Rejecting Shadows to Embrace the Substance

What appears to be a devastating setback becomes God’s means of advance. Persecution scatters the Church, but it cannot silence the gospel. This brief passage reminds us that God often uses hardship to propel His mission forward—and that suffering never has the final word in God’s redemptive plan.

Transcript

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We're in Acts chapter 6. So if you have a Bible or an app, go ahead and open it to Acts chapter 6. So at Sacred Mission, we primarily preach verse by verse through books of the Bible, right? That's what we're doing in Acts. And today we find ourselves with 68 verses to try and work through. So here's what I'm not going to be able to do. I'm not going to be able to go verse by verse in the way that I would love to. There's so much rich history here. There's so much things that we could talk about and point to. I'm going to do my best to get us to where I believe the Lord wants to speak to us and move in us this morning. Right? We're looking at Stephen, the first martyr of the church. And we're also even introduced at the very end to this figure named Saul, who is present and is Saul of Tarsus, who later gets saved by Jesus' grace and becomes Paul. I'm not even touching on that this morning. I just did, but I'm not again, right? And uh I'm eating into my own time explaining to you how I don't have time. So let's dive into this text. Here's what I want to start with. What do you do when the truth you claim to believe starts threatening the life that you've built around it? What do you do when the truth you claim to believe starts threatening the life you've built around it? The false witnesses and violent mob who killed Stephen thought that they were defending sacred things. Moses, the temple, the law, they thought they were defending God Himself. Their opposition, it was filled with all of this religious language, and they stirred up the mob by claiming Stephen was attacking everything that the Lord had given to them as his people. But here's what's striking about this whole story. Stephen wasn't attacking what they held dear, he was trying to show them who all of it was pointing to. The temple, it pointed to God's presence dwelling with his people. The law, it pointed to perfect righteousness. Moses, he pointed beyond himself to a greater prophet who was coming. All of these things were merely shadows meant to point us to the substance. And when the substance showed up, we murdered him. And now his messenger Stephen experiences a fatal end for working to dispel the shadows that he might reveal the substance. Now, we want to think, right, that we're like Stephen in this story. Or at least we might desire to be like him. And honestly, there's a temptation to preach this text in such a way of look at Stephen, look how amazing his life was, that he spent it all on the glory of Christ, and we should just be like Stephen. But the problem is Stephen exists, his story exists because we find ourselves more often not like him, but like his accusers. We want to be full of grace and power. We want to be faithful unto death. We want to have our eyes fixed on the exalted Jesus, and that's a beautiful aspiration to live for. But if we're honest, we're more like the false witnesses than we care to admit. And here's how I think that this plays out. When the substance that we claim to believe threatens the life we've built our identity around, we find ways to defend the shadows that we love instead. We protect religious forms while avoiding their fulfillment. We twist the truth to keep our grip on what feels safe. The question this morning is this Are we defending shadows or are we embracing the substance? Luke records for us that Stephen was in Acts chapter 6, verse 8, full of grace and power, was doing great wonders and signs among the people. Here's something that we have to see in this passage. Stephen's accusers don't necessarily kill him because he's preaching the gospel. Now he's brought before the council at this beginning because he has a public ministry of gospel proclamation and kingdom demonstration among the people in Israel. But when they get angry and violent, it's because he's actually addressing the reality that they love the shadows and they murdered the substance. This ministry that he has publicly, both proclamation and demonstration, it provoked opposition from this local Hellenist Greek-speaking synagogue that was home to an ethnically diverse group of people. Luke names them for us in the passage. And when they rose up and disputed with Stephen, they discovered really quick that they could not withstand the wisdom and the spirit with which he was speaking. So they determined to take a different approach at silencing this disciple. You see, they discovered they couldn't win the argument, so they were going to change the terms. The text says that they seized him and brought him before the council. The language that Luke uses there is like a ship's sail that has been caught by this violent gust of wind. He is dragged before his accusers. They're forcefully taking him into a fight that they're going to make sure he cannot win. And they find false witnesses around who are willing to claim Stephen has been speaking words against Moses and God. That's what they claim. And that he said, Jesus of Nazareth will destroy this place and change the customs that Moses delivered to us. Notice the distortion in their accusations that they make. The way that they're willing to twist Stephen's words to justify their violence. They take Stephen's message about fulfillment and they turn it into a message of destruction. Stephen never said those words. Jesus never said that he was going to destroy these things. In fact, in Jesus' ministry, he spoke of how he would fulfill, not abolish. And so what do they do? They make him sound like an enemy of everything sacred. When what he's actually doing is proclaiming who those sacred things are pointing toward. And then the high priest, in the middle of this heated situation, asks Stephen to respond. And he doesn't give some legal defense, right? Instead, what does Stephen do? He preaches to his accusers. And he gives them this sweeping retelling of Israel's story, but there's this devastating argument buried within it that we're going to see here as we unpack it. Here's what Stephen does. He works through three key eras of Israel's history to show them that they're actually fighting for shadows that they cannot keep hold of. Stephen begins his preaching in Acts 7, verse 2, by saying this, brothers and fathers, hear me. The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia before he lived in Haran. Here's what he's trying to establish. Abraham knew God and had the glory of God appear to him before there ever even was a temple. Before there ever even was a land of their own possession. Even when a dwelling place was actually built, when the tabernacle was constructed in the wilderness for his presence, he was never confined to some man-made building or any type of geographic boundary. And so Stephen's argument is that their anger is actually rooted in their love for the temple. But the temple itself is only a shadow meant to point them to the true dwelling place of God's presence among his people. He then moves on to Joseph, who was rejected by his brothers, sold into slavery, yet through God's providence and sovereignty became their deliverer. But the story of the patriarchs was still only a shadow pointing to another who would be rejected and cast down, but would rise to become the deliverer of his people. And then Stephen gets to Moses. Precious Moses. He was the Lord's prophet that led them out of slavery in Egypt. He delivered the holy law from Mount Sinai to them. And yet, even Moses declared, God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your brothers. Moses was even speaking of a greater prophet yet to come. But yet, here's the thing that they miss. Precious Moses was rejected even by them. He says this, and they made a calf in those days and offered a sacrifice to the idol, and rejoicing in the work of their hands. This pattern repeats through the prophets. God sends a deliverer, his own people reject him, yet God's purposes continue to advance. And then Stephen quotes the prophet Isaiah, Acts 7, 48 through 50. Yet the Most High does not dwell in houses made by hands. As the prophet says, Heaven is my throne and the earth is my footstool. What kind of house will you build for me, says the Lord? Or what is the place of my rest? Did not my hand make all these things? So he's trying to show this angry mob that the temple was always meant to point beyond itself to the God who is sovereign and omnipresent and cannot be contained by what we construct with our own strength. Then Stephen makes sure that they hear what he's been working very hard to say in Acts 7, 51 through 53. You stiff-necked people, uncircumcised in heart and ears, you always resist the Holy Spirit. As your fathers did, so do you. Which of the prophets did your fathers not persecute? And they killed those who announced beforehand the coming of the righteous one, whom you have now betrayed and murdered. You who received the law as delivered by angels and did not keep it. You see, the very people defending Moses have missed whose Moses was pointing to. The ones guarding the temple have rejected the presence the temple symbolized because they're clinging to shadows while murdering the substance. And their response to Stephen's piercing words creates this teeth-gritting, violent response as they drag him out of the city to stone him to death. But before Stephen's eyes are closed in death, they're lifted up to see his Savior. In Acts 7, 55, it says, But he, speaking of Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit, gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. As the servant fell to the ground for the sake of his savior, his Savior stood to receive his faithful servant. And in that moment, Stephen saw past every shadow and was able to behold the glory of the substance, Christ Himself. You see, Jesus is the substance that we tend to defend shadows to avoid. I believe that this is the heart of what happened to the false witnesses. They weren't consciously opposed to God. They thought that they were fighting for him. But when God's actual work threatened their religious security, they defend the shadows while rejecting the substance. You see, every shadow in the Old Testament points to Jesus, the risen, resurrected Lord, as he was walking the road to Emmaus and being with his disciples in Luke 24, he says that he opens their minds and ears to be able to fully understand how everything, the law and the prophets and the psalms, pointed to him, that the suffering servant, the Christ's anointed one, must die and yet rise again in glory. Every aspect of what they held dear was not the end of itself, but it was meant to point them to Jesus. The temple pointed to God's presence dwelling perfectly with his people, fulfilled in Jesus. The sacrificial system pointed to the perfect atoning work accomplished in Jesus. The law pointed to perfect righteousness achieved in Jesus' perfect obedience. Moses even pointed beyond himself to the prophet who was coming, revealed in Jesus. But here's the tragedy. When Jesus came, they chose the shadows. When Stephen proclaimed Jesus as the fulfillment of everything they claimed to honor, they killed the messenger to protect the things that they held so dear. This is what makes their opposition so dangerous. Because it's not the rebellion of obvious enemies. We're not talking about angry atheists or pagan Gentiles. We are talking about a people who claim that they love God with everything that they have. It's the resistance of religious people who think they're defending God while actually opposing his work. And if we're able to be honest this morning, this is where we find ourselves more often than we'd like to even admit. We claim to believe biblical truth, to cherish robust and precise theology, sound doctrine, gospel centrality, but when those truths start threatening what we truly love, we find ways to defend our beliefs while avoiding their demands. We'll defend grace as a doctrine while resisting the grace that transforms our hearts and our lives and our priorities. We'll champion God's sovereignty, but yet we'll live every day as if everything depends on us. We'll protect our traditions while avoiding the costly obedience that they were meant to cultivate. We defend shadows because embracing the substance would simply cost us too much. You see, we have a propensity to cling to shadows to avoid the cost of the substance. You see, when the substance of what we claim to believe becomes threatening, when it demands something of us that we're not ready to loosen our grip on and lose, we instinctively retreat to defending the shadows that we cherish. The false witnesses, they they wrapped all of their opposition to Stephen and his words in religious language, in sacred things. They were defending Moses, God, the holy place, and we've mastered the exact same technique. You and I too often use biblical language to avoid biblical obedience. We use theological precision to escape personal transformation. And we use church culture to insulate ourselves from costly Christianity. And so our religious front becomes our shield against the Spirit's work in our life. Let me try to help us connect this for a moment. What is something in your life that you'd be willing to kill your brother for? And I don't mean this literally, but there's this reality in our heart where we will disfellowship and dismiss, where we will create these hard lines that break fellowship with other people, where we will kill our brother to defend the things that we so cherish and love. What are those things? And how potentially have we taken God's good gifts and made them little gods that rule and enslave us? You see, many of us we twist the truth to justify our grip on the shadow. We twist the truth to justify our grip on the shadow. We become masters at taking uncomfortable truth, right? Whether we get it from the scripture or we receive it from a loving brother or sister in our life. And what do we do? We distort it into something that we can simply dismiss. When someone challenges our life choices with biblical truth, we don't engage the substance of their concern. Instead, we we twist their words until they sound extreme. Because extreme things are easy to place aside and dismiss. The false witnesses, they took Stephen's message about Jesus' fulfilling of the temple and they twisted it into, he wants to destroy what we hold sacred. And we do the same thing. We take calls to costly discipleship and we ref and we frame them as attacks on our own version of comfortable Christianity. When Scripture confronts our everyday lives, we turn passages on holiness and stewardship and obedience into discussions about legalism. When it challenges our vices that we find so much comfort in. When it calls us to sacrificial love of our brother and our neighbor, what do we do? We don't embrace the gospel. No, we embrace therapeutic gospel. And we talk about boundaries. And we talk about self-care. Rather than the costly life of loving someone at your own expense. Here's what I think we've done ultimately. We've learned to hear Jesus' call of take up your cross and respond with it simply too heavy. We're experts at finding the theological escape hatch that lets us avoid the personal cost of truth. And so this creates a superficial spiritual life where we're always arguing with shadows instead of being transformed by the substance. We become people who can debate everything but obey nothing, who know all the right doctrinal answers. But we show little evidence of genuine gospel change. But there's something deeper. Because this propensity for us to twist things is really just a symptom of an illness that we're all trying to escape. You see, many of us, we create idols of the shadow that we fear to let go of. The deeper illness that we're dealing with is idolatry. We distort truth. Why? Because we're protecting something we love more than the truth itself. The false witnesses didn't oppose Stephen because they hated God. They opposed him because they loved the religious system more than the God it was supposed to reveal. Their hands had made the temple. Their hands had held the law. They had established the traditions, their status as religious leaders, and all of that became idols that they could not bear to lose. And man, we do the same thing. We take good things, really good things, like our theological knowledge or our church culture or our reputation as devout Christians, and we turn them into ultimate things. And then what do we do? We twist any truth that threatens them. When Scripture challenges our priorities, we're not just avoiding discomfort. No, we're protecting our idol of security and control. When a brother lovingly confronts our pride, we're not deflecting correction. We're guarding our idol of self-image and reputation. And when the gospel calls us to costly love, we're not just choosing an easier path. We're fighting for our comfort. The false witnesses, they have built their entire identity around being defenders of good things. Moses, the temple, the law. They couldn't let Stephen be right. It was too costly to let him be right. Because it would mean losing everything that they believed made them valuable to God. And so their religious shadows became their functional saviors. And they were willing to kill for them. You see, when we make an idol out of biblical things, we can make little gods out of his good gifts. And these become the shadows that we protect at all costs. Even when protecting them means resisting the very substance that they were meant to point us toward. You see, the tragedy is we're so busy defending what we think makes us righteous, what we think makes us acceptable, what we think makes us valuable, that we miss the greatest treasure of Christ Himself. But those shadows were never meant to be our substance, Church. They were meant to point us to Jesus. Because Jesus is the substance that all the shadows pointed to. Stephen's preaching reveals this devastating truth about us. Everything the false witnesses claimed to defend found its fulfillment in the very person that they had rejected and murdered. Jesus, he's the true temple. Not a building that contains God's presence, but God's presence dwelling perfectly among his people. He is the true and better tabernacle that is dwelling among us. Jesus is the perfect sacrifice, not another offering that seeks to make atonement, but he is the sacrifice that ends all need for any other. Jesus is the righteousness that the law demanded. He's not just a teacher of moral truth, but Christ is the embodiment of moral perfection and perfect obedience to the Father. Moses wrote about him. The prophets announced him. The temple system prefigured him. The whole Old Testament pointed to him. And we rejected and murdered him. And I'm not just talking about first century Jews. I'm talking about us. When we take the good things of God and make them little gods in our life, ultimately we are rejecting the substance that they were all supposed to point us toward. We who claim to honor what pointed to Jesus while avoiding Jesus Himself, we've chosen shadows over substance. But here's the gospel. Jesus didn't come to destroy what we value. It wasn't his purpose. Jesus came to fulfill. He's what every shadow was and is pointing to. And when we rejected him, thank God he did not reject us. In fact, Jesus took our rejection. And he died for our propensity to choose shadows over substance. And then three days later, he rose to prove that the substance is stronger than our rejection of it. And now by his spirit we can see, like Stephen saw, the heavens open and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God. We can see by the Spirit that dwells within us past every shadow to the substance that gives every single one of them meaning. So my prayer for us, sacred mission, is that we would avoid or we would embrace the substance and release our grip on the shadows. Because Jesus is the substance that every shadow pointed to, we don't need to cling desperately to religious forms of security and comfort. You see, Stephen could die with grace to his killers. He prayed for the Father to forgive them while they were stoning him to death. And why was he able to do that? Because his security wasn't in defending the temple or Moses, it was in seeing the exalted and risen Jesus. This means we can hold our theological systems, our church traditions, and our religious preferences with open hands. You see, for us, it's not the question of what are you willing to die for. The question is, what are you willing to kill someone else over? And there you might discover the shadow that you're clinging so tightly to. Now, these things, these good gifts, they've served their purpose. If they point us to Jesus, we can receive correction and rebuke from the scriptures or from a loving brother. Because our identity is in Christ, not in the shadows that we try to keep our grip on. And when you see Jesus as the substance that every religious shadow pointed to, you don't need to defend them anymore. You can follow Jesus all the way to death like Stephen. Like him with your eyes fixed on the exalted Savior who is standing to welcome every faithful servant home. Amen.