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dfroza · 3 years

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Stephen presented his case with honesty from his heart

and they stoned him to death.

and what did they do to the eternal King not long before this?

people can get it all wrong in their human judgments.

(we all need to embrace the pure humility of grace)

Today’s reading of the Scriptures from the New Testament is the 7th chapter of the book of Acts:

High Priest: What do you have to say for yourself? Are these accusations accurate?

Stephen: Brothers, fathers, please listen to me. Our glorious God revealed Himself to our common ancestor Abraham, when he lived far away in Mesopotamia before he immigrated to Haran. God gave him this command: “Leave your country. Leave your family and your inheritance. Move into unknown territory, where I will show you a new homeland.” First, he left Chaldea in southern Mesopotamia and settled in Haran until his father died. Then God led him still farther from his original home—until he settled here, in our land. But at that point, God still hadn’t given him any of this land as his permanent possession—not even the footprint under his sandal actually belonged to him yet. But God did give Abraham a promise—a promise that yes, someday, the entire land would indeed belong to him and his descendants. Of course, this promise was all the more amazing because at that moment, Abraham had no descendants at all.

God said that Abraham’s descendants would first live in a foreign country as resident aliens, as refugees, for 400 years. During this time, they would be enslaved and treated horribly. But that would not be the end of the story. God promised, “I will judge the nation that enslaves them,” and “I will bring them to this mountain to serve Me.” God gave him the covenant ritual of circumcision as a sign of His sacred promise. When Abraham fathered his son, Isaac, he performed this ritual of circumcision on the eighth day. Then Isaac fathered Jacob, and Jacob fathered the twelve patriarchs.

The patriarchs were jealous of their brother Joseph, so they sold him as a slave into Egypt. Even so, God was with him; and time after time, God rescued Joseph from whatever trials befell him. God gave Joseph the favor and wisdom to overcome each adversity and eventually to win the confidence and respect of his captors, including Pharaoh, the king of Egypt himself. So Pharaoh entrusted his whole nation and his whole household to Joseph’s stewardship. Some time later, a terrible famine spread through the entire region—from Canaan down to Egypt—and everyone suffered greatly. Our ancestors, living here in the region of Canaan, could find nothing to eat. Jacob heard that Egypt had stores of grain; so he sent our forefathers, his sons, to procure food there. Later, when they returned to Egypt a second time, Joseph revealed his true identity to them. He also told Pharaoh his family story.

Joseph then invited his father Jacob and all his clan to come and live with him in Egypt. So Jacob came, along with 75 extended family members. After their deaths, their remains were brought back to this land so they could be buried in the same tomb where Abraham had buried Sarah (he had purchased the tomb for a certain amount of silver from the family of Hamor in the town of Shechem).

Still God’s promise to Abraham had not yet been fulfilled, but the time for that fulfillment was drawing very near. In the meantime, our ancestors living in Egypt rapidly multiplied. Eventually a new king came to power—one who had not known Joseph when he was the most powerful man in Egypt. This new leader feared the growing population of our ancestors and manipulated them for his own benefit, eventually seeking to control their population by forcing them to abandon their infants so they would die. Into this horrible situation our ancestor Moses was born, and he was a beautiful child in God’s eyes. He was raised for three months in his father’s home, and then he was abandoned as the brutal regime required. However, Pharaoh’s daughter found, adopted, and raised him as her own son. So Moses learned the culture and wisdom of the Egyptians and became a powerful man—both as an intellectual and as a leader. When he reached the age of 40, his heart drew him to visit his kinfolk, our ancestors, the Israelites. During his visit, he saw one of our people being wronged, and he took sides with our people by killing an Egyptian. He thought his kinfolk would recognize him as their God-given liberator, but they didn’t realize who he was and what he represented.

The next day Moses was walking among the Israelites again when he observed a fight—but this time, it was between two Israelites. He intervened and tried to reconcile the men. “You two are brothers,” he said. “Why do you attack each other?” But the aggressor pushed Moses away and responded with contempt: “Who made you our prince and judge? Are you going to slay me and hide my body as you did with the Egyptian yesterday?” Realizing this murder had not gone unnoticed, he quickly escaped Egypt and lived as a refugee in the land of Midian. He married there and had two sons.

Forty more years passed. One day while Moses was in the desert near Mount Sinai, a heavenly messenger appeared to him in the flames of a burning bush. The phenomenon intrigued Moses; and as he approached for a closer look, he heard a voice—the voice of the Lord: “I am the God of your own fathers, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.” This terrified Moses—he began to tremble and looked away in fear. The voice continued: “Take off your sandals and stand barefoot on the ground in My presence, for this ground is holy ground. I have avidly watched how My people are being mistreated by the Egyptians. I have heard their groaning at the treatment of their oppressors. I am descending personally to rescue them. So get up. I’m sending you to Egypt.”

Now remember: this was the same Moses who had been rejected by his kinfolk when they said, “Who made you our prince and judge?” This man, rejected by his own people, was the one God had truly sent and commissioned by the heavenly messenger who appeared in the bush, to be their leader and deliverer.

Moses indeed led our ancestors to freedom, and he performed miraculous signs and wonders in Egypt, at the Red Sea, and in the wilderness over a period of 40 years. This Moses promised our ancestors, “The Eternal One your God will raise up from among your people a Prophet who will be like me.” This is the same one who led the people to Mount Sinai, where a heavenly messenger spoke to him and our ancestors, and who received the living message of God to give to us.

But our ancestors still resisted. They again pushed Moses away and refused to follow him. In their hearts, they were ready to return to their former slavery in Egypt. While Moses was on the mountain communing with God, they begged Aaron to make idols to lead them. “We have no idea what happened to this fellow, Moses, who brought us from Egypt,” they said. So they made a calf as their new god, and they even sacrificed to it and celebrated an object they had fabricated as if it was their God.

And you remember what God did next: He let them go. He turned from them and let them follow their idolatrous path—worshiping sun, moon, and stars just as their unenlightened neighbors did. The prophet Amos spoke for God about this horrible betrayal:

Did you offer Me sacrifices or give Me offerings

during your 40-year wilderness journey, you Israelites?

No, but you have taken along your sacred tent for the worship of Moloch,

and you honored the star of Rompha, your false god.

So, if you want to worship your man-made images,

you may do so—beyond Babylon.

Now recall that our ancestors had a sacred tent in the wilderness, the tent God directed Moses to build according to the pattern revealed to him. When Joshua led our ancestors to dispossess the nations God drove out before them, our ancestors carried this sacred tent. It remained here in the land until the time of David. David found favor with God and asked Him for permission to build a permanent structure (rather than a portable tent) to honor Him. It was, of course, Solomon who actually built God’s house. Yet we all know the Most High God doesn’t actually dwell in structures made by human hands, as the prophet Isaiah said,

“Since My throne is heaven

and since My footstool is earth—

What kind of structure can you build to contain Me?

What man-made space could provide Me a resting place?” asks the Eternal One.

“Didn’t I make all things with My own hand?”

Stephen: You stubborn, stiff-necked people! Sure, you are physically Jews, but you are no different from outsiders in your hearts and ears! You are just like your ancestors, constantly fighting against the Holy Spirit. Didn’t your ancestors persecute the prophets? First, they killed those prophets who predicted the coming of the Just One; and now, you have betrayed and murdered the Just One Himself! Yes, you received the law as given by heavenly messengers, but you haven’t kept the law which you received.

Upon hearing this, his audience could contain themselves no longer. They boiled in fury at Stephen; they clenched their jaws and ground their teeth. But Stephen was filled with the Holy Spirit. Gazing upward into heaven, he saw something they couldn’t see: the glory of God, and Jesus standing at His right hand.

Stephen: Look, I see the heavens opening! I see the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God!

At this, they covered their ears and started shouting. The whole crowd rushed at Stephen, converged on him, dragged him out of the city, and stoned him.

They laid their coats at the feet of a young man named Saul, while they were pelting Stephen with rocks.

Stephen (as rocks fell upon him): Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.

Then he knelt in prayer, shouting at the top of his lungs,

Stephen: Lord, do not hold this evil against them!

Those were his final words; then he fell asleep in death.

The Book of Acts, Chapter 7 (The Voice)

A link to my personal reading of the Scriptures for Sunday, june 6 of 2021 with a paired chapter from each Testament of the Bible along with Today’s Proverbs and Psalms

A post by John Parsons about having trust in God and courage of heart:

From our Torah this week (Shelach Lekha) we read about the report of the spies: “They (the spies) returned... and brought word and showed them the land’s bounty. And they said, "We came to the land to which you sent us. It flows with milk and honey (זבת חלב ודבש), and look, here is its fruit. Nevertheless the people who inhabit the land are powerful; the cities are greatly fortified, and we also saw the (giant) people of Anak there... We are unable to go up against the people there, for they are stronger than we are ... and moreover the land itself consumes its inhabitants” (Num. 13:25-32).

The Kotzer rebbe asked, “Did the spies lie? Did they invent words that were untrue? Behold, they spoke as they saw it, so how did they sin?” Yet not everything that is not a lie is truth: you may have all the facts “correct” and yet still speak untruth. Truth is therefore something more than the description of appearances since what appears is interpreted by underlying assumptions that contextualize perception... For example, a future tense proposition (e.g., “it will not rain tomorrow”), or a probabilistic prediction (e.g., “there is a 50% chance it will rain tomorrow), are are based on inferences from what is observed or seen to what is not seen, and therefore they are all grounded in faith that the future will resemble the past, that the laws of nature are constant, that measurement is possible, and so on. Language about possibilities, probabilities, expectations, outcomes, and so on all turn on the question of faith. Our Torah portion this week illustrates the responsibility we have to trust in the promises of God, regardless of our limited interpretation of appearances... When it comes to trusting in an unseen Good, we must believe in order to see, not the other way around.

Surely our great need is to have heart, to find strength, resolution, and steadfast determination to walk boldly during these heartless and depraved days (2 Tim. 3:1-5). We are not without God's help, of course. Yeshua told us that the Ruach HaKodesh (רוּחַ הַקּדֶשׁ) would be "called alongside" (παράκλητος) to comfort us on the journey. The English verb "comfort" literally means "to give strength" (from com- ["with"] and fortis ["strong"]), an idea similarly expressed by the verb "encourage," that is, to "put heart [i.e., 'core'] within the soul." In Hebrew, the word courage is expressed by the phrase ometz lev (אמֶץ לֵב), meaning "strong of heart," denoting an inner quality of the will rather than of the intellect. Our faith is the victory that overcomes the world (1 John 4:4, 5:4).

But what about the trouble, testing, pain, hardship in our lives? How do we deal with these without losing heart? Only God can help us, friend... In this life, where our “outer man perishes” we will experience the “existential pathos” of the life of faith. That is the test. We may feel abandoned by God, or forgotten, or of complete insignificance, or sinful, vile, hopeless, confused, and so on, and yet the heart of faith cries out: “Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him” (Job 13:15). Faith is able to see beyond the temporal to the eternal (2 Cor. 4:18) It finds comfort in God’s blessing to endure the ambiguities of this world. May the LORD God Israel, Yeshua our Messiah, strengthen us all. Amen. [Hebrew for Christians]

6.4.21 • Facebook

Today’s message (Days of Praise) from the Institute for Creation Research

June 6, 2021

The Whole Heart

“I will praise thee with my whole heart: before the gods will I sing praise unto thee.” (Psalm 138:1)

When we sing or testify of our praise to God, it should not be perfunctory or repetitive rote praise. It should be sincere, wholehearted, personal praise. We should especially praise Him for revealing to us eternal truth, as written in His inspired Word. Further, we should not hesitate to praise our true God, even amidst all the false “gods” of this world. As verse 2 says, He has magnified His Word above all His name! The Holy Scriptures are our greatest physical possession of all the things in this world, for they alone will “not pass away” (Matthew 24:35). His Word is “for ever...settled in heaven” (Psalm 119:89).

This phrase, “the whole heart,” occurs a number of times in the Bible, especially in the psalm of the Word, Psalm 119. Note the testimony of the psalmist in this great psalm.

1. “Blessed are they that keep his testimonies, and that seek him with the whole heart” (v. 2).

2. “With my whole heart have I sought thee: O let me not wander from thy commandments” (v. 10).

3. “Give me understanding, and I shall keep thy law; yea, I shall observe it with my whole heart” (v. 34).

4. “I entreated thy favor with my whole heart: be merciful unto me according to thy word” (v. 58).

5. “The proud have forged a lie against me: but I will keep thy precepts with my whole heart” (v. 69).

6. “I cried with my whole heart; hear me, O LORD: I will keep thy statutes” (v. 145).

Thus, we should “keep his testimonies” (v. 2), “keep thy law” (v. 34), “keep thy precepts” (v. 69), and “keep thy statutes” (v. 145) with our whole heart, for the good and sufficient reason that He is our Lord and has given us His eternal Word, magnified above all His name. HMM

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