Acts 6-7 | Resolved: Stephen's Gospel Courage

Speaker: I'm excited to be here.

Uh, for those of you who don't know me, my name's Lewis.

I'm the student ministry director here at Compass Baer North Texas, and I

have the privilege of, of preaching this morning, so I'm really excited to.

To be doing this, we're gonna be in Acts chapter six and seven.

All right.

I'm glad we don't have a lot of students here because this would, this would

be a thing for the rest of the sermon.

So, Angelo, stop it.

We're not doing that.

Okay?

This is not student ministry, but we're gonna be in Acts chapter six

and verse and, uh, chapter seven.

And we're gonna be looking at Steven, right?

This series, we're looking at godly men who show us what it looks like

to follow God faithfully, right?

Resolve.

That's our series.

And so we're gonna be looking at the example of Stephen, the

very first martyr of the church.

And here in our passage there's something really, really interesting.

It starts with a problem.

If you look at Acts chapter six, the first few verses, there's, there's a problem.

There's these people, the, the Hellen, the Greek church members, they're complaining.

Against the Hebrews, the Jewish church members, because their widows aren't

getting fed, their widows aren't getting enough food, and so there's a problem.

There's partiality, right?

There's maybe even racism here.

There's division in the church.

This is a big deal.

This is a big problem.

And so what do the apostles do?

Right?

The apostles, these are the guys who walked with Jesus.

He taught them for three years.

What do these guys decide to do?

Well, instead of starting a church program, right, a, a widow's feeding

ministry instead of a sermon series on the importance of not showing favoritism

instead of a food bank, instead of a woman's outreach for the widows.

What do these apostles do?

They say, we need godly men.

Godly men are going to be the solution to this problem.

Look at verse three.

They say, therefore, brothers, pick out from among you.

Seven men of good repute, right?

Godly men, good character, full of the spirit and of wisdom whom

we will appoint to this duty.

They find godly men to serve the church.

One of the biggest needs in any church, just like the church here in Acts six.

Is godly men.

That's the biggest need in our church.

Godly men, men who love Jesus, who lead their families and follow God's word.

And that's what we're here to talk about is godly men.

And part of the reason for that is Jesus gave his church a mission, right?

And, and as men, we are to be leading in that mission.

Godly men have.

First century shouldered the burden of Jesus' mission for his church.

Right?

Go therefore and make disciples.

That's our mission here.

And so to accomplish this mission, we need godly men, not just godly men of

character, godly men of courage as well.

And that's what we're gonna be talking about is Stephen's Gospel Courage.

Courageous men like Steven, courage is a key component to manhood.

This isn't our our verse for this morning, but I want you

to see something about this.

Courage and manhood connection.

One Corinthians 1613, Paul's writing, and he, he uses this, this verb,

this is one verb in Paul's original language, act like men, and this

is a command to the whole church.

And he says, act like men.

What does that mean?

Well, if you, if you're familiar with the story of Joshua, right?

When, when the Lord calls Joshua to go into the promised land, he says,

be strong and courageous, right?

Joshua one nine.

A lot of your kids probably know that verse Joshua one, nine In the Greek Old

Testament, that's the same word here.

Courageous.

Act like men courageous.

So there's something that God wants us to know about manhood

that is tied with courage.

Manhood and courage are tied together and you know that experientially

right from any good movie, right?

Any good movie has courageous men in it, right?

From Lord of the Rings to Captain America, right?

Any godly any.

Any good movie, not Godly movie, any, well, Lord of the

Rings is a godly movie, right?

We're all clear about that.

All right.

Um, in college, I, I was at a bible college and one of the classes was

Theology and Lord of the Rings.

And literally all of this class was just, you get to watch clips of Lord

of the Rings and the professor just uses it as a sermon illustration.

That was the whole class.

Anyway, um, any good movie has courageous men, right?

Because there, there's that inextricable link between courage and a manhood.

And that's what we're gonna see in Steven's story.

All right?

We're gonna see in, in these two chapters what gave Steven

such great courage, specifically in his witness and evangelism.

So that's why we're gonna be talking about gospel courage and

the way I'm defining gospel courage.

Is courage to embrace and announce the gospel, right?

Courage to affirm the gospel.

Courage to love the gospel, even when people don't want you to love the gospel.

E, courage to announce it, courage to tell people about it.

Courage to bring it up in your conversations.

That's the type of courage that we need for our church right here, right now.

Gospel courage.

What gave Steven such great courage in his witness and evangelism?

Well, the first thing I want us to see about Steven is his character.

Look with me at verses three, right?

We start in verse three.

Um, pick out seven men of good repute, full of the spirit, full of wisdom.

So there's saying we need men who have godly character.

We need men who are filled with the Holy Spirit.

We need men who are wise, who know how to use God's word in everyday life.

That's the kind of men that they're looking for.

And then they, in verse five, what they said, please, the whole

gathering, and they chose Steven and what's Steven known for?

Right?

What's Steven's LinkedIn bio.

What's Steven's?

What's What's, what do you think of when you think of Stephen?

He's full of faith and of the Holy Spirit.

That's what Luke, the author of Acts, wants you to know about Stephen.

That's what the apostles thought of when they thought of Stephen.

Full of faith.

He trusts God and of the Holy Spirit.

And that's what they thought of when they thought of Steven.

Stephen is well known to be a righteous man.

He's well known to be living in step with God's spirit.

Stephen didn't just wake up one day ready to be the first martyr of the church.

Stephen's courage was built on a lifetime of growth in Christ-like character.

A Christ-like character is the fertile soil for gospel courage.

And that's our first point.

Ground gospel courage in a holy life ground, right?

The foundation, like when you're building something right, you put the, you put

those foundational pillars in, in, you want to put it in a, in a good setting

ground gospel, courage in a holy life.

See, a lot of times your personal life will reflect your buy-in to your mission.

I heard this story a few years ago.

Um, I, I don't remember where I heard it from, but someone was telling me,

um, about some Mormon missionaries that they invited into their home.

They knocked on their door and they invited their home.

They, they, and the Mormons uncharacteristically seemed very just

not excited to be talking to them.

They almost seemed like they were trying to get out of this meeting.

And so they had 'em over for dinner.

They're, they're talking, they're, they're asking them questions.

They're, they're doing their thing and the Mormons just don't seem into it.

And they don't wanna really open up their, the Book of Mormon with them.

They don't wanna open the Bible with them.

They're, they're very reluctant.

And he hesitant.

And eventually they finally get them to open up the, their

copy of the Book of Mormon.

And the missionaries have weed in their, like in the pages of the Book of Mormon.

Huh.

Right.

Like crazy.

These guys are supposed to be like, they've, they've uprooted their

whole life to, to be here, right?

To, to go on mission for these two years and, and they don't care, right?

They're, they're here because they want to do something else, right?

They personal life reflected their buy into the mission, right?

I could tell you I've never met these, those two missionaries, right?

And I could tell you, man, those guys don't really care.

About Joseph Smith.

Those guys, those guys don't really care about the Book of Mormon.

Those guys don't really care about telling other people what

they think is the gospel, right?

I could tell you just based on that one conversation,

and I trust you already know this, but I have to start here, that gospel

courage and evangelism must always be accompanied by holy living and

Christ-like witness your holiness can make or break your evangelism, right?

If those Mormons.

We're talking to someone and trying to convert them to Mormonism and they

see, oh, you actually don't really care about this, right, that you're just here

to, to, so I don't get fined, right?

It's my Seahawks fan up there.

Um, you're not really on the mission because you're not bought in.

You can also do great harm to the name of Christ through your

reputation and your character.

Right?

And we all know this, but.

You can try to be courageous for the gospel and come in guns blazing,

trying to look to, to prove that you're right and win the argument.

And that's actually sometimes gonna do harm to the name of Christ.

You're gonna dishonor God in trying to be courageous.

The the man that you are, the man that I am has a great impact on.

Whether we're really actually courageous or whether we're just brash and arrogant.

Right.

There's a, there's a big distinction between those things.

Courage is not arrogance.

Courage comes from Christlike character.

Right?

And we, we talked about this in our, our series through the, through

Titus and, and first Timothy, right, where we talked about qualify.

We want to be men who are not undermining the credibility of

Jesus and his church through our.

Our own personal life, but also your own personal life will impact

your desire for evangelism, right?

Your closeness with God will motivate you to tell people about him.

If you're not very excited about God, of course you're not gonna be

courageous for him if you're not very excited because man, you've,

you're holding on to hidden sin.

You've got unconfessed sin.

You're, you're unrepentant sin, or you're not really just bought in.

You don't really believe the things.

That God says in his word, of course, you're not gonna be

excited to tell people about it.

Of course you're gonna shrink back because you're, you're really

not all in on God's mission.

Something that we see in these chapters is that Holy living

comes from the Holy Spirit, right?

We saw that in verses three and five.

These men are full of the Holy Spirit.

Stephen is full of the Holy Spirit.

What does that?

Right.

If you talk about the Holy Spirit in acts, you can get into a lot of

really fun theological conversations that we don't have time for.

Maybe we could do a podcast episode on that or something.

But, um, when we're talking about the Holy Spirit in acts right, what does

it mean to be full of the Holy Spirit?

There's the, the apostles, right?

They have a special gifting of the Holy Spirit.

But in the rest of the New Testament, we see that Christians are also

supposed to be filled with the spirit.

I'll show you what that means, and I think it's actually connected to God's word.

Those two things are tied together.

Look at these two verses for me.

Okay.

Colossians three 16 and Ephesians five 18.

Okay, so we have two separate commands here.

One of them, let the word of Christ dwell in you richly.

The other one be filled with the spirit, right?

Two different commands, but look at the effects.

They're almost identical.

We've got teaching and watching one another.

All wisdom, singing praises, hymn spiritual songs, right?

Addressing one another.

Psalms, hyn spiritual songs, singing, making Me your Lord in your heart

with thankfulness in your hearts.

You see, there's the similarities here, right?

It's almost like these are the same thing.

It's almost like God's word and God's spirit are tied together.

It's almost like God's spirit works through God's word to

make all these things happen.

Right.

So if you wanna be someone who's filled with God's spirit, right?

If you wanna be living out that Galatians five command, walk by the spirit and you

will not gratify the desires of the flesh.

You can't do it without God's word.

That's why we care so much about reading the Bible at our church, right?

That's why we do our dbr.

That's why we have that daily Bible reading podcast.

That's why we want you to, to be taking in all these sermons, is because

the way for you to have Christ-like character that will cause you to

be courageous for the gospel is.

Being full of the spirit, which is accompanied by God's word dwelling in you.

Right?

And something about this verse that's really interesting, it's not

enough for you to be in God's word.

You need God's word in.

You see the difference there, right?

A lot of our kids in our kids' ministry are in God's word.

They memorize the verses, they hear the teaching, but God's

word's not in them yet, right?

It hasn't affected their hearts.

So when we talk about doing Bible reading plans and hearing sermons, right?

Maybe you're in God's word every day, but my challenge to you is to make sure that

God's word gets in you every day, right?

Don't get up from your Bible reading until God's word is in you, right?

Until you, you're full of affection for God.

You have clear steps of here's what I want to do today with

this, that's gonna build gospel.

Courage.

Right.

And we see that in Steven.

Steven definitely had God's word in him.

You notice he summarizes the whole Old Testament in his speech in chapter seven.

He basically walks through the entire Old Testament, very excitedly,

very passionately, with a lot of animation off the top of his head.

Right?

Because God's word was in him.

Which is why we can know that Oh yeah.

He's full of the spirit.

He's also full of God's word.

It's not just an intellectual pursuit, right?

There's passion behind it.

You see that in the way that Steven talks.

But a holy life also includes love for others.

Look at chapter seven.

We're gonna be looking at verse two here.

Look at chapter seven, verse two.

And Steven said, brothers and fathers hear me.

See the way he addresses the, the Jews here, brothers and fathers.

He's compassionate.

He's respectful.

He's not looking down on them.

He's not like, oh, you guys are so dumb.

How could you miss that?

Jesus was the Messiah.

Isn't it so obvious from the scriptures, he's respectful.

He wants to address them in a way that doesn't shame them

because they're beneath him.

He cares about them.

And if you keep reading in the chapter, you see that in verse,

even at the very end in verse 60, when he's about to die, right?

He says.

Lord do not hold this sin against them.

Right?

They're stoning him.

They're killing him in a really brutal way, and he's not out to get them back.

He's not, you know, he's, he's not calling down fire from heaven on them, right?

He's, he's saying, God, forgive them.

Right?

I want them to know you.

I want them to, to trust Jesus to take away their sin.

He's not trying to be right.

He's trying to win the, the person, as we like to say, he's, he's trying to win

the person, not win the argument, right?

So his compassion for others is part of his holy life, right?

We don't wanna be arrogant.

We wanna be courageous, right?

Are you courageously prideful, right?

That's arrogant, right?

Holier than thou moralistic.

Are you just, or are you actually courageously looking for opportunities

to talk about the good news of Jesus because you love people, right?

Courage means running.

Towards people to help them.

Right?

Not running towards people and writing them off and looking down on them.

Right.

We wanna be holy, not just Orthodox, we want to be

compassionate and not just correct.

Right?

That's all part of gospel courage.

But if a holy life is the fertile soil for gospel courage, then what's the.

The seed, right?

That produces it.

If you wanna keep that plant analogy, well, gospel courage comes from faith.

Faith is what produces courage.

Faith is the spark that ignites gospel courage, right?

Look here at the end of chapter seven, right?

Stephen's view of Jesus gives him courage and confidence

to, to deliver this message.

Faith is the way you see Jesus, the way that you see

God, the way you perceive him.

That's what faith is, right?

Trusting God, not just knowing facts about God, right?

Steven's view of Jesus gives him the courage and the confidence that

he needs to do what he needs to do.

What does he see about Jesus?

Well, he what seems to be visually sees Jesus in verse

55 at the end of chapter seven.

But Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit, once again, gazed into heaven and saw

the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God and Stephen's

faith caused him to see Jesus in a way that gave him courage, right?

He's literally probably seeing Jesus, but we figuratively see Jesus by faith, right?

We talk about your view of God.

Who do you think God is to you moment by moment.

Your view of Jesus is gonna make or break your gospel courage.

So our second point is ignite gospel courage with your view of Jesus.

In biblical counseling, we call this our functional view of God.

How you actually see God moment by moment, right?

You have your intellectual, like maybe you're you.

You can pass this theology test, right?

Oh yeah, God is omnisci.

God is omnipresent, right?

Maybe you're a leader in adventure club and so you just learned

about all this stuff, right?

God is faithful.

God is love, right?

You, you know these things about God, but moment by moment is God

actually, those things to you, that's your functional view of God, right?

You can illustrate it.

Like maybe you're in a battle with lust, right?

You're, you're tempted to act on your impure desires, you're.

Intellectual view of God might say, yeah, I believe that God is everywhere.

I believe that God sees me.

I believe that God loves me.

I believe that God is a good judge.

I believe that God hates sin.

But functionally, your view of God is gonna determine how you respond

to that temp temptation, right?

If functionally, you really believe that God is everywhere and God sees everything.

That would change your response to that temptation, right?

Like Joseph, we just read this in our daily Bible ring not too long ago.

Joseph says, how could I commit this sin against God?

He knows, man, God sees this.

God knows about this.

God cares.

And so his functional view of God is that God is present, that God is active and

that God is aware of what's happening.

So your faith is really what you do to get your functional view of God

to match what he says about himself.

Right, because I think most of us know intellectually the right things about

God, but faith is moment by moment.

When temptation comes or when that opportunity to share the gospel comes,

you need to get your intellectual view of God to match your, your boots on

the ground, functional view of God.

And that's what faith does.

You, you talk to yourself, you're like, man, I don't wanna share

the gospel with that person.

And you start, you.

You start, if you start listening to yourself rather than talking

to yourself, what happens is, oh man, this happens to me.

That guy's got big hands.

He looks really scary.

He might try to kill me, right?

Oh, that guy.

Ah, I don't know.

He looks, he looks like he probably wouldn't wanna hear

about the gospel, right?

He probably just would reject me, or, oh, he looks like he's from

a different country, so maybe he wouldn't even care about Jesus.

So, or, uh, he probably knows so much more about his own religion.

He would just totally steamroll me in a debate.

And we talk ourselves out of sharing the gospel, but if you.

Talk to yourself by faith, and you take God's word and, and

you apply it into your heart.

You say, you know what?

Romans one 16 says that the gospel is the power of God for salvation.

Do I believe that?

Do I really believe that the gospel is more powerful than,

than this smart guy's intellect?

Or do I really believe that Jesus is, is active and reigning and ruling and

it's okay if this guy gets mad at me for sharing the gospel, or man, I don't wanna

share the gospel with my relative because things are gonna be really awkward next

time around we that we hang out with them.

Do I really believe that Jesus says Whoever loves father or

mother or brother or sister more than me is not worthy of me.

Do I take that verse and apply it to my heart?

That's what your functional view of God is, right?

And that's how you get courage.

You trust God.

You say, God, you know what?

I, I trust you.

I trust your word, and I'm gonna bring it to bear on my situation.

And that's how you get courage.

And we see Steven doing that here.

Right.

Verses 55 and 56, what does he specifically see about Jesus?

Well, here's what he sees, right?

He sees, I'll put it on the screen for you.

He gazed into heaven and he saw the glory of God and Jesus standing at

the right hand of God and behold, all right, and he says it out loud.

He says what He sees, I see the heavens open.

The son of man standing at the right hand of God.

Look what he sees about Jesus.

He sees that Jesus is victorious.

He's at the right hand of God, right?

We, that happens twice at the right hand of God.

That means that Jesus is right.

He defeated death.

He was as he ascended to the father's hand, he is reigning with power, even

though it might not look like it because Steven's about to die, but Steven says,

I know that that Jesus is is winning.

I know that I'm on the winning team even though I'm getting killed for it.

He sees that Jesus is victorious, right?

Do, do you encounter evangelistic opposition knowing that Jesus

is victorious, that he's alive, that he's reigning, that he

is powerful, that he wins?

Or do you watch the news like Jesus is winning?

Do you watch the news like Jesus is in control or do you watch the news

like, man, I, I, I really hate that and I need to do something about it.

And those people just need to get out of our state.

Or do you watch the news like, man, God is in control.

Jesus is at God's right hand, and I trust him, and we need to reach

those people with the gospel.

Something else that Steven sees about Jesus is he sees that

Jesus is active, he's standing.

You notice that a lot of times when you think of Jesus at God's

right hand, you see this in Ephesians one, he's sitting, right?

Or in Hebrews, Jesus sat down.

Because he's done, his work is finished.

Why is Jesus standing?

Is Stephen hallucinating?

Like, what?

What's he seeing about Jesus?

I think what, what we're trying to see here is that Jesus is active.

He's up, he's, he's ready to receive Stephen into heaven.

He's active, ready to help.

Stephen, do you evangelize, like Jesus is active, right?

When you share the gospel, is it like, oh, well I hope this

works, or is it like, no, no, no.

The gospel is God's power.

The Holy Spirit is real and he is working to save this person.

God says that he desires all people to reach repentance, right?

One Timothy two.

Am I gonna pray like it or am I just gonna be like, oh, well maybe

Jesus is victorious and active.

Those are the two things that Steven sees about Jesus, and those are the two things

that can give us gospel courage, right?

Steven's a regular guy, Steven.

He's not Pastor Steven, right?

Steven is not seminary grad Steven, Steven is not, you know, super smart theologian.

Steven Steven's a regular guy who studied God's word.

He didn't even have a Bible, right?

Didn't have Bibles back then.

He didn't have a New Testament.

He couldn't just, you know, pull up his phone out of his pocket

and and memorize scripture.

He's a regular guy who studied God's word, trusted God.

Applied it to his heart so that he really believed these things and lived like it.

So when you see Jesus like Steven as active and victorious, it'll not just

give you courage, it'll also change your concerns and what you're concerned about

often shapes your fears and your prior.

And that also keeps courage alive.

So we talked about grounding the foundation for courage.

We talked about igniting the spark for courage.

Well, here, here's how you sustain gospel courage.

It's with God focused concern.

You keep your courage going, right?

You, you keep the fire of your courage warm with your

concerns, with your priorities.

What you focus on will shape your fears.

It'll shape your.

Goals, it'll shape your motives.

So evangelistic courage is sustained by prioritizing

God's glory and God's mission.

Right?

Your, your worries and your priorities will either strengthen

your resolve or weaken it.

What you're focused on, what you're, what you're looking for is either gonna

strengthen your courage, it's gonna feed it, or it's gonna take it away.

So Steven is, is very focused on God and on his mission.

Right?

When Steven is getting stoned, what's he looking at?

He's not looking at the rocks.

He's looking at Jesus.

Right?

When Steven is brought before these people at this trial, his

goal isn't to win arguments.

His goal isn't to.

Save his life.

His goal is to share the gospel.

He's saying the reason I'm here on trial with this platform, with

figuratively, with this microphone, this is a great time to share the gospel.

That's what Steven thinks.

When Steven is there.

He's like, man, I'm on trial.

All these people are here to listen to me.

What should I do?

Should I defend myself or should I share the gospel?

He's like, well, it'd be better if I shared the gospel.

'cause if I die, we're gonna be okay.

Something else that you might notice about Steven is, Steven's

job is to take care of the widows.

If Steven dies, can he do that anymore?

No.

Is Steven worried about that?

No.

Steven knows.

You know what?

Jesus is gonna take care of the widows, right?

Jesus is gonna raise up other godly men to serve in the church, but right now I

have this opportunity to share the gospel and that's what I'm gonna do, right?

He, his concern is rightly ordered.

Because it would've been easy for Steven to be like, you know what?

I'm in charge of taking care of the widows.

This is a big deal.

This could have caused a big division in the church.

Maybe I should, I should try to just get off clean and, and go back to the church.

Take care of the widows and, and we'll figure this out from here.

He could have, right, and he could have justified it in his head.

Right.

I could have done that.

I could see myself doing that.

Well, I'm not gonna share the gospel with this person because then they might

hate church, and then they might not be able to share the gospel with them later.

Or we just go down the line and we justify all these reasons not to share the gospel.

Obviously there's, there's a place for wisdom in sharing the gospel.

There's a place for looking for good opportunities and, and, and all that.

But what I'm gonna say is don't use wisdom as a justification

to not share the gospel, right.

To be scared of sharing the gospel.

If you have worldly priorities, you'll always find a reason not to evangelize.

You'll always find a reason not to evangelize if your priorities

are, are outta whack, right?

Oh, well, the, you know, I, I can't share the gospel with this parent

because, you know, they, they're, uh, on the team, their, their son has a

lot of influence and they, they talk to the coach, and maybe not you can,

you can do all sorts of stuff, right?

Or, oh, if I share the gospel with this coworker, then you know, then it's gonna

affect my promotion and all this stuff.

Right.

Your priorities are going to change your courage.

If you have worldly priorities, you'll always be worried about

your reputation, your convenience, essentially your kingdom, right?

I felt this a lot when I, when I first moved in to a new apartment about a year

ago, I was initially, I was like, oh man, we get to meet all our new neighbors and

invite them to church and all this stuff.

And then I was so concerned about getting settled in the apartment.

I never did it.

I was like, oh, well, I'll do it later.

Once I, you know, once we, once we move the rest of the stuff in, or,

oh, once we can actually invite people over and we get settled, then I'll,

then I'll invite them, or, well, I'll just, you know, it's close enough to

Easter, I'll just wait until Easter.

And I never did it.

I never invited my neighbors to church in my apartment complex because I always

was waiting for a better time to do it.

But really what I was doing is I was justifying my fear of not.

Of, of inviting them.

Right?

I was, I was afraid to go over there and say, Hey, my name's Lewis just moved in.

We'd love to meet you guys love to have you over dinner.

By the way, we go to Church Compass, Bible Church.

If you're interested, we'd love to, to go with you.

Right?

I never did that.

That would take 30 seconds.

Right.

Never did that.

'cause I always came with a better reason to wait.

That's me not being courageous.

Right.

That's me using wisdom to justify my fear.

Right.

God focused priorities will always find reasons to evangelize, right?

The, the question should not be, when should I evangelize?

The question should be, okay, well, if there's ever Right, you should not be

looking for exceptions as the rule, right?

The, the, the, it shouldn't be.

Well, if I find a good opportunity, then I'll share the gospel.

Right?

The default should be share the gospel and then the exception should

be, okay, well this time I won't.

But most of the time I will.

Right?

That's, that's what God focused priorities do.

So I want you to think about what matters in a thousand years.

Does it matter that I waited for a great time to invite my neighbor

to church in a thousand years?

Not really.

It mattered more that I would just share the gospel with them.

Right.

What conversations and topics do you bring up?

I was convicted about this this morning reading the DVR.

I noticed that Joseph in Genesis 41, he's always bringing up God.

When they talk about his dreams.

He's like, well, you know, God gives the interpretations of his dreams

just so you know, but I'll, I'll help.

He like always fronts it with God does this, and I think about when someone

asks me about my weekend, I'm never like if they're, if they're not a

believer, I'm not like, the sermon was so good we talked about this, but if I'm

talking to a believer, I would say that.

But I changed it when I talked to an unbeliever.

'cause I'm scared, right?

And that was super convicting for me this morning.

Are you praying for open doors to share the gospel?

Your priorities are often reflected in your prayers, right?

What you're worried about, what you're concerned about is gonna

show up in what you pray about.

And Colossians four, when, um, Paul's talking to the Colossians about what

to pray for for him, he says, pray for open doors to share the gospel.

And in Ephesians six, he prays for give.

He asked them, give me courage.

Pray that God would give me courage.

That's what Paul wants people to pray for, right In your community group, prayer

quest time, when was the last time you asked for courage to share the gospel?

Right on your prayer list.

If you keep one.

Do you have a open door part on your I want open doors

to share the gospel, right?

I had a pastor who challenged me to do that.

He said, every day you should be praying for open doors to share the gospel.

Then for him that literally he prayed that and then Jehovahs Witness came

to his door like 30 seconds later.

There you go.

Right.

But also Steven is more concerned about sharing the gospel than

he is about defending himself.

I think this happens a lot as men is we wanna defend ourselves and that

distracts from sharing the gospel, right?

We, we get self-focused and that takes away from our evangelism.

If you notice, evangelism is inherently selfless in so many ways.

You're loving someone in a way that they usually don't want to be loved, right?

That's selfless.

Also, you're telling them about Jesus, which should distract from you, right?

Evangelism is one of the most selfless things you can do because the person

you're, you're sharing the gospel with probably won't like it and

you're not talking about yourself.

So.

If you're self-focused, you're always going to not want

to share the gospel, right?

It's gonna grate against your selfishness to share the gospel,

but your focus can help you in that regard, right?

You'll be less afraid if you're focused on God, right?

Steven, his look at his gaze, he's gazed into heaven.

He, that's where he is looking, right?

When, think of like when Peter's walking on the water.

He's looking at Jesus, he's doing great.

He looks at the water, he looks at the wind.

Not so great, right?

He starts sinking.

Or you think about Elisha right in Second King, six, whether you that story when,

um, his servant is like, we're surrounded.

What are we gonna do?

And elisha's like, open his eyes because I want him to see the way things really are.

And he, his servant suddenly sees, oh, there's like a ton of angels here.

We're good.

Right?

His eyes were in the wrong place.

He wasn't seeing things the right way.

When you see things the right way, it makes sense to share the gospel, right?

When your priorities are rightly ordered, it makes sense.

It's like, oh yeah, of course I'll share the gospel, right?

I'm not gonna worry about the other things that could prevent

me from sharing the gospel.

I'm gonna worry about how I could share the gospel, and

that builds courage, right?

I thought of Jesus in Luke 2 52.

I must be about my father's business.

That's like Jesus' mission statement, right from age 12.

I must be about my father's business.

His priorities were God's will.

That's what I want.

Not well, I'm gonna get grounded 'cause I disappeared and my

parents were really scared.

Right?

Which that's a hilarious story.

If you're like Mary and Joseph, they lost Jesus.

Like you lost, like what do you do?

Like if you're married, you're like, um, Hey God, you know

that Messiah you gave us.

Um.

You have another one anywhere, like anyway, um, yeah.

Matthew 6 33, right?

We talked about this on, on the Dbr R podcast with when we went through Matthew

six, that passage about anxiety, right, about fear is tied to your priorities.

'cause where does it start with, where your treasure is there,

your heart will be also it.

The eye is the lamp of the body and you can only serve one master.

Those are priority verses right.

Your heart.

That's where your priorities come from.

Your treasure is what your priorities are.

Your master is who your priorities are, and then therefore, don't be anxious.

That's where fear comes from, misplaced priorities.

He says, look, look at the lilies.

Look at the at the birds, right?

Change your focus.

Look at God, and that'll change your priorities because how

does he end that passage?

Matthew 6 33.

Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness.

All these things will be added to you, right?

You don't need to worry about what you're gonna eat, you don't need about

worry about what you're gonna wear.

If you worry about God and you're concerned about what he wants you

to do, he'll take care of you.

He'll equip you to do the mission that he wants you to do, right?

You think about it, if you, if you want your kid to do something,

you enable them to do it.

You give them the resources they need to get it done or your employee, right?

If, imagine if your employee came to you and was like, well, you know,

boss, I know you asked me to do this thing, but I didn't do it because

I didn't have fill in the blank.

You'd be like, why didn't you tell me?

I want you to do it.

I'll help you do it.

That's that's how evangelism works.

Like, God, I really need an opportunity to talk to this person about who you are.

Ask for it, pray for it.

So where will your concern and therefore your energy go?

Will your concern and your energy go toward worrying about yourself?

Or will they go towards worrying about God?

You only have so much energy to worry about stuff, right?

Paul talks about how he's anxious for the churches, right?

Paul's anxiety, his concern is towards God's will, right?

Where is yours going?

Is yours focused on you or is yours focused on God?

And that's where courage comes from, right?

Because if, if you just spend all your time focusing on, on what

you need, you're finite, right?

We're we can't, we can't take care of all of our needs.

We need God to do it.

And so Jesus has not just given us a mission as men who say, Hey, go do that.

Go evangelize.

Right?

It's actually Jesus' mission.

I will build my church.

That's what Jesus says.

And he says, Hey, come with me.

Right?

Even the great commission, you think about it starts with all authority on

heaven and on earth has been given to me, and it ends with I'll be with you

always, even to the end of the age Gospel.

Courage is not divorced from Jesus, right?

The Great Commission, God's mission for us is sandwiched by Jesus in control

of everything, and he's just gonna be with you every step of the way.

So I hope that gives you encouragement to go about God's mission with courage.

Jesus is with you.

He is gonna win one day, right?

That's the main point of the book of Revelation.

Jesus wins, right?

You can, you can talk about all the different things that happen

along the way, but the main point is, hey, this is what happens.

Jesus wins, guys, right?

Our mission will succeed.

We just get to join in Jesus and share in the mission that He's already

going to successfully accomplish.

Let's pray and we'll go to smoke groups.

Father, we are grateful that you've given us more than we need.

Um, your word says that you've given us everything we need for life and godliness,

and so I pray that you give us courage.

We need courage.

Um, we need courage to overcome our fears, our anxieties.

We need courage to rightly order our priorities and to trust you.

We need courage to live a holy life.

We need to fight against the, the temptations that come our way.

So I pray that you protect us.

I pray that you help us to not be lone ranger Christian men, um, who feel like we

need to have it all together to succeed.

But I pray that we'd remember that a holy life starts with confessing sin.

And so I pray that you help us even right now in our small groups to be vulnerable,

to be honest, um, and to come alongside each other and help each other follow you.

We pray this all in Jesus name.

Amen.