Pastor's Ponderings: Tuesday Bible Study on Acts of the Apostles 7:37-53 (October 28, 2025)

October 28, 2025:  Tuesday Bible Study on Acts 7:37-53

Good morning my dear friends. Please continue to pray for Becky Prasek as she undergoes testing to reach a diagnosis that will help her specialists to plan a course of treatment. It looks now like it may well be a nerve getting too crowded in her spinal column, so pray for great test results for Becky. Please also pray for Mark and Linda Backer who live in Wisconsin. We pray for their health throughout the past six months, and that they will be able to return to Tucson for the winter that can be so brutal up north. Pray too for Liisa and Rudy Mendoza who are helping their friend Itai return to California from the Dakotas where he has been a professor of signing. His brain cancer and its presence in his auditory system cannot tolerate yet another cold winter. We all knew that the peace between Israel and the Gaza Palestinians was tenuous at best. Today Israel will once again break that peace accord and begin bombing in the Gaza Strip. It is interesting how much Stephen's continuing telling of the Hebrews in the wilderness, and how once again their worship of the Temple rather than the LORD whose habitation is beyond human restraints and who has guided them across the ages to the time of Jesus, and then in the time of the new Christian Church in Jerusalem,  and yet through it all the Jews remain disobedient to their God.  We should all note that the tone of Stephen's preaching and revelation of the truth of how the people who God has loved takes a turn in today's passage that becomes aggressive and confrontational with the Sanhedrin. What Stephen comes to at this trial, and because of the leaders' continuing aggression toward those whose faith has been placed in Jesus as the Savior and Messiah, is a place in which the Spirit motivates him to confront the unfaithfulness of these powerful Jews.

Here are the important parts of this rather long continuation of Stephen's homily (message) which ends in his railing against those who have rejected God's only begotten son:

1. Stephen makes it very clear that the Hebrews/Jews have been constantly disobedient and rebellious against the LORD who has blessed them time and again with sheltering and protecting them, even when their very next opportunity to act faithfully is rejected once again for an easier human way to go.

2. The Hebrews/Jews have had the most amazing opportunities to be thankful and joyful in the LORD, and yet even after God's carrying them through the wilderness, and providing the manna and quail and water during their journey, in Moses' absence on Sinai for 40 days they become impatient and insist that Aaron build them an idol of their own making which they are more than prepared to worship. a false god. And here, even though Stephen does not say it directly yet, his inference is that the very same thing has happened with everything the Hebrews/Jews have undertaken to do, including the abject rejection of Jesus Christ, the Messiah of God. As Stephen continues it becomes obvious that the temple itself has become a false god for these people.

3. Stephen strongly insists that the Hebrews/Jews have persistently acted to limit God. And they have come throughout the history of the building of the temple, to worship the temple itself instead of worshiping the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob who the temple has been built to honor, rather than contain and restrict God to the Holy of Holies.  The misunderstanding of the Hebrews/Jews about their relationship with God is truly difficult to accept. Of course, the building where we worship, our church at 115 N Tucson Blvd, has, from time to time, been a place where people have treasured the building and faceted glass windows more than the God who they are meant to represent.  The beauty of our worship space, the powerful presence of the temple in Jerusalem, are both meant to draw us close to our God who has done everything for which we could ever have hoped, in this life, and the next! This past Sunday we had the prophetic passage 31:31-34 from the prophet Jeremiah that God would be in our very minds and hearts, and there would no longer be the need for anyone else (human) to teach us the Way. When we worship a thing made of human hands, we are truly limiting our LORD and failing to let His living presence in us take us beyond the things made of human hands. Church buildings are important as we grow and learn and live more deeply in Christ. They are a place which surrounds that learning and growth with the Love of God through the people of faith who surround and encourage our own faith journeys, but as beautiful as our stained glass is, it should never be worshiped as if it is God!  If the day comes to release ourselves from the buildings at American, worship can certainly happen elsewhere, just like the barber shop where American got its start.

4. Stephen charges the leaders of the Sanhedrin of following in the footsteps of their forebears, the people of their heritage, who like them, also rejected, despised, and hated the prophets who the LORD sent to them, and even worse, they arrested, beat, and murdered God's Son who had come to bring Holy Grace and Mercy to God's children AGAIN as a once and for all act of reconciliation!   However, instead of seeing Jesus as the great blessing that he was, they instead saw Him as the enemy of their status, wealth, and power.

Stephen is anger filled as he speaks these words, but he is also filled with grief. What sadness that once again Stephen, an intelligent and compassionate child of Jesus Christ, who is prepared to be servant who would bring timely justice to those who needed food, and whose life was filled with the Spirit and Christ's great Love, and even though it broke Jewish Sabbath Law, what he did never broke the law of God's Love for His children's needs.

With Love in Christ, Pastor Kim        Next Monday the first Martyr.