Well, my apologies for having to maintain a distance like this. It does not feel good having to stay in that little closet and not interact with you and then just come out here. But it is what it is. I feel much, much better than yesterday. But I don't want to risk getting any of you sick, obviously. Our text today is Acts 7, 54. And we're going to read through 8, 4 of the next chapter. I think it's on page 1096 or 1097 or so of the Bible's in the seats. So last time we were in action, it's been a few weeks now, we read Stephen's brilliant defense before the Sanhedrin after he had been arrested, he had been called in because they could not argue against him and they couldn't contend with him in the realm of ideas and biblical truth. And now this week, we're gonna see their reaction to his long speech and basically him calling them out as murderers once again. So we'll start reading at verse 51 of chapter 7. We're going to pick up right at the end of his speeches where he kind of makes that turn for going through Israel's history. And then he goes into directing it at them. And he levels these accusations against the Jewish religious leaders. And then we're going to read through verse 4 of chapter 8. You men who are stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears are always resisting the Holy Spirit. You are doing just as your fathers did. Which one of the prophets did your fathers not persecute? They killed those who had previously announced the coming of the righteous one, whose betrayers and murderers you have now become. You who received the law as ordained by angels and yet do not keep it. Now when they heard this, they were cut to the quick, and they began gnashing their teeth at him, But being full of the Holy Spirit, he gazed intently 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 opened up and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God. But they cried out with a loud voice and covered their ears and rushed at him with one impulse. When they had driven him out of the city, they began stoning him. And the witnesses laid aside their robes at the feet of a young man named Saul. They went on stoning Stephen as he called on the Lord and said, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit. Then falling on his knees, he cried out with a loud voice, Lord, do not hold this sin against them. Having said this, he fell asleep. Saul was in hearty agreement with putting him to death. And on that day, a great persecution began against the church in Jerusalem. And they were all scattered throughout the region of Judea and Samaria, except the apostles. Some devout men buried Stephen and made loud lamentation over him. But Saul began ravaging the church, entering house after house and dragging off men and women. He would put them into prison. Therefore, those who had been scattered went about preaching the word. Let's pray. Lord God bless us today through the testimony of your servant Stephen. May his Christ-likeness encourage us all to strive for the holy steadfastness that we see displayed in his life and his death. Make us receptive to the truth found in these scriptures. Bless our gathering with your presence. May it be glorifying to you, faithful to the text, and helpful for your people. Please send your spirit to work in us now. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. It was actually several weeks now that we covered Stephen's extended defense before the Sanhedrin. And he finished that speech with these accusations that we have read that he made against the Jewish leaders three times now. Three times this has been thrown right back in their face, as it should have been. And the restraint by the Jews that we saw in the previous arrests of the apostles, namely Peter and John that got arrested twice and said this same thing to them both times, those previous restraints the Sanhedrin had have been cast aside, obviously. So this text marks the end of a brief, uncomfortable, yet peaceful coexistence of Judaism and the church. The reason this tense situation couldn't really endure was because the apostles were not willing to stay silent about the evil actions of the Jewish leadership. They weren't just going to agree to disagree on this sort of thing. They're going to confront them. And they did so every time. The church was confrontational. The church was unbridled in their witness that the Sanhedrin tried to back them off, tried to bridle them, but they were unbridled in their witness. In this instance, Stephen not only brought up their guilt for the death of Christ, but he also used that Old Testament language that they would have been familiar with to accuse them of being unregenerate. That's how we understand it. He told them in verse 51 that they were stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, which is clearly about regeneration. This imagery is common for us in the New Covenant, but it's not actually new. That sort of thing wasn't new on the scene. It came from Deuteronomy 10, 16, when God told Israel, he said, so circumcise your heart and stiffen your neck no longer. Called them away from rebellion, away from sin, basically regenerate yourselves. This is, of course, one of those impossible commands, much like Christ's command in the Sermon on the Mount. He tells us in Matthew 5, 48, therefore you are to be perfect as your heavenly father is perfect, right? It's one of those type of commands. Like here, this is the standard. Clearly, you cannot do it. Remember, the demand of the law does not imply the ability of man to obey that demand. does not imply that ability, which is why God promised later in Deuteronomy, after he told them to basically circumcise their own heart and ears, he tells them in Deuteronomy 36, it says, moreover, 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 so that you may live. Basically, the great commandments that we are told about, he says, I will do it. I will circumcise your hearts. I will cause you to be regenerate. And of course, the famous new covenant promise that we see in Jeremiah 31, 33, he says, but this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord. I will put my law within them, and on their heart I will write it, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. A promise to regenerate. Now, that's not because regeneration is new to the new covenant. He's just saying, I'm going to make a new covenant where everyone in that covenant will be regenerate. Whereas the old covenant kind of had unbelievers within it, and it was breakable. So this is why we see faith and repentance and sanctification as gifts of God. Even going back into the Old Testament, their regeneration was a gift of God. It was something that God had to do to them. And Stephen tells these men, they are not circumcised of heart. They are not on God's side. And indeed, he says, they resist the Holy Spirit. They're always resisting the Holy Spirit. These men who consider themselves to be paragons of Torah obedience are actually lawbreakers, the ones that would consider themselves to be the top of the top, best of the best. They do not observe the law that they study and teach to the people. They're not law observers. And that is most recognizable. in the fact that they killed those that announced the coming of the Messiah, which is what he tells them. You kill them all. You always persecute the prophets. And then they betrayed and killed the Messiah himself once he arrived. He says, you have now become his murderers and his betrayers. And these comments by Stephen absolutely set them off. And then verse 54 uses that Hebraic idiom, they were cut to the quick, which I think we've covered already, meaning They were completely infuriated. It's the same language we saw in Acts 5.33 when Peter and John likewise accused them of murdering Christ. It says they were cut to the quick. Their conscience is weighing on them, and they are reacting extremely strongly to this. Like, stop saying that. But they're getting mad because they know it's true. So that's why these words land so hard on them, because they know that it's true. But you remember, in that instance of 533, when they're cut to the quick, and they wanted to kill Peter and John. If you remember, in that instance, it was Gamaliel who stopped them. He was able to calm them down and think about a wiser plan of action. That's where he sent out Peter and John and said, look, there's been other guys that have followed somebody. Nothing comes of it. Just relax. Nothing will come of these guys. if Christ isn't the Messiah. But if he is, then you're fighting against God, right? And he called him down. So in this instance, when they're cut to the quick once again, it's possible that he wasn't present for Stephen's trial. We don't know. It's one of those details we don't know. Perhaps he stayed silent this time. Perhaps this was too much for even him to withhold judgment and say, all right, I've calmed him down once. I'm not doing it again. Or perhaps he tried to raise his voice. His lone voice calling out for self-restraint was simply drowned out by the cries amidst the mob, right? Just his one guy trying to calm a whole room full of men. Dozens and dozens of men just flipping out and he's just like, he can't restrain him. I don't know. We don't know. Luke tells us they were gnashing their teeth and they were reacting in this violent rage. And after Stephen described the vision he saw, of the resurrected Christ in heaven, they literally cover their ears. It's a bit redundant, right? They're already spiritually deaf. They don't need to cover their ears. They're not going to hear it. But they're covering their ears like a kid in an argument. They're just losing it. Needless to say, they're not winning the argument of ideas. They're not even engaging in argumentation. They're not going to the scriptures and saying, look, this is why you're wrong. Let me convince you that Jesus isn't the Christ because of these reasons. No, they can't contend in the argument of ideas. So they resort to violence, which is what a lot of people do when they're wrong and can't prove themselves to be right because they are wrong. get angry and resort to violence. And this is on top of their guilty conscience and the accusations. So they react in violence. Now we'll come back to Stephen's vision of Christ, but as soon as he described it, you know, they're getting mad and he describes this vision. As soon as he does it, he's likely just cut off. It says they rush at him with one impulse. So they, you know, gang up on him. This was just a bridge too far in their minds. And they almost fall into like a state of delirium. blinded by anger. So he's driven out of the city, mercilessly stoned to death. And then proven right. Because what did he say in verses 52 and 53? He said, which one of the prophets did your fathers not persecute? They killed those who had previously announced the coming of the righteous one, whose betrayers and murderers you have now become. You who received the law as ordained by angels and yet do not keep it. They prove him right. It's exactly what he said. He's announcing who the righteous one was. And what do they do? They kill him. Just like they always have with the prophets. Now, obviously, this was not a true judicial execution. Not that that would have made it justified, obviously, if they did it all right, if it were done according to the standards. But this was just an act of mob violence. This is them blinded by their rage. Remember, the Jews weren't even really allowed by the Romans to enact capital punishment. If they wanted to, they had to get special permission. But in their anger, they don't care. Like, who cares how the Romans react? We're killing this guy. We'll deal with the consequences later. I mean, did they even think through those consequences? Probably not. But they did have regulations. at the time for stoning. A criminal was executed this way. Typically, they'd be driven out. There's somebody announcing their crimes going before them. They'd take them outside the city. They'd strip them before. They'd keep parts of them covered, obviously, but they would strip them a certain amount of yards before they got there, wherever they were taking them outside the city. They would typically throw them down from an elevation that was required to be twice their own height. So they'd be above them. They'd throw them off some kind of precipice. So they'd already probably be injured. And then the witnesses from the trial, those that actually testified against them, they were required to throw the first stones, cast the first stone, right? We know that kind of language. And their task was to pick up large stones and aim for their chest. And they would just chuck these giant stones down onto him until the victim died. It would have been an absolutely brutal death. You know, Stephen likely endured some combination of being beaten, basically by rocks hitting him, beaten, crushed from the weight of the rocks, suffocated from the inability to breathe under the weight of those rocks, especially if they're aiming at his chest, and then bleeding out from all the cuts. So some combination of all of those things. It would have been extremely painful and horrific. But even as he faced his own painful death, he managed to cry out to the Lord, saying, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit. He then fell on his knees, either from the barrage of rocks, knocking him down, losing strength, or fall down on his knees in prayer intentionally. We don't know. Then he cried out once again over the shouts of the crowd. Lord, do not hold this sin against them. And in doing so, he obeyed the voice of his Lord, who had told his disciples in Luke 6, said, but I say to you who hear, love your enemies. Do good to those that hate you. Bless those who curse you. Pray for those who mistreat you. I don't know if this was so ingrained into Stephen that he just did it by instinct, or if he just, like, the Holy Spirit brought it to mind. It's like, these people are mistreating me. They are killing me right now. My job is to pray for them. But he did. So he then died, having uttered a prayer of forgiveness for the very ones that were murdering him. And though it wouldn't have been allowed by the Sanhedrin, for somebody that had been stoned, they wouldn't have been allowed to do this. These devout men came, uncovered him, pulled these rocks away, wrapped up his bloody and bruised body, and says that they made loud lamentation over him as they buried him. They weren't allowed to publicly mourn like that for a criminal. which this was a criminal's death. So this likely served as a bold form of public protest, signifying that they were rejecting the Sanhedrin's premise that Stephen had committed blasphemy and that he deserved to die. Luke then takes the opportunity to introduce us to a young man named Saul, who will, of course, be the primary character in the Book of Acts after just a few more chapters here. The term he used to describe him as a young man tells us he was probably in his 20s. There's variations on what age range this term is used for, but it's generally somebody in their 20s. So perhaps he wasn't a member of the St. Hedron itself. Maybe not, but as a star pupil of Gamaliel, he was certainly associated with it at the very least. Present throughout it, he was present, he was very likely a member of one of these synagogues that were accusing Stephen and probably on his way into becoming a member of the Sanhedrin. It does seem that he soon became a member once he undertook the systematic oppression of the church that he did. He seems to have made his way into the upper echelons of Jewish leadership. We learn here, though, that Saul clearly disagreed with his famous rabbi teacher, Gamaliel, who had been the one that urged the Jewish hesitation when it came to executing the Christians. He doesn't go there. echoing the words of his teacher trying to calm him down. No, he's there assenting, agreeing with it. Luke tells us he was giving his assent to Stephen's stoning and guarding the garments of those throwing the actual stones. You know, if I'm going to throw a baseball, I'm going to take off this jacket. If they're going to throw stones, they're going to take out their armored garments. They give them to Saul. He guards them. He's like, yeah, you go do it. You take care of it. Rah, rah. He's cheering them on. And he himself confirms his presence. And later, in Acts 22, he said, and when the blood of your witness, Stephen, was being shed, I also was standing by approving and watching out for the coats of those who were slaying him. So he's complicit, of course. So the Jews are the first ones and the only ones to draw blood. They cross the line into violence. The church never strikes back. This isn't a retaliatory war. It's not like they're going back and forth. The Christians turn the other cheek. They always turn the other cheek to the Jewish violence. And now outright Jewish aggression becomes the norm. This is the new modus operandi of the temple authorities towards the church. This is how they will now operate and consider them. These are enemies, not a Jewish sect, but enemies of the Jewish faith. So Luke tells us that day marked the beginning of a great persecution against the church in Jerusalem. Remember, they were almost all collectively in Jerusalem since Pentecost. And that then drove all the Christians out of the city and into the surrounding region of Judea and Samaria. And that was the next geographical location in Christ's call to the disciples to take the gospel anyways, as you will be my witnesses, in the city, and then into Judea and Samaria, and then to all the ends of the earth. So this was the next expected step. So it served a purpose in not only driving these believers throughout those regions, but obviously in driving the gospel itself into those regions because they take it with them. They go out there and they preach the gospel because that's what Christians do. However, this was not a pleasant time. This was a horrific time. It wasn't like, oh, we're all missionaries now. We're out on the field. No, they were in danger. Verse 3 says that Saul began ravaging the church, entering house after house, and indiscriminately dragging off both men and women and throwing them in prison. That term ravaging, it's fairly aggressive. It's an aggressive term. It was used in extra biblical writings to describe the destruction of a city, which they actually usually tore down all the way. Or the mangling of a wild animal, the way a wild animal tears apart its prey. That's the kind of word that's being used for what Paul is doing to the church. And this, too, is, again, confirmed by the testimony of Paul himself. He talks about what these verses talk about. He describes them. So in Acts 22, he says, I persecuted this way to the death, binding and putting both men and women into prisons, as also the high priest and all the council of the elders can testify. From them I also received letters to the brethren and started off for Damascus in order to bring even those who were to Jerusalem as prisoners to be punished. He said in Acts 26, and this is just what I did in Jerusalem. Not only did I lock up many of the saints in prison, having received authority from the chief priest, but also when they were being put to death, I cast my vote against them. That tells us he was probably part of the Sanhedrin by then. He's voting on the death sentence. Whenever he gets a chance, he says, yes, kill them. And as I punished them often in all the synagogues, I tried to force them to blaspheme. And being furiously enraged at them, I kept pursuing them even to foreign cities." He's literally chasing them down. They're running to, it's like a geographical chasing around the area. He's trying to get them to blaspheme. He's trying to get them to deny Christ. He's furiously enraged against them. Galatians 1.13, he says, I used to persecute the church of God beyond measure. and tried to destroy it, 1 Timothy 1.13, I was formerly a blasphemer and a persecutor and a violent aggressor. Of course, this murderous persecution of the church literally produced the exact opposite of its intended effect. Instead of stamping out the faith of those that trust in Christ as Messiah, it only served to spread it farther into the Roman Empire. It just drove them more and more into other people and teaching more people, and wherever they ran away, they ran into a place where they would teach people about Christ. Instead of stamping out the faith of those who trust in Christ as Messiah, it spreads it farther into the Roman Empire. It was the ancient theologian, Tertullian, who famously observed, I'm sure almost all of you have heard this quote, the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church. That's what we're seeing here. So this is indeed a turning point in history, turning point in the Book of Acts. This is the new dynamic for the rest of the book. They're always going to be in danger. No, it's not always as severe that it is here, but this is the new dynamic. So what can we learn from Stephen's brief but significant appearance in the Book of Acts? As far as we know, he is the first Christian to be killed for his confession of the faith. He is the first witness in this way. And scripture gives us a thorough description of him that can serve as a kind of a prototypical model for what a faithful witness should look like, what we should be like. I don't want to say he's the ideal of ideals, right? He's not Christ, and we're not looking at him like he is Christ, but he is a follower of Christ that faithfully endured and witnessed to the truth that Christ is Lord. So what do we see about him? We know, of course, of his willingness to serve, right? That's how he was introduced to us. He was elected by the church to serve tables in Act 6. So he's a faithful servant of the church, willing to do work that probably isn't that glamorous. We also saw that he actively proclaimed Christ and contended for the faith. He testified. He evangelized. We see him undergoing that, which is what got him in trouble in the first place, because he was so good at it. He was described as full of grace and power. So the Holy Spirit was giving clear evidence of working within Stephen. Stephen displayed in his life evidence the Holy Spirit was working in him. He displayed the fruits of the Spirit. He is a holy man. When faced by opposition, he was undaunted, and yet he's composed. The kind of delirium that we see from the Jews is not at all what we see from Stephen. In fact, he looks oddly calm, dignified in the face of this anger. He's calm, he's composed, he doesn't shrink back in the slightest. He's undaunted by their threats, and he just tells the truth in the face of death, in the face of opposition. He was adept at defending the faith, explaining the true meaning of the gospel. We saw that in his long explanation, his speech before the Sanhedrin. He's very wise. He knows the scriptures. He's well-taught. He was unwilling to compromise for the sake of peace at the expense of truth. He's not looking... When he's with the Sanhedrin, he's on trial, he's not looking for like, where's our common ground here? How can we live together in peace? Let's just... Let's just find a way to get along. That's not his objective. He's not willing to compromise for the sake of peace because it would have cost him the truth. The truth is what they hated. The truth is what enraged them. And he's going to put it in front of them and let them deal with it. He's not guilty of their reaction to it, but he's not going to compromise the truth for the sake of peace. This tells us how we ought to act. And he was willing to die for the truth that Christ is Lord. I mean, it wasn't like he was surprised by what was happening here. He saw this progress, he knew what was happening. As they're getting mad and he sees this vision of Christ standing to receive him, that's a pretty good indicator of, I'm about to die, right? It doesn't stop him. He's willing to die for the truth. And he's willing to face his enemies in love in spite of their hatred towards him. He still reacts with love. He still prays for them. He still wants them to come to faith. And this is only an attitude that can happen when we recognize that there's nothing that we did to get it. We're not smarter. We didn't figure it out. We recognize that they need grace the way we've received grace. This is why we can have that sort of love and pray that kind of prayer towards somebody that hates us and hates Christ, because we know, I mean, Paul, who we see here, we see him being converted from what he was to what he became, right? We can pray that kind of prayer because we know that's the power of God, to change people like that. Now, his courage is obvious, of course, but the significance of Stephen's witness is anchored Not necessarily in his career, it's anchored in the Holy Spirit's presence in his life. Him being full of grace and power. That's the significance of his witness. Luke gives more attention to that than the sheer fact that Stephen was so courageous and so bold. Now that's true, yes, but it's like this is a man filled with the Holy Spirit telling the truth to people that hate him and are flipping out on him. And in his dying prayer, we see the effect the Holy Spirit had on him, being able to do that as he's suffering the very pains of death at their hands. We see a humble submission. to his own death, recognizing this is what Christ has for me. He said we're going to be witnesses. He said we're going to die. He said they're going to kill us. He said they're going to drag us into the synagogues and before the leaders and strike us down. Jesus warned his disciples this would happen eventually, right? It hadn't happened yet, but it's going to happen eventually. And when Stephen faced the possibility of being the first one, because that had the dawn on him, right? We all knew this would happen. Looks like I'm it. I'm the first one. He doesn't beg for physical deliverance. This he surely learned from Christ, who likewise laid down his life when the time came for him to do so. When the fullness of time came, he laid down his life. It's not constant escapism. That doesn't mean it's wrong to try to escape danger ever, right? The Church of Jerusalem flees out of the city to escape the death, right? appropriate, but when the time comes where it's like it's now or never, it's testify to Christ and die, it's time to die. Stephen likewise doesn't even pray for a quick death and a hasty escape from the bodily pain. Again, not that it's necessarily wrong to do so, but like Christ, he fearlessly accepted the torturous death ahead of him. In fact, the only concern his prayer really reflects is the good of his captors. Not his own good. Not this brief little snippet of don't let me feel the weight and the cuts of these rocks, the broken bones. No, it's for the good of his captors. Once again, like Christ, who likewise asked that his death not be held against those nailing him to the cross. What we see from Stephen is an absolute confidence concerning his eternal home with Jesus. Not even a hint of shrinking back. He commends his spirit to the Lord, just as Jesus commended his spirit to the Father. His boldness in this trial should not be overlooked, right? He was talking to murderers. He was detailing the long history of murder. He's accusing them of murder. And as a result, he gets murdered. If you remember the history of the Reformation, Martin Luther, when he was first called to the Diet of Worms, they asked him, they laid out all his tracts and his books on the table and said, will you retract these writings? And he famously asked to think about it overnight. And that was granted to him. And then he came back and he refused to retract. But it is perfectly normal to question oneself when being contradicted by a group of respected religious leaders, those that are in these positions of power. Now, obviously, the Jewish leadership was corrupt. The Roman emperor in the Roman Empire, or the Holy Roman Empire, when Martin Luther faced them, all those religious leaders were corrupt and false teachers and all that. But still, there's a weightiness to this accusation. It's normal to question oneself, like examine oneself, am I in the wrong here? That sort of thing. However, we know all leaders are still fallible men. And when they stand against the infallible word of God, they not only can be defied, they must be defied. That is the duty of the Christian. It is our duty to defy error wherever it is found, to not shrink back due to the consequences of people reviling us, even up to the point of death. We die for this truth. We probably won't have to, but we're willing to. Whatever it takes. Remember the words of Jesus. I say to you, my friends, Luke 12. I say to you, my friends, do not be afraid of those who kill the body and after that have no more that they can do. But I will warn you whom to fear. Fear the one whom after he has killed has authority to cast into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him. Fear God and God alone. That's the message. All they can do is take your body. Their physical harm cannot do spiritual damage to you. And that's the last thing that we'll finish up on, right? His boldness and willing acceptance of his martyrdom was surely bolstered at the very least, bolstered at the very least by the vision that he saw of Jesus standing up to receive him at the right hand of God. That vision kind of served as the ultimate assurance of pardon, right? We have an assurance of pardon in our service every week, but none of us are ever gonna be able to issue an assurance of pardon as good as this one, right? We can't compete with the vision of Christ receiving us, the glory of God. Because of what he saw, Stephen could have absolute confidence that Jesus is truly the Messiah, that he had truly been forgiven. Jesus wouldn't give this vision, wouldn't stand to receive him this way if Stephen was not one of his own, if what he was saying wasn't true. So he got to see where he was going, which emboldened him to face the death that preceded him going there. Now, I don't think we should expect this type of vision in our life circumstances. It definitely does not appear to be the norm in the New Testament. It's not like every martyr gets this vision or anything. However, we do have what Peter calls the prophetic word made more sure. I'm not gonna pretend that a literal vision of Jesus himself would have the same effect on most of us as the word does. We're just very visible, empirical type creatures. But we should be able to have the exact same confidence as we see from Stephen. We should be able to have the same confidence we might get from seeing the resurrected Lord. We should have by reading the word and knowing Christ and having the Holy Spirit working in our lives. It should be obvious. Because there God has recorded his promises for us. And we should not even have a hint of shrinking back from the truth that he's going to keep those promises. He is a promise-keeping God. So when we face persecution or any kind of extreme trial, we need to cling to God's promises the way that Stephen did. We read in Romans 8.31, What shall we say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us? Stephen knew God was for him. He saw this vision. He knows Jesus is the Messiah. We know Jesus is the Messiah. We know God is for us because we cling to that truth. What temptation or what bitter providence can destroy us if we dwell on the fact that nothing whatsoever shall separate us from the love of God? Physical realities cannot destroy spiritual realities. Nothing can separate us from the love of God. No sword, no famine, no stones being cast down. He is for us. No one can stand against us. Now obviously they can still negatively impact our lives, right, our physical life, but ultimately that will not matter. God is on our side. Jesus said it. They can kill the body. Big deal. I made it. I'll raise it to life again. God is on our side. That is the confidence that we see from Stephen. Of course, his life was negatively impacted, right? It was taken from him when he could have served the church for many more years. But he gained his eternal home that day. And he was just replaced. by other gifted men like all of us will be, for us to live as Christ and to die as gain. We have duty to do here, but we know that we will meet Christ when we die. The assurance is the blessing for all of those that believe. That assurance that we know that we will meet Christ, that is our blessing if we believe. This sword of confidence is ours now. The promise to forgive sins is not merely for those that lay down their life and have their martyrdoms recorded for church to study for years to come. It's not that kind of promise and that sort of confidence is not just for the epic saints of old. Forgiveness is for every single person. Confidence, assurance is for every single person who simply trusts in Christ to pay for their sins and to merit the reward of eternal life on our behalf. And with forgiveness comes endurance through suffering, endurance through persecution, endurance even in the face of death. This blessing is ours, and we don't have to wait until death to enjoy it. We get it now. We can enjoy it every day. Every Lord's Day is a renewal and reminder of that assurance. It's ours. We can revel in our assured salvation every single day, because though we are great sinners, Christ is an even greater Savior. And he is at the right hand of God, in glory, ready to receive us. Amen and amen. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we do praise you now for emboldening your saints to show the greatness of our reward in eternal life, that it is worth so much more than anything that this life has to offer. We do not wish for similar circumstances, as we read today. We don't want to face this kind of opposition. We don't want any of our brothers and sisters throughout the world to face this sort of thing. But we know that in some parts of the world, this sort of evil is still prevalent. We pray for their endurance in the faith, those that do face death. We pray for their confidence in the face of death and suffering. We ask, too, that you would embolden us and settle our hearts in a rock-solid confidence of your truth. Give us the tender heartedness that it would take to pray for our enemies and bless those who curse us the way Christ directed us to do. Give us the Christ likeness to mirror his characteristics while we suffer. Grant us that grace so that we might glorify you and strengthen our church. We ask all these things in the name of Christ, the son of man who will receive us into glory. Amen.