SAUL BLASTS STEPHEN.A heart filled with hatred. Acts 7:55

When Stephen had electrified them with his message, the Jewish authorities were filled with hatred, as’ they were cut to the heart, and they gnashed at him with their teeth’. (v54 ) What a contrast with Stephen, who was Christ –possessed, while they planned murder.

‘But as Stephen, being full of the Holy Spirit, gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God ( that is the Shekinah or heavenly radiance ) and Jesus standing at the right hand of God.’ ( v55) Even though Stephen was persecuted, the tender Son of God sustained him with the brilliance of heaven. Although he was rejected, his life overflowed as the Spirit of God controlled him.

Stephen was rewarded with the amazing sight of the Lord, Himself, rising from His throne and standing at the right hand of the Father. The Son of God had been triumphantly installed at the right hand of the throne of the Ruler of heaven after His atoning death, burial and victorious resurrection. Scripture says ,” He saw Jesus’, which means ‘Jehovah is my salvation’, which would have deeply comforted him. And abraded the religious persecutors.

Stephen seized the moment to cry, ‘Look! I see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.’ ( v56) He fearlessly associated himself with the Lord he loved, and for whom he was dying. Game to the end, he told them the gripping sight, and of the honoured place of the Son of Man.

They could not bear it for ‘They cried out with a loud voice, blocked their ears, and ran on him with one accord.’ ( v57) It was an ugly, noisy scene as they unsuccessfully tried to drown his words and stop his final testimony of our Lord Jesus’ presence. The devil was furiously driving on these religious Jews, and he wanted only to see Stephen dead, and the church robbed of a brilliant Bible defender and faithful deacon. Exactly, what he had done to the Son of God just 12 months earlier. He had not changed.

Jerusalem the holy city was too good for such a stoning, so they drove him ’out of the city’, where they tortured him.’ The virgin Mary could have been stoned for her pregnancy out of marriage ( she miraculously conceived of Holy Spirit ). The woman ‘taken in adultery’ would have been stoned to death, if the Lord had not rescued her ‘Let him who is without sin first cast a stone at her.’ They were also restrained from stoning to death the Lamb of God, who died by crucifixion, as foretold in the Holy Scriptures. ‘Not a bone of His body was broken’.

Stephen’s death contrasted with His Lord’s. Stoning versus blood-shedding.

One died as a martyr ( witness ). The other died as our Saviour, Redeemer.

John said, ’Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world,’

Our Lord’s death ( by wounding) proved the minutest accuracy of prophecy.

The remarkable Saul ( later the Apostle Paul ) appeared on the scene, supervising the bloody execution of Stephen, ‘The witnesses laid down their clothes at the feet of Saul. He was a midget, being 4 foot six inches or 135 cms tall. His Roman name,‘tricubitas’, or 3 cubits, described his small stature.

Who was this Saul? He came from Tarsus, where he was educated in Greek and Hebrew and Latin. Later, Gamaliel, the eminent Jewish theologian trained and prepared Saul as ‘ a Pharisee of the Pharisees. He knew the Old Testament books by heart. He knew about the coming Messiah, and the prophecies of His suffering and reign as DTh. PhD. Intellectually brilliant, his heart blazed with frenzy upon every christian whom he sought to wipe out.

Saul heard two cries from a dying man, which influenced him in his later conversion to Christ. ‘They stoned Stephen as he called on God, saying ‘Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.’ ( v39) Saul had never heard a man calling so intimately on the living Lord, firing a longing in Him to know the source of this closeness.

He heard the dying Stephen speak the accursed name of the ‘LORD JESUS’ , chafing him. He noted the quiet confidence of Stephen in asking the Lord to ‘receive his spirit’. Saul had no such confidence if he faced death, although he recalled Job’s word in19:25’ I know that my redeemer lives, and that He will stand at last on the earth’. His conscience was rankled.

The blows forced Stephen to his knees, ‘He cried out with a loud voice

( exactly what our Lord Jesus did in His last triumphant cross cry ) ‘

‘Lord, ( my supreme Leader ) do not charge them with this sin.’ Saul heard two of the seven cries of the suffering Messiah as he watched Stephen die. Had either been present at the crucifixion, then we would understand their response. Stephen followed His beloved Lord in His last expression, while Saul painfully admitted the exceptional spirit of a dying man. Stephen did not curse or blaspheme, but showed the tenderness of his beloved Lord. Many have died praying that gentle prayer; from China, Indonesia, South Sudan, Russia!

Stephen, ‘when he said this, fell asleep.’ ( v60 ) Physical death in the scripture is always the death of the body. Victoriously and joyfully, his soul and spirit were received by His ascended Lord. Stephen is safe in heaven.

‘Saul consented to the death of this first martyr. ‘Thank riddance, another believer of the despised Jesus is gone,’ so he thought. An outbreak of oppression followed, ‘driving many throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria excepting the apostles.’. The early church seemed doomed. No fear! Christ had risen.

Common people, men ,women ( regardless of their state of pregnancy or nursing infants) and little children fled from such a monster as Saul.

In Acts 8:3, Saul worked havoc. Strong’s Concordance records that ‘havoc, includes stigma, dishonour, defilement, ravaging, devastation and ruin. It conveys the sense of pulling the infant church through the mire of the streets, ‘entering every house, dragging off men and women, committing them to prison.’ ( 8:3 ) God alone could ( and did ) convert that felon Saul into the great apostle. .

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