Acts 7:56

“And said ‘Look! I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God!’”

                This is a type of verse that I tend to skim over simply because it repeats something from the previous verse like Leviticus explaining the different types of offerings which are formatted the same, or when God tells a prophet to say something, then the Bible records the prophet repeating exactly what He said, giving me no new content to suck marrow out of. But there’s got to be a reason for why God inspired Luke to write the exact words that were described in verse 55, so it’s not for me to skim over. Yahweh exclaims that His words “shall not return to Me void, But it will accomplish what I please, and it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it.” (Isaiah 55:11) Amen Lord, let this verse do what You please it to do!

                In this passage, Stephen just gazed the glorious sight of the Son standing at the right hand of the Father. Witnessing such a majestic image, his mouth could not be found shut in quiet satisfaction, but this image of Jehovah transposed into joyful exclamation. Stephen didn’t just start to explain what his eyes were beholding, but he tried persuading his persecutors to join him in his gazing- “Look!”

All of these men refused his invitation to lift their eyes, being blinded by their pride and wicked hatred for Stephen similar to their father, Cain in the murder of his righteous brother. But to find out later on, at least one man in the crowd ended up seeing what Stephen saw—Saul of Tarsus, later to be transformed into Apostle Paul, the spearhead of the gospel into the Roman Empire. No doubt when Paul later wrote about Jesus being at the Father’s right hand in the eighth chapter of Romans, the memory of Stephen’s prophetic cry seared into his mind and ended up regretting not accepting Stephen’s invitation to look at His eventual Savior. Though his heart hardened to Stephen’s words and didn’t grasp the impact and profundity of his testimony immediately, the puddles of Stephen’s words still rested on Saul’s rough stone heart. But when Jesus finally pierced and melted his hard heart, the words of Stephen’s testimony soaked into Saul’s new regenerated heart and fueled Paul’s joy and passion for the glory of God which God used to propel the spear of the gospel into the hearts of sinners in the Roman Empire.

Application: Though when I may share the gospel to stiff-necked, hard-hearted sinners, I can still have confidence that God won’t allow His word to return back void. I can always get encouraged that if and when a stubborn unbeliever gains faith in Christ, he will remember my faithful example and be inspired to take the spear of the gospel through lands and hearts that have never been pierced by the healing, forgiving, graceful, powerful and profound love of the Lord Jesus Christ.