Welcome to this podcast from Harvest Community Church of Huntersville, North Carolina, where our vision is to make disciples who make disciples. I'm your host, Liz Stefanini. Look who's standing up. We're teaching through the book of Acts here, and we come today to Acts chapter six, verse eight. Let me put a word up. The word is intervention. What comes to your mind when you hear that word intervention? It might be if you're a parent, you might think of that time when your daughter is there, your young daughter's there and her brother's pulling her hair and she's pleading with you to intervene, right? You have had that happen in your house, right, parents? Or maybe you're playing basketball and you're ready for the rebound, you're ready to go, you're in position, you're blocked out and the guy just shoves you out of the way and you're looking to the ref to intervene, call the foul. It might be, as a Christian, you're wanting God to intervene in the situation. And maybe he does, and maybe he doesn't. So let me give you a true false question, okay? Everybody ready for the little quiz this morning? Just very simple, true false question. Here's the statement. God intervenes in human affairs. True or false? True, right. All right, let me give you another statement. We always see God intervene in human affairs. False. We don't always see it. We don't always know what he's doing and sometimes it seems like he does not intervene. And so maybe it's in your life you're needing some kind of rescue and you ask God to intervene and you don't quite see it. In the book of Acts, we see that. We see God intervene sometimes, right? We see them pray and then preach and 3,000 are saved, but then sometimes we see them preach and they get put in jail. And we see some go to jail and they get rescued miraculously. But then we see James later get beheaded. So sometimes it seems like God intervenes and sometimes he doesn't. One pastor puts it this way, a reason for God's non-intervention is that it often acts significantly to advance the gospel. The death of Stephen does this. And that's what we're going to look at today from Acts chapter six. So I invite your attention there. And we're going to see how the fact that God didn't intervene and God didn't stop bad things from happening to Stephen. We're going to see how God used that to advance the gospel. Let me set the context for you. These are like dominoes in the book of Acts. You know, there was this problem first, and there were certain widows that some were Grecian, some were Hebrew, and the one group didn't feel like they were getting the right amount of food, and so they complained. And so there was this problem that was created, and so the first domino was, hey, the apostles decided, you church, choose seven men to focus on that, and they did. So the domino fell to one of those seven who was named Stephen And all of them were serving but Stephen then did other things in addition to serving in the distribution of food and he preached the gospel and That's what we come to in this story he had a message and the life that had a domino effect on a man named Saul who would become the Apostle Paul. And then we'll see how that carries on the rest of the book of Acts. So Stephen was chosen and this passage tells us about his powerful life and it tells us about his impactful death. He had an incredibly impactful death. And I want to read that. I'm not, I'm not going to read that. This is more than a chapter. This is 60, 70 verses, I guess. So I'm not going to read every verse today. I'll allude to some as we go along the way, but let's dive in towards the end because Stephen is preaching the gospel and the Jewish leaders are very angry about it. And let's pick up in verse 54 that tells us what happened to him. When the members of the Sanhedrin heard this, they were furious and gnashed their teeth at him. But Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit, looked up to heaven and saw the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. Look, he said, I see heaven open and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God. At this, they covered their ears and yelling at the top of their voices, they all rushed at him, dragged him out of the city and began to stone him. Meanwhile, the witnesses laid their coats at the feet of a young man named Saul. While they were stoning him, Stephen prayed. Lord Jesus, receive my spirit. Then he fell on his knees and cried out, Lord, do not hold this sin against them. And when he said this, he fell asleep and saw approved of their killing him on that day. A great persecution broke out against the church in Jerusalem and all except the apostles were scattered throughout Judea. And let me give you just an overview. I think there are three basic movements. There's not really an outline. We call this an outline sheet. Usually I give you an outline. Today, there's not an outline per se of the chapter. I'm just gonna make some observations and you can make notes if you'd like to do that on some of these observations along the way. And then I'm gonna draw it in and say, how does this apply to us today? Because this is a very different story. of the very first Christian martyr. But there's a lot that we can learn from his life and we'll do that. But as an overview, there are really three basic movements. First of all, verses 8 to 10 of chapter 6 talk about Stephen's powerful life. And then he has a powerful message. And the bulk of the section today is a description of this gospel message that he preaches to the people in the first century. And finally, he has an impactful death. The verses that we just read together showed how he died. Now, let's pick back up about his powerful life. Verse 8, Stephen, a man full of grace and power, performed great wonders and signs among the people. Now it's interesting in earlier in the chapter, chapter 6, Stephen was described as being full of the Holy Spirit. Now it says he's full of grace and he is full of power. You know, those things are linked. If you are filled with the Holy Spirit, you also are going to be filled with grace and filled with God's power. But what's really interesting to me is this expression, this thing about that is said about Stephen, that the grace, the power that he's performing these signs and wonders, That's almost the same thing that was said of the apostles earlier in Acts chapter 4. Acts chapter 4 verse 33 says, with great power, the apostles continue to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and God's grace was so powerfully at work in them all. Think about it. Stephen was not an apostle. The apostles had God's grace on them. The apostles had God's power on them. Stephen was not one of the apostles, but he also was full of grace and full of power. And here's the point. You don't have to be an official church leader like the apostles were to have God's hand on you, to have God's power on you, for God to use you. We see that. Stephen was an ordinary person. He was not one of the 12 chosen apostles. but God worked through him. And I, I believe God wants to work through all of you who are followers of Jesus today as well. Well, you would think that if, if he's got grace and he's got power and all these miracles are happening, that everybody's going to go, yeah, not so verse nine. Opposition arose, however, from members of the synagogue of the freedmen, as it was called, Jews of Cyrene and Alexandria, as well as the providence of Cilician Asia, who began to argue with Stephen. But they could not stand up against the wisdom the Spirit gave him as he spoke. When Jesus was with his disciples near the end of his life and he was telling them that the Holy Spirit was going to come, he promised them something. He said, when you are called upon to give a defense, when you're called upon to speak, don't think now, don't worry about what you're going to say because the Holy Spirit in you is going to tell you what to do. And that's exactly what is happening with Stephen here. The Holy Spirit is giving him wisdom to speak. Verse 11. They secretly persuaded some men to say, we have heard Stephen speak blasphemous words against Moses and against God. He didn't blaspheme Moses. He didn't blaspheme God. This is a lie. They think, how can we stop him? You know, one of the attempts that is often made to stop somebody who's telling the truth is just to lie about them, right? It's to lie about what they say and what they do, and that is exactly what these people are trying to do. Oh, he's blaspheming Moses, he's blaspheming God. Verse 13 verse 12. They they stirred the up the people and the elders and the teachers of the law They seized Stephen and brought him before the Sanhedrin Now the Sanhedrin was a group of 71 men. These were the the Jewish this was the Jewish ruling council of the day and They had authority for all religious and civil matters except one There was one thing the Sanhedrin couldn't do. Jerusalem was, the territory that Jerusalem was located in was called Judea. That was the larger area. And in 86, it became a Roman province. And so after that point, Nobody could order capital punishment except for the Roman governor I mean that people the Sanhedrin had authority to do all kind of punishment and this and that and make all kind of decisions But they could not order any capital punishment to take place with only one exception if someone by their words or their deeds Acted against the temple Then the Sanhedrin had the right to give the punishment, the capital punishment. That's where they're going. Verse 13 is you're gonna see how they're like, hey, maybe we can pull this out. So what do they do? They produced false witnesses who testified. This fellow never stopped speaking against this holy place and against the law. This holy place is the temple. So it's like, if we can't stop his powerful message, we'll just lie about it. We'll say he's blaspheming Moses. He's blaspheming the temple. He's speaking against this temple. That way, if we want to put him to death, we have the authority under the Roman governor to do that. For we have heard him say, verse 14, that this Jesus of Nazareth will destroy this place and change the customs Moses handed down to us. All who were sitting in the Sanhedrin looked intently at Stephen and they saw that his face was like the face of an angel. They accused Stephen of speaking against the law against the land and against the temple. Well, actually the law and the temple, but the land was very important. Those three things were very important. And then Stephen gives this sermon or speech. If you call it a sermon, this is actually the longest recorded sermon in the book of Acts. We had a little quiz earlier. Let's take another one. Raise your hand. How many of you like long sermons? Raise your hand. All right. You're going to like this one. It's the longest one there. And in this long sermon, Stephen masterfully addresses the three fundamental issues that these Jewish people are mistaken about. Now, the law was very important to the Jews. The land was very important to the Jews. God had given them a land. And the temple was very important to the Jews. This was the place where God chose to meet people. And yet there was always the danger that they could take these things and they could think, hey, we've got the law, we've got the land, we've got the temple, we're okay. In other words, they had a religious system to which they belonged, and they felt, apparently, that we're okay, and there wasn't any stress on a personal relationship with God. Now, again, that was then, but you know what? Today in our society, in America, a lot of people are right here where they were. A lot of people have their religious system. You know, maybe they're part of a group, a movement, they've been baptized, they've been confirmed, they've been whatever, and they just think, oh, well, we're okay because we've got these things. We went through these religious ordeals. And Stephen, in this message, is going to address each one of them. Three things. Verses two to 34, he talks about the land. His starting point in verse two is with Abraham. Brothers and fathers, listen to me. The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham while he was still in Mesopotamia. Now, what's significant about that? Here's what's significant about that. He didn't have the land yet. God appeared to Abraham before there ever was a promised land. In verses four and five, God revealed himself to Abraham before he lived in the land. In verses nine to 16, the same was true of the sons of Jacob, including Joseph, and he talks about that. God revealed himself to them outside of the land. In verses 17 to 36, God took care of Moses outside the land. Kent Hughes says this, holy ground is wherever God meets his people and not just inside the borders of Palestine. The greatest miracles of Israel happened in Egypt at the Red Sea and in the desert, not in the promised land. So essentially, Stephen is saying you can't just depend on the land. It's about God appearing to people. And then the next thing he addresses in verses 35 to 43 is the law. That was very, very important to them. They trusted the law. But Stephen says in verse 37, he points back and says, Moses had already predicted back in the law that there would be another prophet coming like himself, who would give a living message to the people from God. He was pointing forward to Jesus even back then. Look at verse 39. Even though they already had these words from God, even though Moses went up on the mountain and God appeared to him and he brought these tablets down, he had words for them, what did the people do? Verse 39, our ancestors refused to obey him. Instead, they rejected him and in their hearts turned back. to Egypt. So Abraham, Joseph, Moses, all of these were willing to follow God. All of these were willing to obey God. They had faith and they had obedience, unlike Stephen's audience. They had the law, but they weren't willing to obey. And then the temple. That was the other. Oh, God is in the temple. God appears in the temple. And they were making the mistake to think that that's where God lived. And the temple was not sufficient for God to live in. To support this, Stephen quotes Isaiah 66, one and two. Heaven is my throne, where God says that. Heaven's my throne. The earth is my footstool. What kind of house will you build for me, says the Lord? Or where will my resting place be? Has not my hand made all these things? So there are two themes that run throughout this sermon. The first one is that although God has faithfully and consistently raised up people, deliverers of people throughout the history of Israel, the Jewish people consistently rejected them. They consistently disobeyed the law that God gave. Joseph was rejected by his brothers. Moses was rejected by the people. That's the first theme. The second theme is that the Jewish people had the tabernacle in the wilderness and then of course the temple which Solomon later would build. But they still fell into idolatry. They still mistakenly thought that God actually dwelt in the temple. So Stephen is, he's nailing it. He is giving a message. He doesn't say a whole lot yet about Jesus, but he's coming there. He gets there. And the essence Stephen's message and the essence of the message of Acts and the essence essence of the message of the New Testament is this Salvation is found not in a religious system, but in a personal relationship with God through Jesus Christ That's where salvation is Salvation is not about how many times you go to church how many times you're baptized the morality you employ your Christian Family and upbringing making your first communion or taking communion on a regular basis Salvation is not about a religious system Salvation is a relationship with Jesus That's what Stephen is trying to get to them So Stephen's identified with his audience he says we our Ancestors and he keeps doing that over and over and But now, as he gets to the end of his message, he doesn't allow his identifying with them to lead him to compromise. He nails them. He speaks the truth. Look at verse 51. You stiff-necked people, your hearts and ears are still uncircumcised. And they would have taken that to know that he's talking about heathen away from God. You're just like your ancestors. You always resist the Holy Spirit. Was there ever a prophet your ancestors did not persecute? They even killed those who predicted the coming of the righteous one. And now here's the link with Jesus. They killed these prophets, they were predicting the Messiah to come, and now you have betrayed and murdered Him. You who have received the law that was given through angels but have not obeyed it. Have you noticed in Acts that they keep coming back to the cross in their messages? They keep coming back to the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus. That's the essence of the gospel. That's the heart of what we have to say. We are sinful. We are separated from God. And Jesus was God's son, God in the flesh. He came. He lived a perfect life. He died. Why? Not as an example, but he died to pay a price for our sins so he could bring us back to God. That is the message of the gospel. Stephen was an ordinary man. But when ordinary men and ordinary women are filled with the Holy Spirit, God gives them extraordinary boldness. It took a lot of boldness for him to look at this religious, the highest religious council and say, you guys have missed it. And in fact, not only have you missed it, but you're guilty. You've crucified him. Peter Cartwright was a 19th century circuit riding Methodist preacher. You know, the kinds that got on the horses and they'd go preach here and there back in the 19th century. And one Sunday morning he came to this place to preach and somebody said in advance to him, hey, President Andrew Jackson is going to be in the audience today. Make sure that you don't offend him. Make sure that you, you know, speak calmly because they knew that he was known for his boldness. He was known for his straightforwardness. He didn't say anything, but when it came time for him to preach, he, he walked up and he said, I understand that Andrew Jackson is here. I have been requested to be guarded in my remarks. Andrew Jackson will go to hell if he doesn't repent. How's that to start your sermon? Congregation was shocked. They wondered how he would, how the president would respond to that. After the service, the president said, I want to speak to that man. And he goes up to him and he walked up to him and he shook his hand and he said, sir, if I had a regiment of men like you, I could whip the world. Now, it happened that way for Peter Cartwright in that instance, but it didn't turn out that way for Stephen. Nobody shook his hand. Nobody said, man, you're really bold. You're really telling us the truth. Thank you for telling us the truth. No, they put him to death. Hey, where's God? Why didn't God intervene? Why didn't God stop that? I mean, Stephen is chosen by the church. He's powerful. He's filled with the Holy Spirit, is full of grace. God's using him to do miracles. Surely God's not gonna let anything bad happen to Stephen. But he did. And I just noticed some ways that Stephen's death is very similar to Jesus' death. Let me just mention a few. First of all, they were unjust. Jesus didn't die on the cross because he deserved to die, because he did something wrong. Stephen didn't do anything wrong. Secondly, they both granted forgiveness in their dying hour. Remember Jesus saying, Father, forgive them while he's hanging from the cross? And Stephen in his last moments says, Lord, forgive them. The third thing is that both of these sacrifices pleased God. God the Father was pleased with Jesus' sacrifice, and he was also pleased with Stephen. Now, let me ask you a question. In the Bible, when Jesus lived, and then he died, and then he rose from the dead, and he went back to heaven, he goes back to heaven, and where is Jesus now, like right now? He's at the right hand of God. And what is he doing at the right hand of God? He's praying for us, he's interceding. And what's his posture? Is he kneeling, is he standing, is he sitting? How is he pictured in other places in the Bible? He's seated, right? Because his work is done, right? He did his work on earth and his work is done. And here's God the Father and here's Jesus seated, all right. Look at what happens here. This is pretty neat to me. Verse 55, Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit, looked up to heaven and saw the glory of God. And Jesus, read the next three words with me, standing at the right hand of God. I think that's significant. Jesus is not sitting down. Jesus is watching the first martyr and he stands to watch Stephen. Verse 56, look, he said, I see heaven open and the son of man standing at the right hand of God. The title of this sermon is look who's standing. And there's a double entendre here. Stephen is standing, he's standing for God, he's standing for the truth, but more importantly, Jesus is standing. And when we stand up for Jesus, when it's tough, when we share the gospel when it's tough, when we're determined that we're gonna serve God no matter what, that pleases Jesus. He sees it. He knows it. He watches. And here he stands. I love that. Finally, Stephen's death was like Christ in that it was used by God sovereignly to be seed for the church. Look at verse 57. They covered their ears and yelling at the top of the voices, they all rushed at him and dragged him out of the city and began to stone him. Meanwhile, the witnesses laid their coats at the feet of a young man named Saul. Wow. Saul. While they were stoning him, Stephen prayed, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit. Then he fell on his knees and cried out, Lord, do not hold this sin against them. And when they had said this, he fell asleep and Saul, Approved of their killing him on that day a great persecution broke out against the church in Jerusalem and all except the Apostles were scattered throughout Judea and Samaria, you know, what acts 8 1 is the fulfillment of acts 1 8 Acts 1 8 was he told them that they were going to be filled with the Holy Spirit. And when the Holy Spirit came on them, they were going to be his witnesses in Jerusalem and in Judea and in Samaria and the uttermost parts of the earth. And guess what happens? Because of this death of Stephen, persecution breaks out. And that's part of it. And there it's like there it incenses it, it adds to it. And now the church gets sent out. In fact, everybody except the apostle, the apostle stayed in Jerusalem and everybody else got sent out to the rest of Judea. God is taking this terrible event and he is using it to spread the gospel throughout the world. And Saul, is a part of it. Saul is going to become Paul. He is going to be saved. We'll watch as we go through Acts. He gives his testimony several times in Acts and he will allude back to this. He alludes to being on the road to Damascus, but at least once he alludes back to, I was standing there when this happened. So the church takes the gospel to Jerusalem first, but this is like a hinge. This passage right here is a hinge in the book of Acts because the first eight chapters in Acts are about ministry right there in Jerusalem. It's Jewish based. It's the gospel of Jesus right there in Jerusalem. But now they've got to go past Jerusalem. They got to go out through the region to Judea and then they got to go on to Samaria and they got to go to the ends of the earth. And the hinge comes here. that moves them in that direction. And it's also the hinge between Peter and Paul. Peter is the main focus, the main leader that we see in the early chapters of Acts. And Paul is the main leader we see in the latter part of Acts. Stephen is the link between Peter and Paul. Well, let me wrap up by just giving you some lessons for today. Again, this is not the type of story that is often going to happen, but it did happen, and it does happen all over the world. How do we apply it? How do you apply it? Let me give you six. And I'll do them fairly quickly. Number one, please don't substitute religion for a personal relationship with Christ. He is the ultimate fulfillment of the law. And so today, if you're hearing this message, I hope that you don't think that the way to be right with God is by being more religious. I hope you realize that you can't be good enough that you're separated from God by your sin and Jesus is the way. He is the truth. He is the life. He is the solution. He is your savior. And you can enter in a relationship with God through faith in him. Number two, God's filling turns ordinary people into extraordinary servants. Great exploits are not just for apostles. or missionaries, or pastors, or church staff. Great exploits are for God's people. Stephen, he was just an ordinary guy. He wasn't on the payroll. I believe wherever you go this week, whether you're in your home, whether you're working at home, whether you're in an office, you're in a neighborhood, in school, in a dance group, wherever you might be, God wants to use you. He wants to make, he wants to fill you with the Holy spirit and use you there. Number three, there may be a cost for standing up for God. Steven paid a price right now in America. We don't pay this price, although all over the world, our brothers and sisters are paying this price. All over the world, people are being martyred for their faith. They're losing their jobs because of their faith. And in America. Can't you feel that the screws are getting tightened? And and it's getting less and less popular and less and less free to be able to speak the truth. I've known people that have quit jobs, for instance, because their company wanted them to compromise on their faith. Number four, live and speak the truth regardless of immediate response. Live and speak the truth regardless of immediate response. This is what Stephen did. He lived the truth, he spoke the truth, and that's a model for us. Don't judge success by what you see immediately. In America, we are like, we are like beholden, trapped by this success model that if I do it right now, I need to see results right now. And if I can see results right now, that means I'm successful, right? If I pray a prayer right now and I see God answer it like I want him to, then that's a successful prayer. If I present the gospel to somebody and I see them get saved right now, that's successful. By all accounts, if you applied that to Stephen, he would be considered a failure. I mean, he preached and they didn't say, tell us more. We want to be baptized serves. What must I do to be saved? As they said to other people, wasn't Stephen preaching the same gospel? Wasn't he God's man, just like they were? Of course, we can't judge success by immediate results. We judge success by faithfulness to God and his truth. And that's what Stephen did. Look what happened long-term. The church went everywhere like they were supposed to. Number five, God may never call you to die for Him, but He is calling you to live for Him. He called Stephen to die for Him. I don't know what He'll call us to do, but I know He's calling us to live for Him, and I know He's calling you to live for Him. Are you willing to do that? And number six, by your life and spoken words. So the seed of the gospel, so the seed of the gospel, that's what Stephen is doing here. He's sowing seeds and while they come to great fruition, this is God's word for us. When God builds his church, it sows the seed of the gospel. J. Oswald Smith said, or Oswald J. Smith said, the world does not need sermons. It needs a message. You can go to seminary and learn how to preach sermons, but you have to go to God to get messages. Steven had a message and he gave it. You have a message. Give it the pastor member at the beginning of the sermon and this sermon wasn't that long after all. I'm sure at the end, some of you say, yeah, let's go a little bit longer. At the beginning of the message, we talked about non-intervention, how God doesn't intervene. And I gave you a quote from a pastor who talked about that. He also told a story in that same context about his church that he was pastoring at the time in Southern California. And I want to close with that. It's a pretty amazing story to me. He said, one night, there was a young woman that was praying at the altar. She had two beautiful little girls. She was crying and he said, hey, how can I pray for you? And here's what she said. I'm still struggling with the after effects of my husband's infidelity. I began to suspect my husband was having an affair with my best friend. The four of us would have dinner together. I was the only one of the four who was a believer. Even though I suspected that my friend was having an affair with my husband, I decided that no matter what, I would do my best to lead her to Jesus. Because the reason she was having this affair was she didn't have God's love in her heart. This is a woman saying this to her pastor. She continues, I faithfully was a witness to her. Our marriage broke up. My husband's affair with her didn't pan out. And after it all blown up, my friend came to me and said this, there's something about you. I've got to have whatever you have because I know you knew it was me. And yet you witnessed to me, I want to come to faith in Christ. And she did. And the pastor concludes, it was a remarkable display of the advancement of the gospel through non-intervention. God didn't intervene. He didn't strike the husband or the adulterous dead. He intervened through his non-intervention. That's a pretty amazing story, isn't it? That woman was so focused on the gospel. Stephen was so focused on the gospel. If you're a believer today, church must be focused on the gospel. Must be focused on the truth, because when God builds his church, it sows seeds of the gospel. Thanks again for joining us today from Harvest Community Church. This podcast is also available on our website HarvestCharlotte.com. Please go there if you want to send a question or comment, learn more about our ministries, or find out how you can donate to support the podcast.