One Day He Will

The sermons we read in the Book of Acts are one of its greatest treasures. They’re wondrous for several reasons, but maybe what’s most precious is the way they display a thoroughly Christian understanding of the Old Testament. 

We see this right away in Peter’s sermon at Pentecost (Acts 2). He boldly proclaims Jesus, interpreting the prophet Joel and the Psalms in light of the gospel. We see it later in Paul’s sermon at Antioch, where he recounts the history of Israel and their hope in David’s son (Acts 13). But still, Stephen’s ‘sermon’ in Acts 7 stands alone in its survey of the Old Testament. 

Speaking to Sanhedrin, Stephen starts with Abraham in Genesis 12 and tells the story of Israel through Moses to their most current events. The Jewish leaders were as faithless as their idolatrous forefathers. Just as they killed the prophets who announced the Messiah, the Jewish leaders of Stephen’s day betrayed and murdered the Messiah himself. 

Stephen says all this, to their faces, and Luke tells us: 

Now when they heard these things they were enraged, and they ground their teeth at him. (7:54)

They were in a murderous stupor, you might say, moments away from crying out with loud voices, stopping their ears, and bashing Stephen to death with stones.

But Stephen, Luke says, is as sober as they come. He’s full of the Holy Spirit — which means empowerment, not drunkenness (see Acts 2: 13, 15), and Luke says:

But he, full of the Holy Spirit, gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. 56 And he said, “Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.”

Stephen saw Jesus.

Now, notice that nothing about Stephen changed. He was not in a trance, like Peter was later in Acts 10:10, when he had the vision that declared all foods clean. Stephen gazed up from where he was standing on this earth and he saw into a dimension of reality that is normally veiled. Stephen wasn’t dreaming. He was actually looking into the heavenly dimension, and he saw Jesus there.

And Jesus is still there. He’s in the same place now as he was then, in that same dimension, and we’d be able to see into it if God wanted us to. 

I was thinking about this one evening last week, looking up into the sky with the kids, imagining the unseen dimensions that lay in front of us, wondering what it would be like if God peeled back a few layers for us like he did Stephen.  What if the Father let us see Jesus from here?

Is it wrong to want to see him so badly? Isn’t it okay to tell him we want to see him? Sometimes I wish he’d just walk through the wall and make everything right. I want you to want that too. One day he will.