God's holy and inerrant word. And when they heard these things, and the these things is a reference to the sermon that Stephen had preached. So when they heard these things, they were enraged, that they being the Sanhedrin, and they grounded their teeth at him. But he, full of the Holy Spirit, 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 opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God. But they cried out with a loud voice and stopped their ears and rushed together at him. And then they cast him out of the city and they stoned him. And the witnesses laid down their garments at the feet of a young man named Saul. And as they were stoning Stephen, he called out, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit. And falling to his knees, he cried out with a loud voice, Lord, do not hold their sin against them. And when he had said this, he fell asleep. And Saul approved of his execution. And there arose on that day a great persecution against the church in Jerusalem. And they were all scattered throughout the region of Judea and Samaria, except the apostles. Devout men buried Stephen and made great lamentation over him. But Saul was ravaging the church and entering house after house. He dragged off men and women. and committed them to prison. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we praise you. We thank you for your word. In a world that seems like there is so much uncertainty, what is comforting and what is good is to know that your word is true and unchanging. And it's the same, just as you are the same, both yesterday, today, and tomorrow. And thus we can trust in it and we can hope in its promises, for they are yes and amen in Christ. So Father, I pray that you would use this word to strengthen our faith. And if there are those here who do not have faith, Father, I pray that you would use this word to convict them of their sin, that they might repent and come to faith in Jesus Christ. Father, in all things, I pray that you are glorified and honored and praised and proclaimed, and I pray that you would do this either through me or in spite of me. And this I pray in Jesus' name, amen. When the wicked and the ignorant, the simple-minded, the weak-minded as it were, cannot defend their position with reason and arguments, What history testifies to is that they resort to violence. And that is exactly what we are seeing here from the judges in the Sanhedrin as they are dealing with and working in terms of Stephen's case. He has made his case before them. He's been charged by people who are trumping up charges, who are making up stories about him, and he's been charged with blasphemy. Blasphemy in the Roman world was the one thing that the Romans allowed the people of their individual regions to actually practice the death penalty for. So the reason for the charge of blasphemy was just that. They wanted to put Stephen to death. They wanted to silence his witness. And this seemed to be the only way they could do that. What is blasphemy? Blasphemy is maligning God's name. It is saying things about God that are not true. It is claiming that God is something other than what the scriptures teach He is. Stephen preached that Jesus was the Son of God, that He was resurrected from the dead, that He was the greater temple, and that He was the final sacrifice for sin, the one who has fulfilled and overthrown all of those Old Testament symbols in terms of the sacrificial system, all of those things that gave the Sanhedrin its power over top of the people. Jesus fulfilled that, and Stephen was preaching as much. And the Sanhedrin, at this point illegitimate leaders over Israel, sought to put him to death, to silence his words. And so that's the context that we are seeing. And so at the end of his sermon, giving defense, they start yelling. They start raging out in anger, even gnashing their teeth as they're doing that, ultimately with the hateful, murderous desire to see an end to this man's preaching. Despite that, What's interesting to me is to see the contrast. To see the contrast between these supposed leaders of the people of God and Stephen, who is a leader as a deacon of the people of God. And I think it's important for us to notice the contrast because on the one side, in verse 54, we see all this raging and anger and hatred being poured out upon this man. And in verse 55, what we're told about Stephen is that he was filled with the Holy Spirit. The rage, the anger, the hatred was not returned. It was not reciprocated, if you will, by Stephen against those who were his persecutors. And I think it's important for us to be aware of that, not just in terms of understanding this particular context, but applying it to ourselves. Because all of us are going to find ourselves at times and places where our faith is being tried, where we are kind of under scrutiny of others, and sometimes where we are receiving the hatred of others for the things that we stand for and the things that we believe. And I think we need to ask ourselves, how do we respond? and maybe arguably even think about that ahead of time and ask ourselves, how might we respond or how can I train myself to respond when I face such times and trials? Because we haven't always done a good job in the life of the church, in the history of the church, of responding to the trials. But if you look at the true church, if you look at those who are truly Christians in faith, what you see is a pattern here that is imitative of what takes place here in the Sanhedrin. You see time and time again, Christians making a peaceful and a prayerful stand even under intense scrutiny and persecution. One of the things I like about reading some church history and of some of the stories of some of our missionaries is that you see examples in different times, in different contexts, but of the same kind of thing. But you see that in life as well. Some of you have gone down and spent time either with me or at places like Planned Parenthood, where you're taking a stand against something that is evil in our society. And so we've been involved with 40 Days for Life, which is an organization that does that. And we take a peaceful and a prayerful stance against the wickedness that is going on in those clinics. But what you see is a pattern there. We're praying quietly and prayerfully with a protest sign on our back. The people that come up to us are rarely pleasant. In fact, I've been involved with 40 Days for Light for about 10 years now, a little over 10 years. And I don't think I've ever had somebody come up to me and say, Sir, can I challenge your idea? Can we just talk through this as civilized, patient human beings? And here are my reasons against what you're standing for. I want to hear your reasons for it. Let us debate that through. I've never had somebody come up to me and say, and approach it that way. We've been yelled at. There are kind of hand signals that have been given to us that are impolite at best. Oftentimes we've been denigrated and in a most recent case, I thought one of our gentlemen was about to be slugged by doing that, by simply presenting a prayerful protest against that. This is the model that we should follow and expect. Follow in the sense that we should follow Peter's, or not Peter's, Stephen's example. But expect in terms of the way the world is going to respond to us. No, I've never had somebody throw rocks at me and try and stone me while we've been out there praying at Planned Parenthood. But I wouldn't put it past some people if such a thing were allowed and permitted in our society. There's lots of instances in addition to that. Whenever Christians make a stand against gay marriage, when they take a stand against the idea of gender fluidity that is becoming popular in our society, when we take a stand against euthanasia, when we take a stand against so many of the ills that plague our society, the response is rarely, let's have a reason to dialogue about this. But the response is most commonly, Christians taking a stand for what is true and what is right and what is biblical. And the world responding with hatred, anger, name-calling, and worse. the same thing as happening here in Stephen's day. It happens in our communities. It happens in our workplaces. Sadly, it happens sometimes in churches. It happens in our families. It happens all over. And at times and places, we are called upon as Christians to take a stand. So I encourage you this day to think about how it is that you do respond when you're asked to take such a stand by the Holy Spirit. But ask yourself, how will you respond when people become violent against you? Now, that is not to say that there is not a place for a true and righteous indignation. Paul writes that we are to be angry, but not sin. That's Ephesians 4.26. And he goes in that same context to explain that and says, don't even let the sun go down on your anger or give the devil opportunity. to raise up that sin. In other words, we are to have righteous indignation when wickedness is going on around us, but we're to approach it, not let it stew in us for a season and a while. We're to address it when it needs to be addressed right away. When sin is going on, we need to take it and tackle it in a loving and a gracious way because we're angry about that sin and we're to be prayerful about those things. And even if we need to, we need to recognize that there are times to pray the imprecatory Psalms. The Psalms that bring curses even upon the wicked as a way of expressing that indignation before God in a holy and a righteous way that is totally and fully inspired by God. And not to let the devil tempt you to forsake your Christian witness. It has happened many times, and I expect it will happen again. And shame on people when it happens. Shame on the PCA pastor in Florida who got tired of making a peaceful protest against the abortion clinics and took a rifle and started sniping at the people working in the abortion place. Shame on groups like Westboro Baptist Church who have forsaken their Christian witness and turned that into violence against the things that they do not happen to care for or like. We see it happening around us, but we need to be intentional about not allowing it to happen in our lives, in our midst, and in our community. And so we're taught, we're seeing an example for us in the way Stephen is even facing his imminent death. And God does something wonderful in him. As they're cursing him, as they're angry, as they're getting ready to drag him out of the city and stone him to death, Stephen sees a vision of the glory of God. He sees Jesus standing at the right hand of God. And if you know the book of Ezekiel, you know that this sounds and echoes very much like the vision that Ezekiel sees in Ezekiel chapter two. really even one and two, but especially as we move and he sees the glory of God raised up in Christ walking upon the firmament. And he told them, I don't know what to make about this. I mean, I get it. I understand it. But it's almost like I've just proven to you guys that you're wrong and I'm right. And I'm almost wondering my humanity, whether or not I'd just kind of keep that to myself. But he told them. Telling them did two things. In a very immediate sense, it sealed the deal of his own execution. Because from the point that he said, look, by the way, as you are raging against me, I'm seeing Jesus standing at the right hand of the Father, looking down upon what's going on. And they drag him out of the city immediately. They start yelling so loud that they can't hear themselves. They're trying to silence him. There's something else though too. Not only in a very immediate sense does it seal Stephen's fate, but it also seals the fates of the Sanhedrin. Because part of this idea of of Jesus standing at the right hand of the father, he's standing in judgments over top of the wicked who are indeed the Sanhedrin in this particular case and those who are bringing up their charges against the church. And so basically a double sealing is taking place. One in an immediate sense for Stephen, and one in the ultimate sense for the Jewish authorities of that day. They would face judgment. And that was a testimony of the impending judgment that they would face. And they start stoning him. And we're told at the end of the passage there, at the end of chapter seven, that Stephen fell asleep. Let me just state something that I think is probably obvious to all of us. This does not refer to some kind of a soul sleep kind of thing where the soul is asleep. That's something that's taught by Jehovah's Witnesses and also Seventh-day Adventists. In ancient Greek, the idea of falling asleep was simply the idea, it was a euphemism, it was a figure of speech, a way of talking about a peaceful death. So God gave Stephen a grace, and that grace was not suffering the agony of the brutal death that stoning would be, but letting him fall asleep gracefully and die gracefully, even at the hands of these wicked men. And then in that same context, we are introduced to a man that all of us at this point, especially if you grew up in the church, know well, and that's Saul of Tarsus, man who would end up being better known to us by his Greek name, which would be Paul, and we call him the apostle. But at this point, Saul was still identified in the context of his Jewish connection, his context of the connection with the Sanhedrin, and we're told that he was keeping the garments of the wicked mob while they were stoning him. That was a position of responsibility. It was a position of prestige. Again, it reflects the fact that he was, again, in defeat of Gamaliel, who was part of the Sanhedrin at that day. Though I wonder, based on Gamaliel's previous comments, whether Gamaliel was overly pleased with his pupil, for his pupil's attitude. And we're told in the very first verse of chapter 8 that Saul approved of the matter. It was kind of like one of those things where he was seeing this done and it was almost like he was encouraged as a result of this event to do more. Kind of was given license, given permission, if you will, to go and say, this didn't turn out so badly, let's keep on doing this and let's up the ante and continue this attack against those who are Christians. And so we're told the persecution in Jerusalem rose and increased. And as a result, the Christians scattered. And this brings to an end and a close the first section of the book of Acts. In Acts chapter one, verse eight, we are told that the apostles would be witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. This is the end of the witness, as it were, where the church is contained in Jerusalem and the immediate surrounding cities. With the spread of... the Christians fleeing the city, the gospel spreads with them and spreads out, now we're told, to all of Judea and Samaria, transitioning us into the very second passage, second section of the book. And that's a wonderful little picture for us because a lot of times, in the things that we think are earthly failures, I mean, if the book of Acts stops with the end of chapter 7, if we just kind of ended there and didn't know anything more, we would go, wow, what an ugly end to this beautiful, wonderful church that was starting. But it wasn't the end at all. Our testimony, the fact that we are here today, is a testimony to the reality that it wasn't the end at all. God was making His prophecy, the prophecy that was given through His Son in chapter 1, verse 8, come about. And so oftentimes through our failures, God brings about His will. Isn't that a wonderful thing that God does? We're talking in confirmation class today about God's sovereignty, and thus, when we face adversity, we can be patient with that adversity, or in the midst of that adversity. Why? Because we know God's sovereign over these things. We know God's in control over these things. And so we don't need to worry because everything's going wrong, because God's got a purpose, a plan for it. We just don't always understand what that purpose and plan is. In this case, they ought to have because Jesus had already told him what his purpose and plan was. Most of you know that I spent a lot of time or I've spent a lot of years working a couple of weeks a year with a seminary in Ukraine. And when the Russians came into the eastern part of the country where we happened to have our seminary, the Donbass region in the city of Donetsk, we were concerned at what was gonna happen next because the airport was bombed to smithereens, the train station was destroyed, the roads and infrastructure that you would get in and out of that region was utterly demolished and wiped out and they're still fighting back and forth over the demarcation line between the eastern regions and the western regions. We just don't hear about it a whole lot on the news anymore. And we were concerned. We've invested a lot of time and money into these students and into building the church there. What was wonderful, the things that we couldn't see, is that God scattered those students in a lot of different areas because everybody needed a place of refuge and a UN refugee camp is not a good place to go if you have any other option. It's the last choice. And so they went with cousins and family and extended families wherever they were in other parts to the west of the country. But they took the things that they had been taught with them And they ended up in churches in all of those other regions and towns and communities, villages, and things like that. And the pastors recognized that they knew something and that they were a blessing to the church. And so the pastors from there were saying, where did you learn all of this stuff? And they would say, well, from the seminary that we were involved with. And then eventually when we were able to relocate to the city of Kiev, you know it better as Kiev, we had students now coming from churches all across the country. Isn't that funny how God works and develops and builds his church to things that from our end, when we're going through it and we're watching it, look as if they're tragedies. We can go on with example after example, and I imagine that every single one of you, as you look at your life and look at some of the tragedies that you have had to face, either as individuals or as families or as a church community, you recognize what God has done as He's worked you through those tragedies and kind of brought you to the other side of the tragedy that you have had to face. Same thing, same principle. God is sovereign over all of these things, and He is building His church as chapter eight begins. And the more Saul rages, the more the church grows. So how are we going to apply some of this? And I want to highlight just a few thoughts as we wrap up this morning. The first of all, Don't make light of the importance of the introduction of Saul here, in this particular context. Saul's conversion for the church becomes the model for us, both of reconciliation and repentance. Okay, it's no coincidence that Saul becoming Paul will retell his conversion Several more times he's converted in Acts, but twice more in Acts, he retells that conversion. Then in Galatians, he tells of his conversion story. And again, in 2 Corinthians, he tells of his conversion story, because his is the example. He was the persecutor of the church, and God made him the defender of the church, even to the point where it would cost him his own life. And so with that in mind, it's also a matter not only of Paul's repentance, and he would say that I was the chief amongst sinners. Why? Not just because he approved of murder, but he approved the murder of Stephen and of God's people. But he's also a model for us of reconciliation, because the church had a decision to make. When God called upon the church, to welcome this guy in. They kind of didn't know how to respond. What's going on here? We're not sure that we trust this guy because he does really bad things. But in terms of reconciliation, God brought the persecutor and the persecuted together in faith and in grace. And isn't it wonderful how God does that in history as well? And we can name names of people that have been great persecutors of the church. that God has worked in their life and made them heroes of the church. C.S. Lewis being one of my heroes that fits exactly that description, who was an atheist, an attacker of Christians, until he became one himself. So don't make sure you make enough of the introduction of Saul here. Secondly, be reminded that Christian faith is going to cost each of us, in the end, our lives. Christian faith is not meant to be kind of an easy thing. It's not meant to be a sit back and enjoy the ride and God's gonna pour out the riches of heaven on you and you're going to just, everybody be healthy and wealthy and have no problems in your life because you're a Christian, that's not how it works. In fact, in most cases, the way it works is that the day we become Christian is the day that trials really begin in our lives. And as we grow in our faith, that's when our trials begin to grow. And sometimes people have said that you can test your own Christian faith by the trials that you have had to faith for the gospel in your life as well. holiness and a life of holiness will cost you something. Martyrdom, the word martyr, is actually the Greek word for witness or testimony. It's the fact that witnesses of Christians, particularly in the early days, brought their death, joyfully, gratefully, oftentimes happily. And so the words became interconnected with one another. And so when we think of a martyr today, we think of somebody who is executed or brought to death because of the faith that they have, because of their testimony. But understand, if you have a testimony, if you have a witness of Christ, that makes you a martyr. It may not bring your life to an earthly end in this world, but it may. but it will cost you something as you live out your life in this world. Third, in light of costing you something, in light of trials, in light of challenges, we began our sermon talking about this. Be intentional about how you take a stand. Don't give the devil an opening either in your life or the life of the persons that are persecuting you. but take a stand in Christian faith and with a Christian witness from beginning to end. Don't compromise it or allow it to be compromised. Fourth, in light of that, true strength. Remember, this is Paul's witness at the end of 2 Corinthians, true strength does not come from having power over people. having power over others. True strength comes from submission to Christ and letting Christ's power flow through you in spite of your weakness. That's how the Apostle Paul was used by God to build the church. And that's how we are called to live so that his church might continue to grow. And fifth, God most often demonstrates that power through weakness and not human strength so that he is most visible in the work. So A, don't be surprised when sometimes the least, the people that you least expect to make a Christian witness do, because there are lots of examples of that. But B, don't be afraid to be vulnerable for the Christian faith. Because oftentimes, that's when you're most sincere. And that's when your witness is best heard. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we praise you. We thank you for your goodness and your mercy to us because we oftentimes get it backwards and upside down. And Father, I thank you that you choose to use us in spite of ourselves. And I thank you that you have shown your mercy and grace to us and your son. We are indebted to you. Father, I pray that as we live out our days, we would be reminded of the witnesses that have gone before us and be willing to stand and to stand firm upon your truth. You had to do it in grace and in faith and in love and in mercy to those who can't tell their right from their left. We praise you, Father. And we pray that you would use us to be that pillar and buttress of the truth in our community and in this world, and that we would indeed see your hand work in our lives. This we pray in Jesus' name, amen.