Throughout her history, the church has had countless martyrs. As you all know, a martyr is someone who dies because of his or her faith in Christ. Martyr comes from a word that means witness, and a martyr is someone who bears witness to Christ and then dies as a result of his witness, as a result of his faith. And there have been more martyrs through the history of the church than we could possibly count. In our passage this evening, we meet the first of them. As we read just a little while ago, Acts chapter 7 concludes with Stephen being stoned to death because of his faith in Christ and his witness to Christ. Stephen is the first martyr in the Christian church. Now that might not seem like the best passage to encourage all of us to be witnesses. We're not perhaps enticed to serve as witnesses when we read here about a man being killed because of his witness. But in this passage, We see things that are vital for us to see, things that both cut to the heart of the opposition that we as Christians face when we bear witness to Christ and things that give us the most abiding comfort as we face that opposition. As we find in our passage this evening, the world hates the church because of Jesus. But Jesus reigns, and He is always with His people. Now, as Acts chapter 7 concludes, and the once vibrant Stephen has been reduced to a corpse, one thing is unmistakable. The world hates the church because of Jesus. Now, as you well know, the entire passage before us this evening, the whole of Acts 7, is rather lengthy, so we've just read the end of it. But you certainly need to know the setting of Acts 7. Back in Acts 6, It was more than a year ago, I believe, when I was with you on a Lord's Day morning and we looked at the closing of Acts chapter 6, so it perhaps isn't the most fresh in your mind, but there, at the end of chapter 6, we saw how Stephen, the first deacon in the church, a man who was doing wonderful work through the power of the Holy Spirit who was filling him, this Stephen, because of the gospel work that he was doing, had been brought before the Sanhedrin, the Jewish ruling council in Jerusalem, and he had been accused of speaking blasphemy against the Jewish faith. Blasphemy against the temple, blasphemy against the law. All of that lies in the background when, in verse 1 of chapter 7, the high priest says to Stephen, are these things so? The high priest is asking Stephen if he has, in fact, spoken blasphemy against God, blasphemy against the law, blasphemy against the temple. This is the high priest's question. Are these things true? And Stephen's answer is overwhelming. He doesn't give a yes or no answer. Instead, Stephen starts with Abraham, and he traces all through the history of the Israelite people. He goes from Abraham to Joseph to Moses. He deals with the tabernacle. He deals with the temple. Stephen gives an amazing summary of the history of Israel. And within this sweeping view of Israel's history, Stephen most fundamentally brings out two chief points. First of all, at seemingly every point, Israel has rejected the messengers whom God has sent to her. At seemingly every point, in every age, when God sent His Word to His people, if that Word has been a Word that Israel didn't want to hear, or a word that they weren't prepared to believe. They would reject the word that God had sent and the person through whom God had sent it. And in that, Israel had rejected God himself. As Stephen says in verse 51, ye do always resist the Holy Ghost. When the Israelites rejected the prophets, they weren't just rejecting the prophets. They were rejecting the Holy Ghost who filled the prophets and who spoke through the prophets. In resisting the prophets whom God has sent, Israel hasn't just resisted men. They were resisting God Himself. That's Stephen's first theme. The second theme that Stephen highlights in his overview of Israel's history is that God is the God of all the earth. He reigns everywhere. There is no particle of creation that doesn't belong to God. There's no corner of creation where God doesn't reign omnipotent and supreme. Without a doubt, God had given his people Israel a tremendous blessing. when he'd given them the tabernacle and then the temple. But while those places manifested God's particular presence in the midst of his people, those places didn't restrain God. They didn't limit him. He's the God who reigns in all of creation. Now, these were the two overriding themes that Stephen highlights in his very detailed speech. Israel always has rejected God by rejecting the word of his prophets, and God is not limited to the temple, but rather He fills all the earth. Now, in those two themes, there's much for us to consider. But for this evening, we need to focus our attention on something else. As Stephen is working his way through Israel's history, highlighting their resistance to the Spirit, highlighting their refusal to recognize that God isn't confined to the temple. He is saying some very radical things. He's accusing the Sanhedrin, he's accusing their ancestors of some very serious things. And they don't make any effort to stop him. And I think it's safe to say that the Sanhedrin don't like what Stephen is saying. They doubtlessly disagreed very strongly with what Stephen was saying. There most likely were many scowling faces as the Sanhedrin listened to what Stephen said, but they didn't try to stop him. They were willing to sit and listen to what he said, no matter how viscerally they might have disagreed with it. But when Stephen's speech begins to focus specifically on Jesus, he touches a nerve. Beginning in verse 52, when Stephen starts to make the connection that all the prophets whom the ancestors had rejected had been speaking about the Jesus whom the Sanhedrin had rejected, and when he calls this Jesus the just one, the Sanhedrin become agitated. Their hostility begins to swell. Then in verse 56, the Sanhedrin have had too much. In verse 56, Stephen says this to them, Stephen had looked up, as verse 55 tells us, And by the Holy Spirit, Stephen's eyes were able to penetrate into heaven itself. And he saw Jesus standing at the right hand of the Father. And he told the Sanhedrin. And in telling them this, Stephen was telling them that Jesus was God. To stand at the right hand of the Father, or at the right hand of God, as Stephen puts it in verse 56. It was to be equal with God. Stephen here is telling the Sanhedrin that Jesus is God. And the Sanhedrin explode. In verses 57 and 58, we read that the men of the Sanhedrin, they put their hands over their ears and immediately they carried Stephen out of Jerusalem. Both of these things were what you did with blasphemers. Under the Jewish law of that time, people were forbidden from hearing blasphemy. If they heard blasphemy being spoken, they were to cover their ears. And they were to remove the blasphemer physically from the city. And that's precisely what the Sanhedrin did with Stephen. They were convinced he had blasphemed, so they closed off their ears and they carried him out of the city and they stoned him to death. And in this, the motivation of the Sanhedrin, the motivation of Stephen's opponents, is laid completely bare. As we already have seen, there were all of these charges that have been made against Stephen. that he spoke against the temple, that he spoke against the law, that he spoke against Moses. There were all these accusations. None of them were inconsequential. But the heart of the opposition that Stephen faced, the one thing that made his opponents hate him was Jesus. They may not have liked what he said before, what he said about the temple, what he said about Moses. But when he said that Jesus was God, they killed him. Now, they killed him because, since they didn't think that Jesus was God, for him to say that Jesus was God was, to them, blasphemy. But that just underscores the point. The central thing, the core of the animus against Stephen and against the church at large The fundamental underlying fact why the Sanhedrin hates the church is Jesus. The fact that the church confesses Jesus as the Son of God, that's the problem. Now certainly, that leads to other issues as well. It leads, for example, to different views about the temple. But all of those other things are secondary. They're derivative. The core is Jesus. Jesus as the Son of God. Side issues abound, but the central core is Jesus. The world hates the church because of Jesus. He is the irreducible core of all of the dissonance between his people and the enveloping world. Now, brothers and sisters, the exact same thing is true for us this evening. When you think about the church over against the world, there are scores of areas where we disagree, issues which we see differently. But at the core of the tension between the church and the world is Jesus. We confess Him to be the Son of God, and the world doesn't. And the hatred that flows from the world to the church, the hatred that assaulted Jesus Himself, The hatred that Jesus promised would come upon his people as well. That hatred flows from the world to the church because the church believes in Jesus. They're all a matter of side issues. They're all types of window dressings and side skirmishes. But when it comes down to it, the world hates the church because of Jesus. And as Christians, As individual Christians living in the Grand Rapids area, we need to get that absolutely straight in our minds. As we bear witness to Christ, we must bend over backward to be pleasant, to be gentle and loving. As the Apostle Paul tells us elsewhere, we must lay aside everything about ourselves that might even potentially cause offense. We have to be sensitive. But we cannot avoid and we cannot change the simple fact that the world will hate us because of Jesus. To get rid of all the world's hatred, we would have to get rid of Jesus. To tweak the gospel so that it won't offend anyone. And so that it won't get us into any trouble. And so that it won't cause any awkwardness or difficulty for us. To tweak the gospel so that bearing witness to it is as smooth as velvet. We would have to remove Jesus from the gospel. Because He is the point of contention between the church and the world. Brothers and sisters, if we're going to be witnesses, and we have to be witnesses, then we must be prepared to face resistance, to face opposition. Because that's what witnessing to Jesus brings. And you can sidestep a lot of things, but you cannot sidestep Jesus. So we must be prepared. As we bear witness to him, we must be prepared for disapproving looks, awkward responses. We must be prepared for rejection. We must be prepared because we are seeking to take Jesus to a world that hates him. The world hates the church because of Jesus. But there's one more thing we need to see in our passage. And that is that the world hates the church because of Jesus. But Jesus reigns and he is always with his people. You remember that vision that Stephen had of Jesus, the vision that elicited the murderous rage of the Sanhedrin. In that vision, Stephen saw Jesus standing at the right hand of the Father. And to be at the right hand of the Father is to stand in a position of authority, a position of activity. If you remember all the way back to Acts chapter 1, the disciples had seen the resurrected Jesus ascend into heaven. And here in chapter 7, Stephen sees that ascended Jesus reigning in heaven, exercising the authority that is his. In fancy terminology, this is referred to as the Session of Jesus, the Session of Christ. Jesus Christ is ruling from heaven above. At the close of Matthew's Gospel, Jesus had told his disciples that all authority in heaven and on earth had been given to him And here, Stephen sees Jesus exercising that creation-wide dominion. He is standing and he is ruling at the right hand of the Father. But that doesn't mean that Jesus is somehow distant from Stephen. As if Jesus is in heaven and Stephen is on earth and there's some great divide between the two. No, the Jesus who reigns in heaven is with Stephen. Look at what Stephen says and does in verses 59 and 60. With the stones pummeling down upon him, Stephen asked Jesus to receive his spirit. It's as if Stephen is speaking to the enthroned Jesus, asking him to bring him home. and to accept him when he arrives. Stephen so powerfully feels the presence of the reigning Christ with him that he speaks to him. Ignoring the shouts of the crowd, the falling of the stones, Stephen speaks to the Jesus who is with him. And that presence is most wonderfully manifested in verse 60. Verse 60, Stephen again speaks to Jesus, and he asks Jesus not to hold his very own murder against his murderers. These men have forced Stephen to the ground. And don't sanitize it. They're picking up stones, and they're throwing them at Stephen with the express intention of crushing his skull. They're using stones very literally to beat Stephen until he dies. To terrorize him in the final moments of his life until he dies under the stones that they're throwing at him. And Stephen asked Jesus to forgive them. Flesh and blood can't do that. The physical agony the shock of it all, the injustice of it all, flesh and blood do not, in that circumstance, utter those words. This is the Spirit of Christ, indwelling Stephen, that speaks. And as you may have noticed in his request that the sin of his murderers be forgiven, Stephen uses precisely the same words that Jesus himself had used as he had been nailed to the cross and had asked his father to forgive those who were murdering him. Jesus isn't just with Stephen. Jesus is making Stephen like himself. In a moment of the most inexpressible pain, the most inexpressible extremity, Stephen opens his mouth and Jesus's words come out. Stephen is a man surrounded by men who hate him, and those men have stones. But Stephen isn't alone because Jesus is with him. Jesus is within him. And then Jesus takes him. Verse 60 says that as soon as Stephen asked for the forgiveness of his murderers, he fell asleep. And this idea of falling asleep is an expression that's used several times in the Scriptures. It's used to express the temporary nature of death and the certainty of resurrection. When a Christian dies, it isn't forever. Just as a man who falls asleep will not sleep forever, but certainly will wake in the morning, so the Christian who dies will not rest in the ground forever, but he certainly will be raised up in glory on resurrection morning. To the eye, it's almost as if he's only sleeping. Now, Stephen here has experienced profound trauma. He's been jerked up from his place before the Sanhedrin. He's been dragged and pushed violently through the streets of Jerusalem. He's been forced to the ground outside the city. He's been pummeled with stones. This is horrific. But the Lord Jesus has been with him. Jesus is in control. None of this. As brutal as it is, none of it has spiraled out of Jesus' control. He's still reigning in heaven above. Stephen has seen that with his own eyes. Now, Stephen doesn't know why all of this is happening. You know, right after this, in Acts chapter 8, We see how God was using this opposition, how God was using even the martyrdom of Stephen for good. But Stephen doesn't know all of that here. But he does know that Jesus is in control. And Jesus is with him. And he hears him. And in a way that seems almost peaceful, In all of the enveloping chaos, Jesus brings Stephen to himself as a child falls asleep in its parents' arms. You often hear people speculate that when a Christian is martyred, when a Christian goes through the terror of dying for his faith, that God upholds him in such a way that the Christian is strengthened, and preserved that the martyr in the midst of his suffering knows a peace and a comfort beyond our imagining. And we see that here. A man being brutalized and seeing Jesus and praying for his killers and falling asleep. Had you been there that day? witnessing these things, practically all that you would have seen would have been the crowd. This one man, Stephen, on the ground, and a yelling, violent mob overwhelming him. You would have noticed the crowd. They would have been the focus. They would have been the center. But when we see things truly, When we see them in our passage this evening, the crowd almost disappears into the background. You see Stephen and you see Jesus. Stephen being comforted by the vision of Jesus. Jesus bringing Stephen to himself. The world hates the church because of Jesus. But Jesus reigns and He's always with His people. Now as we go out and we serve as witnesses here in our lives, in our communities, we almost certainly will not be stoned to death. However sharp it may be, the opposition that we face will be as nothing beside the opposition that Stephen faced. And yet the comfort is the same. His comfort is our comfort. Even if faced with the murderous rage of this thronging crowd, Jesus' people are never alone. They never find themselves in a place, they never find themselves in a situation that Jesus doesn't control, or where Jesus doesn't reign. We may not always understand His ways, but we know that He reigns. And we can never be separated either from His control or from His love. Never. The hatred in men's hearts, the stones in their hands, the quivering rage in their voices, none of it can put a wall between Jesus and His people. If you bear witness to Jesus, you'll get strange looks. People might say nasty, rude things to you. People might mock you. People will seem uneasy and then perhaps avoid you in the future. You will face opposition. But Jesus will be with you. You will speak. And from the right hand of God the Father Almighty, Jesus will hear you and he will be within you and he will be making you like unto himself. Now, that won't help you in the world's eyes. Remember, the world already hates the church because of Jesus. So when we become more like Jesus, the world most likely will hate us even more. But when we are his witnesses, we will be like Jesus. You will open your mouth and you will live your life and others will hear and see Jesus in you. And then one day you'll sleep in Jesus. Being a witness isn't easy. Being a Christian isn't easy. Jesus never said that it would be. But He said that everything you will suffer, He has suffered before. And He will be with you as you suffer it for His sake. The world all the time makes promises that aren't true. Promises that are all pleasant and all easy and not true. But this promise is true. Being a witness for Jesus is hard. And it will bring opposition. But in the swirling center of that opposition, the omnipotent Jesus will be with you. Be encouraged, be emboldened. The world hates the church because of Jesus. But Jesus reigns and He is always with His people. Now our passage this evening makes clear the gravity of our calling to be Jesus's witnesses. If we're going to be witnesses to Jesus, it's going to bring opposition. We can't sugarcoat it enough. We can't smooth out its edges enough. We can't cover it over enough. If we bear witness to Jesus, we will face opposition. but even closer to us, underneath the opposition, overshadowing its noise, we will know the presence of the Jesus who reigns in heaven above. And that's a taste of glory. Bear witness to Christ and know his presence, know his glory. The world hates the church because of Jesus. but Jesus reigns and He is always with His people. May the Lord be with us and may He use us in our witness to glorify His holy name. Amen. Let's pray. Our great God and Father in heaven, We praise Thee tonight as the God of all glory, the God who is worth more than all of creation. We give Thee thanks that Thou, O Lord, hast raised up to Thyself a people in every generation, and that from that people Thou hast testified to Thy glory and to the salvation that is in Thee. We give Thee thanks, O Lord, that the blessed Lord Jesus has suffered in the place of His people and that He has spoken to us and told us truly that as the world has hated Him, so shall it hate His people. We ask, O Lord, that Thou wouldst be with us, that Thou wouldst afford unto us The privilege of being thy witnesses in all the earth. Lord, we are called to that witness. Give us by thy spirit boldness to undertake it. And undertake it with humility. And with the confidence. That thou art at work in this world. And thou art able to use even the halting labors of men and women, young and old, such as we are. Lord, give us opportunities, even concretely in the days that lie ahead. Give us opportunities to speak the name of Christ, to bear witness to His worth, to bear witness to His glory and His mercy and His love. Give us opportunity to speak. In those moments, give us boldness and compassion that we might speak. And that we might declare the riches of the blessed Lord Jesus. Give us boldness, O Lord, and be pleased to use even our witness. To bring many out of darkness and into thy marvelous light. We ask, O Lord, for thy blessing upon this congregation as a congregation. That they might be a gospel witness here. Always speaking of Christ. Always drawing attention to Him. not to the things of the flesh, but to the glories of the blessed Lord Jesus. Bless that witness and use it as a bright gospel light in the midst of a wicked and perverse generation. Do all these things, we pray. And in all of them, we beg that the blessed Lord Jesus and He alone would be high and lifted up. For we ask it in that wonderful name of Jesus. Amen.