← ArchiveSunday, August 10, 2014DateAugust 10, 2014Speaker—TextActsPassages in this sermonActs 614:51Acts 6:715:13Acts 721:59Acts 2027:56Hebrews 1034:02Hebrews 1234:12Acts 1:840:35TranscriptClick any line to jump there.0:00I just don't know how I'm going to follow that. Great job, choir. Thank you for leading us to the throne this morning. Let me open this up just with a word of prayer real quick.0:30Let's pray. Lord Jesus, once again, thank you, Lord, for today. I pray, Lord, you would remove me out of the way. You would speak through your servant this morning. And, Lord, I do pray that as we hear around us about rumors of war and about the persecution, Lord, of the church, not only overseas, Lord, but even here today in our own country.0:48Lord, I pray, Lord, that we would be reminded that victory is yours. Lord, I pray, Lord, that we would know that, we'd understand it. And as we look at Scripture this morning, we would realize it. And it's in your name we pray.1:18Amen. Now, I want to do something. I know you guys just opened your eyes. I want you to close your eyes again. I want you guys to just imagine with me just for a moment. If you will, if you are driving down the road, just close your eyes, if you're driving down the road, and your car starts to sputter, and it stops. You've got your family with you, and you're in a dark road. It's a little chilly out, and you're like, my goodness, what am I going to do here?1:45And you start contemplating, okay, I could get the family out of the car, walk down the road for a couple of miles, maybe, to the nearest gas station. Or I could stay here, and hopefully someone would come and rescue us. Well, minutes go by. Minutes turn into 30 minutes, and you're like, you know what, we've got to move on here. And you decide to take your family and walk down the road.2:12And as you're walking down the road, you look behind you, and you realize, I can no longer see the car. And in front of me is just kind of darkness. And all of a sudden, you hear this. I know a lot of you laugh.2:29I kind of figured that would happen. You can open your eyes now. A lot of you are laughing because you're not there. Hypothetically, you were there. But what you just heard was a pack of wolves.2:58And I know there's not that many around this area, probably in Alabama, maybe in North Alabama. But just imagine, if your family was in danger like that, what would you do? Would you run? I know a lot of men here, they carry weapons. Some of you are probably carrying right now, truth be known. And you would probably have that weapon, and you would defend your family if you could. But a pack of wolves is something a little different.3:27If I change the story a little bit, and you're walking alone late at night, and you see a flock of sheep, you would pet them. Because they're not dangerous. Okay? They're not dangerous at all. And so, one of the storylines in the Bible is that God is the good shepherd. Jesus says that he's the good shepherd. And the church is what? The flock of sheep.3:56And so we're all like sheep. So God is the good shepherd. Christians are like sheep. And the church is like a pen where we have come together for protection, for equipping, for learning. Pastors and other leaders are supposed to be the shepherds. They're our wolves. These wolves come in different forms. Sometimes, these wolves are from within. Some of you here this morning, you're wolves.4:26I don't know who you are. But you're here. You have your agenda. You have your opinions. And so, you're here. And we have to deal with that. Some wolves are governments. Some wolves are terrorists that want to kill Christians. Some wolves are in packs.4:52Some are singular. And so, we have wolves today. We have different wolves that are attacking, always attacking, always attacking the church on a consistent basis all the time. And so, this morning, what I wanted to do is I wanted to kind of open up in the book of Acts is where we're going to be at. We're going to talk about the life of Stephen. Stephen, as you know, was the first Christian that was martyred.5:18And the word martyr, basically, I mean, he was killed for his faith. I did a little study on wolves, and they are very fascinating. I think we need to kind of understand just a little bit about how wolves work because they're all in Scripture. If you look at God's Word, you can see that wolves are, that people, individuals, and even groups of people are compared to wolves.5:44And so, I did a little study on wolves, and this is what I found out. I found this little study, and there's this shepherd that is in France, in the French Alps, and they did an interview with her. And this is what this shepherd said. The last couple years, this shepherd has been on the front lines in battle with these beasts. And the wolves have hunted almost, the wolves were hunted almost to extinction in France in the 1930s.6:11So, none of those, that was almost wiped out in the 1930s. But after being labeled an endangered species, they started coming back. And now, these wolves are killing 6,000 sheep a year. And the government is allowing only a few of them to be hunted. And so, the question was asked of the shepherd, can we domesticate them? And the answer was a resounding, no, you can't.6:41They're too wild to domesticate. And this is what the shepherd says. The wolves are clever, he says. They spend long hours watching, watching and learning the flock's movement. They wait and attack. When they attack a flock, especially when they get inside an enclosure or a pen that's supposed to protect them, in other words, the church, he says this is very insightful.7:10They go berserk. Once they get in where the sheep are, they go berserk. They won't stop killing as long as there is a sheep or a lamb still moving. It's not about the food. It's about the death. In general, we have maybe one that is actually eaten and several others that they've just killed for the sake of it.7:36What's frightening, says the shepherd, is wolves' singularity purpose is to kill the sheep. He spends a lot of time looking after his sheep, but people also do other things. They have to take care of the kids. They have to do the laundry, take care of the house, do different things around the house. But, he says the wolf's concentration is on how he's going to attack the flock next.8:03And this is the last words of this shepherd. All the time, all the time, they are watching us. All the time. And so, again, wolves come from different areas. Wolves come from, like I said, governments. They come from cults. They come from different forms. And the goal of these wolves is to cause confusion, fear, and ultimately to scatter the church.8:28In Iraq, Christians are being persecuted in ways never seen before in a hundred years. Reports of beheadings, torture, rape, and in Syria. Last week, Christians were crucified in town squares. Here in the United States, an atheist group that have recently sued the IRS. I know you guys probably have been hearing about this, and I've been kind of keeping up with it because I'm very concerned about the church here in the U.S. An atheist group went to the IRS and sued them and says,8:58Hey, you know what? These pastors are actually having political speeches in their churches. And so, we want you to do something about it. So, they sued the IRS, and they actually won the suit, but nobody knows exactly what's in it. And so, what concerns me is the term political speech can be defined as anything. In other words, if I'm up here and I speak out against homosexuality, according to what God's Word says about it in a sermon, that can be how you're, that's political speech.9:27Or if I speak out against abortion, using God's Word, hey, that can be political speech. And then we get fined, they take us off the tax exemption as a church, and I get arrested. Let me just say this. They'll have to arrest me. Okay? They'll have to arrest me. They'll have to cart me off, put me in jail. Because I'm not going to stop.9:58Just not. And you, as a church, I hope that you realize that we're in a day that is closing in on us. I had an opportunity to speak to a missionary to England. I was sitting at a table, and I think it was a first-priority banquet. And there's a missionary from me. I've never met a missionary to England before. He's from the States here. And he said, I'm a missionary to England. I said, man, I'm really intrigued by that.10:27What do you do in England? He goes, well, we help churches. We help plant churches. And he said, you know, there's no more steeples in England. I said, what do you mean there's no steeples? He says, well, they're all storefronts. And he said, we can't call ourselves churches no more. We have to call ourselves charitable charities, basically is what they have to call themselves. And so what we are is we're pseudo-underground. And so we've had to learn how to function in a hostile environment.10:54And hostility means that we're fine if they catch us evangelizing. We can't go into the schools indefinitely. And there's a lot of pressure on us. And so we have to redo things. We have to rethink things. And he says, you know, we have a 15-year plan. And that intrigued me because I'm a strategist. I love plans. He says, man, we've got 15 years. I said, 15 years? And he says, yeah. He says, year 12. From this date, we will be sending missionaries to here, to the United States,11:25to teach us how to conduct church in a hostile environment. He says it was year 15, but we had to move it back because things are happening here a lot quicker than expected. One day, one day we will be in a hostile environment. We will have to learn how to cope with that. It's coming. Now, we get to God's word in Acts. And the question is, will we persevere?11:55More Christians have been martyred in the 20th century alone and all the past centuries combined. In Fox's book of Martyrs, this week I've read this, these questions. And here's some questions to us today. Would you suffer and die for Christ? Would you suffer persecution, poverty, and prison for Christ? Would you endure cruel tortures that take your mind and your body at the very brink of death and beyond? Would you persevere?12:25Would you hold fast to the profession of your faith without wavering? Would you stand boldly without shame and confess Christ as Lord to your own and to your family's pearl? And here's the deal, ladies and gentlemen. I think most of us in the United States, we really don't know what that's like. If we look at what's happening in other countries right now, we really don't have a clue at what that's like. We've never been persecuted to that point before. And so I'm not trying to stand up here and say, you know, I'm not trying to put blame on us.12:54I'm not trying to make us feel shameful for that. Because guess what? I'm glad that we do live in a country where we do have freedoms. But let me tell you something, we need to take advantage of those freedoms now while we can. Because there's other places that are looking at us going, man, I wish I could do that. I wish we could do that. I wish we had a church like this. I wish we could go and have those freedoms. How do you respond to the possibility for dying for Jesus?13:27It might actually be more helpful to ask, are we willing to live for Jesus? So let's take a step back. We can talk about it if you want to die for Jesus and be theoretical about that. But are you willing to live for Jesus? Maybe even a step before that, what are you living for today? What are you living for today? Which is really the question I want to ask us today.13:55It's going to kind of be the theme for today. What are you living for today? What are you doing today? How are you living for Jesus today? And so if we are going to lunch after the service, and you're sitting around, and you're talking to your friends, ask that question, man, what are you living for today? What are you as a believer in Christ, what are you living for today? What's the driving vision in your life?14:24See, every one of us, Christian, non-Christian, young or old, black or white, educated, uneducated, is living for our own life for a story. For a particular vision of the good life. And whatever story we're living for, whatever story we're living out of shapes our lives. It shapes our pursuits, our identities. It shapes everything about us. So what story are you living for today? And we're going to see in Acts chapter 6 and part of 7 today, the life of the example of Stephen.14:51It's a beautiful and forceful witness of one story. One story, one Lord who is ultimately worth it. He's worth living for. He's worth dying for. So Acts chapter 6, verse 7. Here we go. And the word of God continued to increase. And the number of the disciples multiplied greatly in Jerusalem.15:20And a great many of priests became obedient to the faith. Now, take a look at verse 8. And it says, and Stephen. I want to stop right there. Chapter 6, verse 8. And Stephen. And I don't want to stop there. The word and lets us know that there's some dots that need to be connected there about Stephen's life. There's some things that we need to look at about Stephen's life. Stephen's life and death are actually a pivot point in the entire book of Acts.15:48Everything kind of changes. Everything kind of hinges right there on the entire book of Acts. And if you go back to 1.8, most of us know what 1.8 is. And that's where we're going to be a witness in Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. And it's basically the gospel being preached right there. People multiplying from Galilee to Rome. And that's the story. Stephen's life is fundamental in the story that's being told in the book of Acts. Verse 8 says, and Stephen, full of grace and power, was doing great wonders and signs among the people.16:189 says, and then some of those who belonged to the synagogues of the freemen, as it were called, and of the centurions, and of the Alexandrians, and of those from Sicilia to Asia, rose up and disputed with Stephen. But they could not withstand the wisdom and the spirit with which he was speaking. So the picture that we get here is that he's such a powerful individual.16:42He's such an articulate guy. He's such full of wisdom that they just didn't know how to handle him. And as we're going to see later, it kind of enraged them a little bit. They just didn't know how to handle this guy. They would try to pin him up, and he would quote scripture at them, and they'd get angry about that. And let me just say this.17:15Stephen is just not a martyr. He was a powerful leader in the church. A lot of times we look at the story of Stephen, we go, well, he was killed. He was martyred for his faith. It's not just that. Before that, he was a powerful leader in the church. A very powerful leader. A very huge leader. A very important leader. He was one of the shepherds there, one of the deacons there. His witness, his life was unbelievably powerful. And even reminds you some of Jesus.17:44And the same things that happened to Jesus happened to Stephen again and again. One of those is that his ministry was so powerful that his critics became so frustrated. They went behind the scenes to try to kill him. Verse 11. Then they secretly instigated men who said, we have heard him speak blasphemous words against Moses and God. And they stirred up people and the elders and the scribes, and they came upon him.18:10And by the way, you're not supposed to bear false witness. Here they're violating one of their Ten Commandments. And so they're violating one of their own Ten Commandments. In other words, guys, this is a mob scene. These are wolves that are literally watching Stephen. They're watching his ministry. They're watching his life, and they're hearing about him, and they're getting angry about it.18:38Because the gospel is starting to spread. The gospel is starting to get out. And they're like, man, we've got to do something about this. And so they begin to devise a plan. And they start plotting. They start making up things. This is a mob scene. They grab Stephen because they're mad. And because they don't know how to talk to him in a way that makes them look better than him.19:04And they seize him, bring him before the council, and they set up false witness. Verse 13 says, They put forth thought witness who said, This man never ceases to speak words against the holy places and the law. Verse 14 says, For we have heard him say that this Jesus of Nazareth will destroy this place and will change the customs that Moses delivered to us. Verse 15 says, And gazing at him who sat in the council saw his face was like an angel.19:32So the goal is very simple here. The goal is very simple. Discredit the minister and destroy the ministry. Go after the shepherd and you'll destroy the ministry. That's their goal. Go after the man of God and you'll start to destroy the ministry. And that's always Satan's plan. That's always his plot. And here, even in this time, even in these days right here, those early days of the church,20:02the good old days when all they did was eat meals together, study the Bible and baptize new believers, they're in the rearview mirror. They're in the rearview mirror. Ladies and gentlemen, we're almost there. There will be a day when we may not be able to go to grandma's house after church and eat fried chicken for fear of persecution. I'm not trying to scare anybody, but I'm just saying that there will be a day.20:34And now the opposition has come. The wolves have found their way to the door of the church, and they have devised their plan to take down the shepherd. And it's a really big deal to speak against Israel at this particular time. It's a very big deal to speak against those people. So they're saying that Stephen is blaspheming.21:04Again, the accusations are eerily similar to what Jesus went through. As a matter of fact, if you were to look at the trial of Stephen, you'd almost compare it to what Jesus went through and go, man, they're very similar. They're very similar. The charges of Stephen, just like Jesus, are blasphemy. Teaching a different religion, teaching a different Lord, a different story of salvation.21:33The high priest hears this. And again, this is the Supreme Court. This is the high priest. This isn't a district judge. Okay, this is the high priest. The Supreme Court of the nation that he's standing before. In chapter 7, verse 1. Chapter 7, verse 1, it says, And the high priest said, Are these things so? What you have in Acts, chapter 7, is one of the best courtroom scenes in the history of the world.22:01They dragged this guy out full of power and wisdom and accused him of something that's false. And his response was brilliant. It was absolutely brilliant. Now, here's the deal. For the sake of time, we're not going to read the entire sermon. But we're going to get through a little bit of it. And I want to end up about verse 50, 51. Okay, so if you're looking at this whole story going, Oh my goodness, Brad. We're not ever going to get out of here.22:30I'm going to summarize it. Okay. What he did was he literally took the Old Testament and he made a sermon. And he started preaching the Old Testament to these guys. And guess what? They know the Old Testament like the back of their hand. These guys were scholars. As a matter of fact, it is said that if you take a pen and you take a scroll and you take a letter in the scroll22:57and you punch it through it, they will tell you what every letter hits and the word that it hits. That's how well they know their Bible. That's how well they know the Old Testament. And so here's Stephen, a young guy, by the way. Some of you can call him a rookie. Man, he starts to preach this sermon. And this is what he does. It's brilliant. Abraham is about Jesus.23:26Israel is about Jesus. The patriarchs is about Jesus. The Exodus is about Jesus. Moses is about Jesus. Joseph is about Jesus. David is about Jesus. Solomon is about Jesus. The temple is about Jesus. The priesthood is about Jesus. The kingdom is about Jesus. All about Jesus. In other words, he says, God, it's all these guys that you're talking about here.23:54They're pointing you to Jesus. Every single one of them. You're reading the Old Testament wrong. That's what he's telling them. You're taking the Old Testament and you're just reading it for what it is. You don't know the whole story here. The whole story is about Jesus. It's all about Jesus. He's saying the story that we're living for,24:27whatever it is, in their case, it was the story of the Old Testament, is incomplete and therefore misshaped and the wrong story without Jesus in the center of it. It all points to Jesus. The wolves are listening. They're listening and Stephen, by the power of the Holy Spirit, he's a good shepherd and he doesn't know it yet but he is preaching his funeral. Wouldn't that be awesome? Some of you are looking like,24:59what? To preach your own funeral. I'm not talking about video. I'm talking about, you're preaching and you're about to die. And by the way, Stephen didn't know this. He didn't have that insight and this is why it's important to know your Bible, by the way. He wasn't, it wasn't like he was prepared. Like I have been this week, I knew I was going to preach this morning. Okay, so guess what? I've been preparing. I've been studying. Trying to get all the distractions and everything out of the way25:29and trying to focus and study. Stephen didn't have that luxury. Stephen had no idea that he was going to be before the High Council. And I wonder, if you have a time, read that sermon. And that's what it is. It's literally a sermon. It's brilliant. He takes the entire thing and articulates it in such a way that he just makes it pop. And these scribes, these guys will look at him like, we have no idea25:59what to do with this guy. It all points to Jesus. Here are the final words. I love this. Verse 51. You stiff-necked people. You stiff-necked people. Now, if that don't... I mean, he's not trying... Before, he wasn't trying to tick them off. He was basically just laying out the foundation.26:29But man, this right here is like, okay, I'm done. Y'all are listening to me. So here, I'm just going to let it go. You stiff-necked people.26:43Right here, it would have been easy for Stephen to become a wolf. Let me explain what I mean by that. He stayed a shepherd. It would have been real easy for Stephen to go the other way. Right here. Because I know. I'm young. And sometimes, Stuart, sometimes I just go, I'm just going to tell him like it is. I'm just going to tell him I guess it's just that youngness in me, I guess. I don't know. I'll be 40 this year.27:12Is that young? So you're like, PJ's like shaking his head. No, man. It's not. You're old. You're old. My students are like, you're 40? Really? I didn't know that. But anyway, sometimes it's really easy. It would be really easy for me to let my flesh take over and at this point in time become a wolf. Sometimes for even my own gain. But Stephen didn't do that. He remained27:42He remained a shepherd. Looking at his fast approaching murder in an effort to make his life similar to transition from a shepherd to a wolf. The Holy Spirit warns of this in Acts chapter 20. We're speaking to the Ephesian elders and it says this. Men will rise up from your own number distort the truth and lead many astray. The ESV version says it like this. Some of you elders28:12are going to become wolves and ravage the flock. It would be very easy for leaders to do this. We've seen this through church history. Some of you may even know of churches where this has happened. It's a sad, sad place. That's why it's important that the man of God needs to be in tune and in his word and have people surrounding him and understand that, man, people are watching you. His flock was watching him.28:41They were outside, man, they were watching this whole thing go down and a lot of them probably were angry like, man, why don't he just tell them the way it is? You stiff-necked people. You ever try to walk a dog with a stiff neck? You find out that it's actually walking you? I had a friend of mine have these huge dogs that are new families. They're almost like horses and they would pay me to go walk them. I was, I don't know how old I was,29:1112, 13 I guess and I was a runt and I would try to walk these dogs and it was like, I walked them once. Now I'm done and I said, here, you can have your money back. I'm through and they had two of them. Hey, you have to walk them once at a time. I could walk them both because they would drag me down the road. You stiff-necked people. God says that his people are often and at least sometimes just stiff-necked. And he goes on.29:42He ticks them off even more. You stiff-necked people uncircumcised in the heart and ears. You always resist the Holy Spirit as your fathers do. So now he's picking on not only their genealogy so he's insulting their fathers and grandfathers because they were law-keeping legalistic hypocrites. Then verse 52, it says, which of the prophets did your fathers not persecute? And they killed30:13those who announced beforehand the coming of the righteous one. And by the way, that's Jesus whom you have now betrayed and murdered. Verse 53, you who received the law and as delivered by angels did not keep it. In verse 54, the very first part, now when they heard these things, they were what? Enraged. Enraged. Maybe if he'd have said it differently.30:43Maybe if he'd have been a little nicer about it. Maybe if he would have packaged it just a tad bit differently. They may have not have been as enraged. Ladies and gentlemen, the truth of God's word sometimes hits our heart just right. And if there's sin there, it's going to hurt. I've said it like this before. I tell my students this. Some of them, they're like, man, that hurt, Brad. And this is what I say.31:13The Holy Spirit is almost like a rock. And you throw it into a pack of dogs and the dog that yells the loudest, guess what? That's the one the Holy Spirit hit. In this case, Stephen, he's just throwing all kind of stuff at him. And it's hitting every single one of them. And it's cutting them. It's cutting them hard. It's cutting them bad. So maybe if he would have packaged it differently, maybe it just31:42wasn't so hard. The truth, sometimes, out of love, in the conviction of the Holy Spirit is hard sometimes. And so this is what they look like. It gives a physical picture of them right here. And they ground their teeth at him. They ground their teeth at him. Like a wolf, hair up, teeth is out. What do you do? You're in danger. It's an32:12It's an involuntary response to a ticked off wolf to attack. They're preparing to bite, devour, and attack. And these men now, demonically inspired, by the way, are like animals. They're like wolves and their teeth is showing. But look at this, verse 55, very first part. But he, full of Holy Spirit. Stephen was a great man because he submitted to an awesome Lord. He held his own. He held his own. And so32:43And so when you start getting attacked by your faith, how do you respond? Because the flock is watching. Your friends are watching. You respond out of anger or you respond out of truth. Now, sometimes the truth can be construed as anger. But if it's the truth of God's word, it'll get through. Apart from submitting to a33:13great God, there's no such thing as a great man. He is now going to be like Jesus by the power of the Holy Spirit as Jesus was empowered. The second part of 55, he gazed, and this is awesome right here, he gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. And he said, behold, I see the heavens open and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God. Now, I read that and it hit me a different way this time for some reason. I don't know why. I'm reading that and33:42that and I'm at home Friday by myself. We sent the kids off with a sitter so I can study Friday and it's like, wow. I'd never really seen that before and I talked to Chris briefly about it and it just hit me differently this way. If you look at scripture, don't turn there, but Hebrews 10, 12, this is what it says, but this man after he had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down at the right hand of God. Hebrews34:12Hebrews 12, 2, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who was for joy that was set before him and adored the cross, despising the shame, has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Guess what? Stephen, looking up into heaven, sees Jesus standing. And ladies and gentlemen, it's the first standing ovation in heaven because the Lord knows that one of his is about to come home. The Lord knows that one of his is standing up for the faith.34:42the faith. The Lord knows that one of his is fixing to endure some persecution. So guess what? Ladies and gentlemen, church, when you're persecuted, Jesus stands for you. He stands. And I don't know why it hit me so differently. I've read that before and I'm like, man, he's standing. He's standing up. His applause, his approval, his well-done Stephen. They can35:13They can persecute us, they can throw us in jail, but our Lord will be standing. Verse 57, they cried out with a loud voice and they stopped their ears. They were done. Done. Stopped their ears. They cried out with a loud voice. They stopped their ears. They would listen no more. And listen to this. This is really interesting. And they rushed together at him. They rushed together. It wasn't35:42It wasn't singular. It was the whole pack. Mad, demonically inspired, the entire pack. Now I want you to understand something. These were not atheists. They were maybe politically charged. They were religious men. They were religious people. religious people. They knew their Bible, Old Testament, like the back of their hand. But they36:13But they were so hardened. They were so turned off to the truth. And that's what we're seeing today. That's what we're seeing today in this world. People don't want to hear the truth because they're more interested in their own lives and what's going on in their own lives and their own sin. Verse 58. Then they cast him out of the city and they stoned him. And the36:43And the witnesses laid down their garments at the feet of this young man named Saul. There's the alpha wolf. There's always a leader. Always a leader. There's the alpha. Saul, as you know, will one day become Paul. Saul was contracted to go after Christians and do this very thing. Persecute them. Kill them. Verse 59.37:14Verse 59. And as they were stoning Stephen, he called out, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit. Father, unto your hands I commit my spirit. Same thing the Lord Jesus said on the cross. Verse 60. and falling to his knees, he cried out with a loud voice, Lord, do not hold this sin against them. And when he said this, he fell asleep. These are Stephen's last words. He's on37:46He's on his knees. The men have encircled him. The wolves have come for him. And they're going to stone him. And you need to understand that this was not legal. What they're doing here is very illegal. It's not even according to their own customs. It's not how it's supposed to go down. So what they're doing is very illegal. They're so mad and so enraised. As a matter of fact, in the Old Testament, when they would stone you, they actually give you a chance. As they were stoning38:15were stoning you, by the way. They'd take you, they'd throw you out, and they would literally stand up on a ledge like this right here. They'd take two large stones and throw it at you. If those didn't hurt you to the point you couldn't cry out or you weren't dead already, you could plead. And then they'd just stone you. Later on, it got more effective. They'd bury you waist deep. That way you wouldn't run and squirm. But here they just drug him out. Guys, this is mob violence. This is a mob38:45a mob scene. A bunch of religious men from the synagogue. So now they're going to murder him. And they don't seemly have a legal right to do so. There's no trial. This is just mob violence. And this is exactly what they done to the Lord Jesus. They argued with him. They couldn't win. They accused him. Nothing sticks. Falsely accused him. And they couldn't discredit him. Therefore to silence him, to shut39:14to shut him up, we've got to kill him. We've got to kill him. We've got to get rid of him. The men who threw the rocks were like pitchers coming out of a ball pen. And by the way, did you notice where they had taken their cloak off and laid it at the foot of Saul? I wanted to know why they did that. So I did some studying on it. Have you ever tried to throw a baseball with a coat on? It's not very effective, is it? So what they39:44would do is they'd take their cloak off, throw it down to the feet so they could throw more effectively. And they'd usually throw it down to the feet of the person, the magistrate or the person that was the accuser. In this case, Saul. Guess what? Saul was just kind of standing in the background. He was there. So they're coming out of here like a ball pin and they're just pitching as hard as they can. And there's40:14And there's Stephen with the face of an angel filled with the Holy Spirit, praying for his enemies to be forgiven just like Jesus followed. Forgive them. The persecution that followed this, the gospel would go out to Judea, Samaria, to the ends of the earth. Acts 1.8 at this point in time was accomplished because of the death of Stephen. They had just awoken40:44just awoken a sleeping giant called the church and the gospel went out. Let's conclude by thinking about Stephen's life and death and what it teaches us. What it teaches us is there's only one story, the gospel. There's only one story, the gospel, and there's only one Lord who really is worth dying for. And that's the story that you're living out. And the question is, is Jesus your Lord?41:14your Lord? Is Jesus Christ your Lord? Are you living for him? Jesus is just following the example, or Stephen is just following the example of Jesus. That's all he's doing here. He's just following Jesus, and it got him killed. He's just following Jesus, and it got him put on trial, arrested. He's just following Jesus' example. And let's41:46And let's turn this around just a little bit. Let's just say that you're in that same car. you're driving down the road and your car stops. You're with your family. And you're like, man, I got to get out of here. I got to go somewhere down the road. And you get out and you start walking. It's dark. This time, instead of wolves, you hear what sounds like soldiers and42:15soldiers and gunfire. you think to yourself, man, what in the world is going on here? Let's just suppose hypothetically here. What if ISIS or the Islamic state was to make their way down 411? Let's just say they've been watching us like wolves. They've been kind of camped out, just kind of observing us,42:44observing us, just kind of watching us, just kind of checking us out a little bit. And all of a sudden the day comes, the plot comes, and they attack. Here's the big question. Would they come after you because there's evidence that you're a Christian? Would they mark your house because there's evidence that your family is a Christian home? Would they bypass this43:14bypass this church because it's deemed ineffective? or would they burn it to the ground because we're doing what we're supposed to be doing? Are you living for Jesus today? Are you living for Jesus? Jesus himself said it this way. If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow43:43and follow me. For whatever would save his life will lose it. But whoever loses his life for my sake will save it. What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world? Jesus is standing ready to save us today. He's standing ready to receive us. What we need to understand is like Stephen learned, Jesus is steadfast and44:12steadfast and his love is better than life. So who are you living for today? What is the purpose of your life? And that purpose should be if you're a believer is Jesus. It's Jesus. Would you pray with me?44:36Lord, my prayer today is that by looking at the life of Stephen, we would understand and we would know that you are an awesome Lord, worthy of following. And my prayer is Lord that we would have a burden in our hearts45:06our hearts to live for you. To live for you in such a way that it is evident. It's evident around us. It's evident in our lives. It's evident in our homes that we're living for you. And Lord, my prayer is that one day when we're all up there, that you would say to us,45:36to us, well done. well done. With every head bowed and every eye closed this morning, where are you at in your walk with Jesus?45:56Is there a walk with the Lord? Maybe you're here this morning and you're like, Bradman, I'm not sure. I would hope that there is something there, but I've never really made that commitment. I'm going to ask you to step out. If you don't know who the Lord is, if you're like, Brad, I don't know. If I was to die today on my way home, I don't know. I'm not certain that I would spend eternity in heaven with Jesus. Do not leave this46:25leave this room without making that certain. Maybe you're here and you've been a Christian for years. But you haven't truly stepped out and you're not truly living it. I'm going to ask you to come and just spend some time with this altar just praying. Lord, help me. And maybe you're here this morning and you're looking for a place to46:55plug in, a church. A group of people together here in the same pen worshiping our Lord. You come too. Lord, take this service and do what you will. In your name I pray. Amen. Would you stand?47:32youMore sermons on Acts →
