In a sermon, “The Story of a Stiff-Necked People” John Piper unpacks Acts 7, our reading for today:
Two Ways Stephen’s Message Ministers to Us
What we need to do today is let Stephen’s message minister to us in at least two ways. He says that Israel “Always resists the Holy Spirit.” This means, first, that God had been working for Israel again and again with repeated acts of mercy and patience and long-suffering throughout their history. And it means, secondly, that they had repeatedly hardened their hearts and stiffened their necks and stopped their ears to the work of God.
So I think God wants to speak to us about two things today:
1. Encouragement
He wants us to be encouraged by the story of his patience and long-suffering with a rebellious people—that he is “slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and forgives iniquity and transgression and sin” (Exodus 34:6–7). He is not eager to punish. He is eager to forgive and move on with repentant and humble people.
2. Warning
He wants us to be warned that there is an end to his patience. There is a resistance to the Holy Spirit that goes so long and so far that God hands a person over into the power of his own sin. You see this in the words of verse 42: “God turned and gave them over to worship the host of heaven.” So the second way God wants to minister to us today is to awaken us to the awesome truth that we can resist him so long and want other things so much more than we want him, that he finally turns away, stops convicting, stops giving the gracious feelings of guilt, and hands us over entirely to our sin (cf. Romans 1:24, 26, 28) and ultimately to the demonic gods like Moloch and Rephan (v. 43).
Both Are Words of Grace
And please remember that both the promises of God’s patience as well as the warnings of his judgment are words of grace this morning.
Knowing God through His Word ... Day by Day 