing about a small family of Abraham growing to the point that they occupy a whole land. In the interim they're going to be captive in another land for 400 years and we know that's true. They go to Egypt. And God's going to bring them out.

Thank God. He brings them out. And a couple of years ago we did the whole series of the book of Exodus which is central to the foundation of the nation, the national structure of Israel. That's their beginning of their real history.

God brought them out into the wilderness, the exodus from slavery. So that's a central piece of this picture. Yeah.

That's exactly right. So Stephen's telling a very accurate but very condensed history. Oh yeah. As a matter of fact he's been through all of, well all of the early part of Genesis up to this point.

Yeah right. And then he finishes where we did at the end of 7 by saying, you know, they'll come out of that place and they'll worship me in this place where you're standing, Abraham, where you're standing out in the middle of nowhere here. So let's just pick up the story from there from verse 8. Verse 8.

Okay. Because this is pretty accurate, pretty routine Israel history. And he, talking about God, 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 12 patriarchs. So you know, that's Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, they're all right there, right? That's the patriarchs.

Okay verse 9. And the patriarchs, jealous of Joseph, sold him, so one of the sons of one of the younger sons of Jacob. One of the patriarchs. Sold him into Egypt, but God was with him. And he 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. And Joseph sent and summoned Jacob his father and all his kindred, 75 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 for a sum of silver from the sons of Hamor and Shechem.

Wow. So that is a way pared down, condensed story, what is he driving at? So we start with Abraham, pretty close look at Abraham, his son Isaac, his son Jacob, who doesn't mention the other son, and then Jacob's sons, who are the 12 sons of Jacob who are the 12 tribes. But he doesn't mention any of the others, only Joseph. Only Joseph. So he's actually, in verse 8, he's making a bridge to talk about Joseph.

Right. So the first section we looked at here, he really wants to make some point about Abraham as a focus on Abraham. He's the key focus, he's the spotlight on Abraham. And now, spotlight on Joseph, the next to youngest son of Jacob. And it's a very famous story, it's a very famous story. So we'll just, let's just summarize this really quickly if you didn't catch that entire thing. So Joseph, remember he sold off because his brothers want to kill him, they decide no that's too harsh, let's sell him into slavery, they sell him to a wandering trades group that goes down to Egypt, and then suddenly he's a slave in Egypt, sold him into Egypt.

So you don't, Stephen doesn't include all that, but you listeners can go back and read it. This is Genesis starting at about 37 and going forward to the end of Genesis. And it turns out that he found some favor with Pharaoh while he was in prison there. Funny connections happen that really can only be attributed to God himself in his, what's the word? His sovereignty. His Providence. Providence, yeah, and so he finds favor with Pharaoh, so much so, so much so that when you read this is that Pharaoh is so impressed with Joseph that he says, you're in charge of the entire nation. The only thing you are not in charge of is the throne itself.

I still get to be in charge of everything, but you are actually in charge of everything. So that's, he makes him ruler over Egypt and over his whole household. And the purpose for that, we find in 11, again this is a great summary, is that there's a famine in the land and so through the wisdom that God gives Joseph, he leads him to store grain, grow grain, store grain, and avoid the affliction and the death that would have happened from that. And it turns out then that famine also not only affected Egypt, but it affected his family who were back in the promised land up in present day Israel. And so he summarizes how it is that Joseph's family, his father, his brothers who wanted to kill him, but they sold him instead, how they come groveling to Egypt and they want to buy some food because they're all starving.

And they do that. Eventually, you know he compresses this whole story quite a bit. We're compressing almost 10 chapters right here in what he does. Keep going because I have something I want to say here.

Okay. Well he compresses it so much so that eventually his father Jacob and his brothers all move to Egypt and they're there for so long that Jacob himself dies while they're back there and they carry his body back into the promised land. All according to God's promise.

Yeah, that's all according to the plan. But what's happening between the lines is he's zeroing in on Joseph who unknown to his brothers back home had risen to power and prominence. They didn't know, that's right. God had put him in this place in order to provide essentially salvation for his family when they come down and he feeds them. And again, he feeds them and they don't recognize him.

So this is I think probably central to what Stephen is driving at. He's making this point that God has put in place the one through whom they will be saved from the famine. They come and they get the food but they don't recognize him until he reveals himself to them on their second visit. Yeah and this very tightly connects into who Jesus himself is. Prefigures Jesus. Now you know if I was in Stephen's shoes I'd be standing there just preaching who Jesus is. That would seem to be the straight thing to do. But the Holy Spirit seems better for better thinking about that and thinking let's do this kind of on the sly in a way they won't quite catch.

Maybe not now, maybe later they will. Well so that they don't pick up stones to sown him to early because he's really got some serious stuff coming in the next, well we'll get to it next week. So the Holy Spirit is actually making an investment in reminding them about the character of Joseph and they don't realize it at this moment. But the character of Joseph is a prefigure, he's a hint, a strong hint about who Jesus is as our Messiah Savior is who is not recognized by the family.

Unrecognized king. Yeah the entire family of Israel does not recognize him just as in the Joseph story. Indeed he's been mistreated and sold and imprisoned, falsely accused. And yet he's in a position of great power that they don't realize. You know I mean all of these connections are there. So what we're doing, the Holy Spirit is laying a foundation for them hopefully to make a connection to what's going on here. And I think the same kind of investment for a connection is being made with Abraham as well as it connects to Jesus. So he doesn't have to say it overtly here but I think later on the Holy Spirit will make the connection for him. So he's just reminding them in a very accurate way that he understands the history of Israel, he understands the history of these patriarchs, of the guys going all the way back to Abraham. But they're missing the bigger picture because these guys all in different parts of their character prefigured Jesus himself. So that when Jesus does show up and does provide salvation that they desperately need, they'll realize and a light bulb will go off in their head and they'll say, hey this is just like Joseph.

You know we knew this was going to happen all along. So I think that's kind of what's going on. Remember at the outset here I said, why is he speaking what he's speaking? I think that's what it is. I think what he's trying to do is lay enough foundation for the religious leaders who are listening to him. They are all ears.

He's connecting dots here, he's laying out the dots. And the Holy Spirit is allowing them to make connections back to maybe what they've forgotten. And you know the connections with Abraham, I think there's many of those and this is sort of conjecture but Abraham is the father of the nation. And Paul is very bold when he talks about Abraham by saying, let me tell you about the distinctive of Abraham.

He was saved, he was saved and made right with God by faith. That's the cornerstone of Judaism is faith in God in terms of what God promises. In fact he was so bold in his faith that when God said, leave home, which at the time was the New York City of the world, leave home and just go someplace and stop when I tell you this is the place.

I mean that's a remarkable thing to pull up stakes and do that. And yet when he got out there, there was no over promises of having land right now. In fact it's gonna be to your offspring, which didn't even start to exist yet. So Abraham is a man of faith and I think what he's drawn a connection to is that being right with God may have little to do with your temple ordinances and have everything to do like Abraham with faith in God in his word. It's interesting to me that Stephen doesn't make reference to that verse in Genesis that says and Abraham believed the Lord and the Lord reckoned him as righteous.

Yeah, tell our listeners where that is. Yeah, that's Genesis 15 verse 6 and you just read a couple of verses before that and you'll see what the Lord says to him like, I'm a shield to you, I'm gonna do all these things for you, I'm gonna give you a son and Abraham believes God and God counts him as righteous. This is before any of the sacrificial system, any of the religious structure. There was Abraham had not a clue who this nation was gonna grow to be.

He didn't even have a child at this point. But God made a promise to him and Abraham simply believed that what God said would be. And he acted on God's promises knowing that they would come true and they did. So Abraham is kind of like the model Jew in many ways. He's the guy who without a temple, without the laws of Moses, without so much of the trappings that at the time in the first century that Stephen has been arrested here is so central to Jewish thought and to Jewish righteousness and yet Abraham had none of those things. And so maybe, just maybe the true righteousness that God's looking for to the Jews has nothing to do with the temple. So remember he was accused of disrespecting the temple? Well actually the topic is coming around that maybe, especially in the case of Abraham, the temple has nothing to do with it in terms of real righteousness.

Well and that might help us as to why he kind of skips past Isaac, although he talks about Isaac in reference to the circumcision, the covenant, but he jumps right past Jacob also to Joseph, right, to again the child who was born under unusual circumstances, unrecognized and yet known from the beginning that he was destined for great things and who becomes king that they refused to recognize. And God had made plans before anything ever happened to maneuver Joseph in a position where he would literally be the savior of Israel. I mean that's a really direct connection with Jesus.

It's kind of picture on picture. The Lord is just a master at this, of giving us layer on layer on layer of real people living in a real place and time doing a real thing and yet in hindsight they have become this very clear pattern that points to Jesus. And you know when we talk about the patriarchs, they revered the patriarchs, Joseph was a patriarch and he was done dirt to and never recognized for who he was, they were jealous of him, they hated him, they wanted to kill him. I mean the parallels with Jesus are just profound, but Stephen is not deliberately making those connections for them.

No. He's just laying out the history. But he's laying it out. He's skipping a lot of things in Genesis. Yeah, but he's lining things up in such a way that the dots connect differently than they're accustomed to connecting them.

Yes. Because later on in his speech he will make direct reference of Jesus, but this is the foundation so that they'll connect. And so what we often think about when we look at the Old Testament is we think well it's just a collection of old stories, it's kind of cool, but what you don't understand is that woven into these narratives, these true historical narratives, there are profound statements about who the Messiah Jesus would be and the character he'd be like so that we can actually say, you can look at each other in short form as a Jew who comes to Jesus and say Jesus is just like Joseph.

In what way? He was hated by his brethren. He was the hidden savior of everyone and everyone appreciated him in the end, but at the beginning all they wanted to do was kill him. So this is clearly a message that God has woven here in order for us to recognize Jesus when he comes. Well next time we're going to push on to another big, big name in the Old Testament which also has connections to Jesus and that big name is Moses. Which directly pertains to the accusations against Stephen. They said he's trying to change the traditions that Moses gave us.

Exactly. And so we're going to talk about Moses next time. So join us as we continue the history and the connection to Jesus here on More Than Ink. There are many more episodes of this broadcast to be found at our website, morethanink.org. And while you're there, take a moment to drop us a note. Remember the Bible is God's love letter to you. Pick it up and read it for yourself and you will discover that the words printed there are indeed more than ink. Don't press that, press this. This has been a production of Main Street Church of Brigham City.