Acts 7:56

Acts 7:56

The Witnesses for the Glorified Son of Man.

I. When Stephen spoke the words of our text, the truth which he had been proclaiming in all his discourse, which he had perceived to be the subject and climax of all revelation, presented itself to him just as actually as any visible thing presents itself to the eye. It was not a doctrine of the Incarnation which he acknowledged in that hour a mere doctrine would have stood him in little stead. It was a person who stood before him, a person upon whom he might call, in whom he might trust; he was sure that it was life and substance he was in contact with, not hard forms of the understanding. It was a Son of man on the right hand of God, an actual mediator between man and God, one in whom God could look well pleased upon man, in whom man could look up to God and be at peace. Was it not an opening of heaven which disclosed such a union of manhood with Godhead? Did not that opening of heaven foreshadow a shaking of all religions of all polities upon earth which stood on some other foundation than this?

II. St. Stephen's witness is the witness which the Church of God is to bear upon earth. The true martyr the martyr who deserves honour and reverence from men bears that witness and no other. Religious bodies are wrong only in pretending that they have been faithful stewards of the Divine message of men; that their divisions, hatreds, persecutions, have not marred it, broken it, inverted it; that each has not often been used by the wisdom of God to bring forth some witness of it which the other has suppressed or mangled; that there has not been a cry rising out of the depths of the human heart often a cry of bitter wailing and cursing against them all which has also, if we interpret it according to the teachings of Scripture, the same significance. Judging according to human calculations, there never was a time when such men as Stephen were more demanded, or were less likely to appear. But we are not to judge according to human calculations. This is God's own cause, and He will take care of it. In places of which we know nothing, by processes of education which we cannot guess, He may have been preparing His witnesses. They will speak with power to the hearts of men who need a Son of man. They will be sure, even when their own vision is weakest, that the heavens will one day be opened, and that the Son of man will be revealed to the whole universe at His Father's right hand.

F. D. Maurice, Sermons,vol. v., p. 59.

References: Acts 7:56. T. de Witt Talmage, Christian World Pulpit,vol. viii., p. 56; E. M. Goulburn, Acts of the Deacons,p. 165.Acts 7:57; Acts 7:60. Expositor,2nd series, vol. iv., p. 428. Acts 7:58. Spurgeon, My Sermon Notes, Gospels and Acts,p. 186. Acts 7:59. J. Pulsford, Three Hundred Outlines on the New Testament,p. 111; Parker, Cavendish Pulpit,vol. ii., p. 181.