In 'Our Lost Condition,' Peter Allison explores Stephen's defense before the Sanhedrin in Acts 7. Stephen criticizes the Sanhedrin for their stubbornness and idolatry towards the temple, which they valued over God's true plan. Allison draws parallels between Stephen's time and today's believers, emphasizing that everyone has been in a 'lost condition,' oblivious to spiritual danger, at some point. He highlights the concept of being 'stiff-necked,' or stubborn, and how this attitude prevents people from recognizing their spiritual shortcomings. Allison explains that true circumcision is of the heart, a metaphor for spiritual renewal and openness to God's word, contrasting it with mere outward religiosity. He discusses the resistance to the Holy Spirit and how God's revealed will can be resisted, while His secret will cannot. The sermon calls for self-reflection, urging believers to recognize their spiritual condition and respond to the Holy Spirit's conviction with repentance and gratitude for God's grace and salvation.

Our scripture is Acts chapter 7. And I will read beginning at verse 51. Stephen has been giving his defense, his answer to the charges that were brought against him. He is standing in front of the Sanhedrin. And here we pick up His words at verse 51.

You stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, you always resist the Holy Spirit as your fathers did, so do you. Which of the prophets did your fathers not persecute? And they killed those who foretold the coming of the just one, of whom you now have become the betrayers and murderers, who have received the law by the direction of angels and have not kept it. And when they heard these things, they were cut to the heart, and they gnashed at Him with their teeth." These testimonies which Jehovah has commanded are righteous and very faithful. Heavenly Father, may You bring Your Word to us this morning, not with human wisdom, not with eloquence in speech, but in the power of your Holy Spirit.

May we be transformed today by your Word. May it sanctify us. May it renew us. May it comfort us where we are in sorrow and convict us where we are in sin. May it instruct us where we are ignorant.

And may, Lord, we rejoice to see You as You are revealed to us in Your Word. May Your Holy Spirit testify to us what You have said in Your Word. And I ask that You would sanctify my sinful lips this morning to this task. In Jesus' name, Amen. Well, there's a whole genre of videos in all the various online repositories of videos that show scenes and situations that look very safe and very normal moments before disaster strikes, catching everybody completely off guard.

See, these videos show people in scenes that are completely oblivious to the disaster that is about to unfold around them or on them. It could be a rogue wave that appears seemingly out of nowhere and catches everybody on the beach off guard, washing all their stuff away. Or it could be a material failure, physical failure of something where something unexpectedly breaks or collapses. Or it could be something that everybody sees coming at them, but are powerless to do anything to stop it, like a huge tanker coasting into the dock crane and crashing into it. Well, this condition of being Oblivious to impending disaster is the exact condition of the people in this account that we have read.

Not Stephen, but the Sanhedrin. They are lost. But they are completely oblivious to the danger that they face. You know, Stephen's answer dealt first with the false accusations. And he spends quite a bit of time, the whole chapter, all the verses, all 50 verses, dealing with these charges.

And the focus of those charges against Him dealt with the place of the temple in God's plan of salvation. And it was His teaching on the temple and its significance and what would happen to it that was the primary source of their rage and anger against Him. He was saying that the temple is no special place that God needs to build His Kingdom. And this was a long-standing idol for them. Even Ezekiel, hundreds of years earlier, had said that the Jews made the temple in idol.

Ezekiel 24 says, Speak to the house of Israel, and say, Thus says the Lord, Behold, I, that's God, I will profane my sanctuary. Your arrogant boast, the desire of your eyes, the delight of your soul. This is what the temple was to them. It was the delight, it was the boast. It was their desire, it was their idol.

God says, and you, Son of Man, will it not be in the day when I take from them their stronghold, their joy, their glory, the desire of their eyes, and that on which they set their minds. See, this temple was an idol all the way back in Ezekiel's day. And they didn't appreciate Stephen's message that this temple was passing away. They didn't recognize what God was doing when He tore the veil that separated the Holy of Holies from the Holy Place. He tore it in two at Christ's crucifixion.

So Stephen is answering this from the Scripture, showing that what he is preaching is God's plan and God's Word. And it always had been. He wasn't bringing some new message to them. But when he's finished answering the charges of their blasphemy for preaching the temple was going to pass away, then he turns in the passage that we just read to directly address their lost condition. And so I've titled our message this morning, Our Lost Condition.

Not their lost condition, but our lost condition. And I don't mean to imply by that that everyone here is currently in a lost condition. Not at all, although there may be some that are. But you see, this is the condition that all mankind were in at some point. And that does include you and me.

This lost condition is the way we were conceived. We were conceived in sin. We were conceived under the wrath of God. We were conceived as sinners. And so this condition that Stephen describes here in these few verses is our lost condition.

But if by the grace of God you are no longer under the wrath of God, then this message is a reminder of what we once were. And it's a reminder, and it should be a reminder to us of just how much Jesus loves us in giving Himself for us. And it's a reminder of just how great the grace of God is to us. And we need these reminders of just how great the grace of God is to us. How precious His love is for us.

It's a reminder to thank Him for His mercy and His grace to us. Because we were once in this same lost condition, and He saved us. Didn't have to. It was His mercy. It wasn't anything in us.

It wasn't because we were better or smarter or we were born into the right family or had the right bloodlines. It was His mercy. Undeserved favor. And so, recognizing our lost condition should remind us to thank the Lord for that. But also, if you're still living and I don't see any dead people out there, we still have traces of the old nature within us.

It doesn't rain, but it does rear its ugly head. And it can create some of these similar responses to the truth. But there also may be here this morning those who are still under the wrath of God, but oblivious to that danger. And it is people in this condition that Stephen addresses. Who exactly is he addressing?

The people that Stephen is addressing here are members of the church. These are upstanding churchgoers. They were circumcised. Today, you would be baptized. They ate the Passover on the right days and in the right ways.

Today, we celebrate the Lord's Supper. They had extensive portions of Scripture committed to memory. They tithed of all their increase. They fasted regularly. The people that Stephen addresses were not just church members.

These were ordained church members. These were people who had been ordained as we read this morning, set apart by the Lord to minister in His temple. Paul describes them this way in Romans 9. It's to whom pertain the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the service of God. This is the temple service and the promises.

Of whom are the fathers? Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, the patriarchs, the kings, David, Jehoshaphat, Solomon, Hezekiah, Josiah. These are the fathers from whom, according to the flesh, Christ came. But Stephen is telling these people that they're lost. They're not just lost, they're oblivious to their loss and their lost condition.

Of course, that is the way we all were once until the Holy Spirit makes us alive and able to recognize the sword that is suspended over our heads. Or the metaphor we would use today would be the gun, the loaded gun pointed at our heads. So how does Stephen describe these people? These lost people oblivious to their condition. The first thing that Stephen says of them is that they are stiff-necked.

That means they are stubborn. It's the only place this word is used in the New Testament, but it's used quite frequently in the Old Testament. Exodus 33 for example. God said to Moses, say to the children of Israel, you are a stiff-necked people. I could come into your midst in one moment and consume you.

Now therefore take off your ornaments that I may know what to do to you." Or in Deuteronomy 9. That was at the beginning of the 40 years in the desert. This is at the end in Deuteronomy 9. Moses says, Therefore understand the Lord your God is not giving this good land to possess to you, He's not giving this to you because of your righteousness. For you are a stiff-necked people." God told Moses directly a couple of verses later, I have seen this people, and indeed, they are a stiff-necked people.

Stiff-neckedness describes someone who won't listen to counsel. Who doesn't listen. It's dangerous in anybody, but it's especially dangerous in those who lead. They don't listen to counsel because they think they know what you're telling them. They already know it.

They know it better. They know it before you did. They know how it applies. And you don't. Proverbs 29 says, "...He who is rebuked and hardens his neck..." Who has a stiff neck.

Stubborn. "...he will suddenly be destroyed, and that without remedy. See, the person who has a stiff neck doesn't listen when people try to talk to them about the problems that they see. That's one sign of a lost condition. Someone who is oblivious to their condition.

They don't listen because they don't see anything wrong. They don't see their lost condition. And they are completely oblivious to it and unwilling to listen to anybody who would tell them otherwise. So we can ask ourselves, are we committed to listening and learning? Do we answer people before they finish their sentences?

Do we jump to conclusions or get upset? Do we take seriously when people are critical of us, even if we don't think there's any merit to it? Do we take it seriously? Do we write it down and pray about it? Even if we think it's off base.

Husband, do you learn from your wives? Or do you think you don't need to? Or isolation, Do we recognize that isolated individuals don't produce good fruit? If we've isolated ourselves from all counsel, we are very vulnerable to a fall. Are we willing to make admissions publicly when we've spoken publicly in error?

Are we quick to acknowledge our sins? To admit our failures? Or how we have hurt or neglected someone. Are we quick to give grace as much as we want to know that grace has been given to us? Have we, in a sense, fired that inner lawyer that always wants to justify our mistakes.

See, these are some of the marks of stiff-neckedness. Do we recognize our weaknesses and boast in them more than our strengths? Do we recognize that we need the gifts of other people? That they have strengths where we don't? Do we glory in the infirmities so that the power of Christ, in our infirmities, so that the power of Christ can rest upon us and be manifested in us?

Invested in us. Are we committed to prayer? When we pray, we are recognizing that we are unable, and incapable to do anything in ourselves. And when there's a lack of prayerlessness, it's often the result of the thinking that We don't need that right now. There's something more important that we need to be doing.

The second characteristic that Stephen gives of these lost after being stiff-necked is that they are uncircumcised in hearts and ears. Uncircumcised in hearts and ears. What does that mean? Circumcision, speaking metaphorically of course, Circumcision is in the physical sense the ceremonial removal of what symbolizes sin passing from one generation to the next generation. It's a sign.

Circumcision was a sign that pointed to our need to be cleansed of our sin. It symbolizes purification, the putting off of the sins of the flesh, the handwriting of ordinances taken out against us. It symbolizes those being put off by the cross. In circumcision, people were also identified as being members of the covenant, part of the being identified with God, Jehovah. And they became identified as members of the covenant with all of its blessings as well as its sanctions.

Circumcision is a seal of God's covenant of grace that He made with Abraham. A seal of it. It's a mark of authenticity. That's what outward circumcision is. See, everything that's promised in redemption is represented in circumcision.

And when the Holy Spirit then brings the reality of what is promised, when the Holy Spirit brings regeneration and brings the new birth, then that is the inward circumcision of the heart. And so Paul says, that's why Paul can say in Romans 2, verse 28, For he is not a Jew who is one outwardly in circumcision of the flesh, nor is circumcision that which is outward in the flesh. But he is a Jew who is one inwardly, and circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit, not in the letter, whose praise is not from men but from God." See, Paul is saying that a Jew is somebody who has been born from above, who's been regenerated. This could be just as easily read of baptism. He is not a Christian who is baptized.

He is not a Christian who is one outwardly, nor is baptism what is outward in water. But He is a Christian who is one inwardly, and baptism is that of the heart and the spirit. It's the baptism of the Holy Spirit, regeneration. It's not in the letter. See, outward circumcision in the flesh doesn't cleanse anyone.

It's only the inward circumcision of the heart that accomplishes that. And that's the work of the Holy Spirit in changing us, giving us life where we were dead in our sins. And that's why even in the Old Testament, Israel was commanded to circumcise their hearts. Circumcise the foreskin of your hearts, Deuteronomy 10, 16 says, and be stiff-necked no longer. You see, these two are connected.

Deuteronomy 36, And the Lord your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your descendants to love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul that you may live. So they were commanded to circumcise their hearts in the same way that we are commanded to repent. They weren't being commanded to regenerate themselves, but rather commanded to repent. But Deuteronomy 30 says it's God that circumcises the heart. Jeremiah 4, 4, Circumcise yourselves to the Lord and take away the foreskins of your heart, you men of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem, lest my fury come forth like fire." You see, to be uncircumcised in heart is to have only an outward religion, an external religion that can to the outside look fine, but God who looks on the heart can see the difference.

The outward religion professes the right things and sometimes appears to do the right things. But it's not coming from the work of the Holy Spirit within them, but rather from the flesh. So He calls them uncircumcised in heart and in ears because they are not willing to hear what the Holy Spirit says. They're uncircumcised in heart. They haven't been circumcised by the Holy Spirit.

They haven't been regenerated. Their heart hasn't been changed, and their ears are closed. And the third thing He says about them is that they continually resist the Holy Spirit. You might think, well, how can they resist the Holy Spirit? Doesn't the Bible say that God can't be resisted?

Yes, it does. Many places, right? Isaiah 46, verse 9. Remember the former things of old, for I am God and there is no other. I am God and there is none like Me declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times of things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand and I will do all My pleasure." God is saying very clearly that He knows from before the foundation of the world everything that will happen.

And He will do everything that He has declared. It will stand. It will happen. It can't be resisted. Or Numbers 23, God is not a man that he should lie, nor a son of man that he should repent.

Has he said and will he not do it? Has he spoken and will he not make it good? Rhetorical questions, The answer is obviously yes. What God has said He will do, He does. His dominion, Daniel Nibchineser had these words after he recognized the sovereignty of God over his own life.

He said, His dominion is an everlasting dominion and His kingdom from generation to generation. And all the inhabitants of the earth are reputed as nothing. He does according to His will in the armies of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth, and no one can restrain His hand or say to Him, even, what are you doing? God's will cannot be resisted as Pharaoh found out. God hardened his heart.

God determined beforehand that He would make an example of Pharaoh. That his name might be known throughout the earth, and he did. And so Paul ticks this up in Romans 9 and he says, You will say then, why does God still find fault for people when they sin? For who has resisted His will? We can't.

God can't be resisted in His will. Isaiah 45 says, I create light and I create darkness. I make peace and I create calamity. I the Lord do all these things. And so it's passages like these that lead us to make a distinction.

A distinction between the secret will of God and the revealed will of God. This secret or decreed, what God has decreed from before the foundation of the world to come to pass cannot be resisted. Everything that He has said, that He has determined will come to pass. He creates calamity and no one can change one iota of what God has decreed to do, what He intends to do. But on the other hand, there is His revealed will.

That which He wants us to do. It's what He commands us to do. Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Do not murder. Do not commit adultery.

Don't steal. Don't lie. Don't covet. Have the Lord for God. And this will, of course, we all recognize is not always obeyed.

That's why Jesus teaches us to pray in the Lord's Prayer to pray that His will would be done on earth as it is already being done in heaven, because it's not being done on earth. God doesn't want people to kill each other or to lie to each other, but people do. And so in this sense, God's will is resisted by those who rebel against God. God desires all men to repent and believe. How do we know that?

Because God commands. Paul said in Athens, God now commands all men everywhere to repent. All men everywhere. All men without exception. Sometimes all can refer to a class of people, but there it refers to everyone.

All men everywhere to repent. And we know that God wants people to do what He commands them to do. But we also know that according to His secret will, He has not ordained everyone to salvation. We just confess that this morning in our confession. He doesn't intend to accomplish that.

So we have these two aspects. And of God's will, His revealed will, which is resisted by those who are lost in their rebellion against God, in their resistance to Him, and His secret will or decretive will, which cannot be resisted. Now these two aspects of His will converge in eternity, because then His revealed will will be obeyed. He will accomplish what He has taught us to pray for. He's taught us to pray for His Kingdom to come, for His will to be done on earth as it is in heaven.

And He will accomplish that. Jesus said, I didn't come to destroy the law, but I came so that the law would be fulfilled in his sermon. He says, till heaven and earth pass away, not one jot or one tittle will by no means pass from the law till all is fulfilled He didn't come to he didn't come to destroy the law he came to fulfill So this law will be fulfilled and what His revealed will will be perfectly obeyed in eternity in heaven. But Stephen says here that these lost are resisting the Holy Spirit. As your fathers did, so do you.

They are rebelling against the Spirit. And that leads to the fourth characteristic. The fourth characteristic of the lost is that they are lawbreakers. The commandments of the Lord are too burdensome. They're too restrictive.

They're too hard. Or they might be considered no longer relevant. There are many rationalizations and justifications that people go through to justify their law breaking. And this breaking of the law leads to the rage of the nations that Psalm 2 speaks about. Why do the nations rage together against the Messiah to overthrow His reign.

See, it's this collective rejection of the law of God by a culture of lost people under the conviction of the Holy Spirit. That's the rage of the nations. This resisting of the Spirit and breaking of His laws, flaunting His laws. The lost, the oblivious lost, are at enmity with God and with His people. The lost become enraged at the truth.

When God's Word is brought to the lost, it creates intense conflict. Because Galatians says, for the flesh lusts against the Spirit and the Spirit against the flesh, for these are contrary to one another, so that you do not do the things that you wish. These are contrary to one another. They war against each other. Romans 8 says it this way, For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, for to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace because the carnal mind is enmity against God.

The carnal mind is at war with God and it rages against the truth under the conviction of the Holy Spirit. So we should expect that. We should expect the lost to rage against the truth. We should at least be prepared for it. We should also pray for the Holy Spirit to bring conviction because that He does and to bring submission to His will for that He does.

But you see, sometimes even believers can respond wrongly to this pain of conviction. Are there some things in the Word of God that get your dander up or make your blood boil or just irritate? See, that's the old man rising up against the truth of the Word of God. That's the pain also that comes from the conviction of the Holy Spirit. The conviction of the Holy Spirit brings pain, and the response of the old nature to that pain is to either deny denial, to live in denial, or to attack this perceived source of pain, to attack the Word of God, or the messengers that bring that word.

That's where that saying comes from, don't shoot the messenger. It's the message that is not liked. And so when people are under pain, because they feel the conviction of the Word of God, they will often attack the messenger. And that's exactly what happens as Stephen brings their true condition, according to the Word of God, to them. They are cut to the heart and they gnash their teeth at Him.

They're filled with rage Because the Word of God is powerful. And it's bringing pain to them. It's bringing conviction. They realize the truth of what He's saying. And they attack Him.

And they kill Him. But even believers sometimes can fall into this of attacking the messenger under the pain of the conviction of the Word of God. Asa is an example. He's a good king. He loved the Lord.

But he erred. He made an alliance with Samaria, the Israelites to the north, the ten tribes. And Hanani the seer came to Asa the king of Jude and he said to him, because you have relied on the king of Assyria and have not relied on the Lord your God. Sorry, I said he made an alliance with Syria. He made an alliance with Syria, and he said he hasn't relied on the Lord, your God.

Therefore, the army of the king of Syria has escaped from your hand. Were the Ethiopians and the Lubim not a huge army with many chariots and horsemen? Yet because you relied on the Lord, He delivered them into your hand." He reminds Asa of a time earlier when there were bigger armies, stronger armies, and Asa had trusted in the Lord, and the Lord had delivered them. And this messenger bringing the word to Asa said, For the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the earth to show Himself strong on behalf of those whose heart is loyal to Him. And in this you have done foolishly, therefore from now on you shall have wars." And Asa, instead of repenting as David did when he was confronted by God's messenger with his sin, instead of turning in faith and repentance and confessing to the Lord, Asa was angry with the seer, and he put him in prison.

He was enraged at him because of this. And he oppressed some of the people at that time. In other words, this one sin of hardening his heart against the conviction of the Holy Spirit led him into other sins, into the sins of oppressing other people. See, brothers and sisters, there is only one true solution, one true response to the pain of the conviction of the Holy Spirit when we are confronted with some aspect of sin in our lives, some aspect where we have grieved the Holy Spirit. And that is not to attack the messenger, not to rationalize away the law of God, but to confess, to come into agreement with the Word of God.

That we are sinners. That we were born in sin. And apart from the grace of God, there is no hope, there is no other answer. Apart from Christ's sacrifice for our sin, and apart from His righteousness, As we sang this morning, give me your righteousness. We aren't righteous.

We're not good. We're not holy. We are just lost. But In Christ, there is cleansing, and there is freedom, and there is joy and deliverance, because He does deliver. He delivers us from that pain.

He removes it. He removes the guilt of our sin. He removes the shame of our sin. He removes our sin. He becomes sin for us.

And He gives us life. May He do so. Heavenly Father, we thank You that You send messengers with Your Word to us. Your Word that steps on our toes, that condemns the sin within us, that points, Lord, to areas where we have grieved You. We ask, Lord, that we may respond in faith and in obedience.

That we may respond by confessing and acknowledging that Your Word is true. And that we are sinners. And that there is no hope for us apart from you and your work and your righteousness. Lord, we love you and we thank you for your great salvation. May we never take that for granted.

May we never cease to thank you and to adore you and to love you for so great a salvation. Through Jesus Christ we pray. Amen.