Acts 7:44-53. Stephen concludes his testimony before the council by reminding them that Moses made the tent of meeting according to God's instructions as a place where God would commune with Moses and his people. The people brought that tent to the lands God gave them when He dispossessed other nations from them. The tent of meeting continued to be the place where the Jewish people communed with God until David asked leave of God to build the temple, and his son Solomon did so. Even so, God "does not dwell in houses made with hands." Indeed, His hands made all of the things that we use to build houses for Him! Stephen concludes by saying the council, and the Jews in general, are stiff-necked people. They always resist the Holy Spirit, as their history shows. Which of the prophets, he asks, did the Jewish leaders not persecute, including killing John the Baptist, who was sent to prepare the way for the Righteous One? And they have even now betrayed and murdered the Messiah himself, these men "who received the law as delivered by angels and did not keep it."

Stephen is talking to the council, but his words apply to all of us. We are all stiff-necked people. Speaking for myself, it took a long time for me to wake up and see the awesomeness of God and the awfulness of my sin. I was comfortable, I thought I understood and practiced my faith, but I was like the Jews here - I just didn't see how wrong I was in so many ways. I needed the Holy Spirit to wake me up, which He did once I stopped (unwittingly) resisting Him.

So Stephen's words are a good reminder to me that this journey of the Jews from Abraham up to the days after Jesus' Resurrection (and beyond!) is the same journey I am going through. It is the same journey, I think, we each go through, and the same journey the whole human race is going through. We are all the council at some point in our lives, and, hopefully, we will all get to be Stephen at another point.