Seeing Jesus in the Midst of Resistance
Edited directly from the sermon transcript of Matthew Miller’s message at Highland Hills Church of Christ on May 3, 2026. Adapted for length and readability while preserving his voice and message.
I don’t know if you’ve ever read a story that just stayed with you. There are stories I revisit over and over because each time I get something a little different from them. Beowulf probably isn’t at the top of everybody’s reading list, but it’s one of those stories for me. I love that story. Just read it. It’s great.
Well-told stories keep appealing to us because they help us see things. We hear other people’s stories and encounter experiences different from our own. They help us empathize. And sometimes a story we know very well lands differently.
We especially experience this in Scripture. Studying the Bible is like chasing the horizon. I see it out there and think, “If I just get to that point, I’ll touch it.” I get there, turn around, and realize how vast the land is that I’ve covered. Then I look ahead, and there’s another horizon.
You can hear the stories of creation, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and the disciples over and over and never exhaust their depth. The events don’t change, but your understanding deepens. Something grows inside you as you keep encountering these stories.
When we get to Acts 7, we see this kind of clarifying moment. Opposition to the growing church has been increasing. First there was questioning, then imprisonment. We’ve also seen internal pressures: dishonesty and complaints that threaten to divide this young movement. Division is always near at hand because a unified church portrays Christ so brightly. Before he died, Jesus prayed that his people would be one as he and the Father are one.
At the beginning of Acts 6, seven people are chosen to serve. These are everyday ministers. Stephen is one of them. He is full of faith, preaching and teaching about Jesus. As he gains success in sharing the gospel, someone doesn’t like it. The religious leaders had hoped this whole Jesus movement would fizzle out. Instead, everywhere they turn, they hear his name.
So Stephen is brought before the council, and he tells them a story they know very well. He begins with Abraham, then Joseph, Moses, and the tabernacle. There is nothing new on the surface. They’ve heard all this. But perhaps they haven’t heard it quite this way before. It calls them to change.
The charge against Stephen is that he is speaking blasphemous words against the holy place and the law. What does he do? He begins with Abraham and directs their attention to something foundational: Abraham did not begin by choosing God. God approached Abraham.
The story begins with God revealing himself, making the first move, and being faithful. As Stephen continues, that pattern becomes clearer. Joseph was rejected and betrayed, yet God was with him. God’s presence is not limited. In real suffering, real waiting, and real experiences of life—even what feels unresolved—God is present.
After a very long time, God sends Moses. It’s easy to skip over those hundreds of years when we read, isn’t it? Those were hundreds of real, toilsome years. Moses is called and sent by God. He isn’t perfect, but God speaks to him and through him. Yet Stephen reminds the council that this is the same Moses their ancestors rejected.
The issue was whether people recognized what God was doing. When they didn’t recognize it, they resisted it. Stephen then speaks about the tabernacle and the temple, showing that God’s presence is bigger than the places on which they are so focused. God has consistently been faithful and revealed himself, whether people saw him rightly or not.
Up to this point, you can almost picture the council nodding along: “Yes, those people were resistant. You’re right.” But in verse 51, something shifts. Stephen tells them why he has been telling this story: “You stiff-necked people.”
It’s easy to be courageous from afar, isn’t it? Hashtag activism is convenient. It makes you look brave, like you’re doing something. They could agree that people in the past had resisted God while thinking, “But we understand what he’s doing.” Then Stephen says they are doing the same thing. Joseph was rejected. Moses was resisted. The prophets were opposed and killed. Now they have betrayed and murdered the Righteous One.
This story concerns how they are seeing and responding right now. They are blinded by their resistance to God’s advances in their lives and to Jesus’s presence before them. They have the information. They know the story. They have heard the truth. The problem is that they aren’t seeing it rightly.
These people spent their whole lives thinking about God and searching for him, at least in some sense. Perhaps they were using God to hide from God.
When they hear Stephen, they are enraged. There is no receptivity, no stepping back to reflect on what he has said. Sin reacts when it is exposed. But in the middle of their anger, we see a different picture in Stephen. He is full of the Holy Spirit. He looks up. He fixes his gaze on heaven and sees Jesus.
Stephen didn’t suddenly become bold in this moment. Go back to chapter 6. Why was he chosen? Because he walked with God. He was an everyday minister before he became what many call the first martyr of the faith. Amid chaos, conflict, threat, and danger, he sees with clarity and keeps his focus on Jesus.
Remember Peter stepping out of the boat? We can be hard on him because he started to sink, but he was the only one who stepped out. We have to give him that. He was fine until he took his eyes off Jesus.
Stephen keeps looking toward Jesus even as the crowd takes him outside the city and stones him. He entrusts himself to Jesus and asks that their sin not be held against them. As he sees Jesus, he becomes like him. Jesus offered forgiveness from the cross. Stephen reflects that same character.
Jesus said, “Blessed are the peacemakers,” and spoke of those persecuted for righteousness. He called his followers the salt of the earth and the light of the world. I don’t know a better example than this. It’s one thing to say you believe something. It’s another to take that belief to a stoning, to a cross.
We may never experience what Stephen did. I certainly hope you don’t. But we will experience pressure and opposition, both internal and external. The more clearly we see Jesus’s way and align our lives with it, the more costly it can become. A comfortable, convenient, cultural Christianity may go unchallenged. Living as Jesus lives will cost us.
Yet what we see here is that faithfulness is never wasted. At the end of Acts 7, the witnesses lay their clothes at the feet of a young man named Saul. Even amid the worst, God’s presence is at work. Saul is standing there, witnessing Stephen tell them about Jesus and bear Christ to the world. In the midst of terror, there is the light of God accomplishing his purpose.
As we think about the stories we tell—the story of the world and the story of our own lives—we need to ask: What are we seeing? How we answer may depend on another question: Whom are we seeking?
When God’s truth comes through his word, conviction, or our circumstances, are we courageous and humble enough to see his way rightly? When he reveals something broken that needs healing, the temptation is to lash out because we thought we had hidden it so well. But that revelation is part of God’s active work to heal us and bring us to wholeness in Christ. Don’t turn away from it.
It doesn’t always arrive dramatically. Sometimes it appears in the things we avoid, explain away, or delay responding to. What would it look like to turn our gaze toward Jesus in every part of our lives, including the parts we would rather not consider? To let that gaze shape how we respond, endure, and face pressure?
Stephen offers us an invitation to see what God is doing clearly, to follow Christ, and to seek his face.
