I invite you to turn to acts chapter 7 as the text for the message this morning.

The passage is too long to read all at once.

I wouldn't have time to say anything else if I read all 53 verses.

So what I want to do is to try to guide you through this passage and help us understand what Stephen in this longest of all speeches in the Book of Acts

is trying to say to us as well as to the Jews in the council to whom he speaking.

It might help for you to hear what happened as I was meditating on the application yesterday.

Asking the Lord, now Lord, this could be just historically interesting for those who have that sort of bent.

But I don't want it to be merely historically interesting.

I wanted to have relevance for me and for this church today.

And would you show me at what points it should be brought to bear.

And the two points at which it came home most powerfully

was this book and that new worship center. And so hold in your mind the question as I walk through

what bearing might it have on this book and my editing of it and I'm moving into that worship center.

And I think if you're listening carefully you will begin to pick up relevances for those two

things and then I hope more issues in your own life to whom this

to which this relates

first let's get the setting before us.

V. 14 of chapter 6, we learn the charges.

We saw them a couple of weeks ago, but let's remind ourselves,

Stephen is under arrest, he's before the council. What are the charges?

Verse 14, chapter 6. We have heard him say that this Jesus of Nazareth, number one, will destroy this place, this temple. Number two will change

the customs of Moses that he delivered to us. Now those are the two charges. Stephen is against the temple and God and

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