Acts - Week 6 (7:51-8:3)

This is ERC Sundays, the messages at Emmaus Rd.

Church in DeWitt, Iowa. ERC is a Church of people

striving to grow in Jesus and make him known to others through

our faith, words and actions. Find out more about our church

at emmausrdonline.org. Here's this week's message.

We have We are in a series in the book of Acts called The

Multiplying Church. And that's an appropriate name

because in the early church that's exactly what God does in

and through his people, He multiplies them.

Now I'll tell you this is the 6th week that we're in this

series and we're going to be here all summer.

So, you know, sit back, relax, enjoy the ride.

But up to this point, it's actually like, it's kind of been

sun, sunshine and rainbows. Like, I mean, that like

everything has gone really, really well.

And so if you are like thinking about like, hey, I want, I want

to think about church growth. I want to think about like,

yeah, multiplying God's Kingdom. Up to this point, everything has

gone so fantastic. People are repenting.

They're being baptized. They've gone from about 120

people to somewhere in the neighborhood of 5000.

And so I mean, like that's that's a remarkable thing in and

of itself. And so all that's great and all

that's fun. But we're going to come to a

point today where I think I mentioned in in the prayer, like

we're going to hit a brick wall and it's going to hurt.

When I say the word martyr, What do you think of the word martyr?

What do you think of somebody being killed for their faith

does? Is that a fair definition?

Yes, Yeah. OK.

We've got a lot of head nods. Good job.

You paid attention, doing well. Keep it up.

Well, here's the thing. I actually think that that

working definition that we have in our heads of somebody being

killed, biblical scholars will tell you that that's not

actually terribly accurate. And you're like, wait a minute,

I've never heard it any other way.

Well, let me let me read something to you that comes from

New Testament scholar NT, right? Here's what he says.

The word martyr technically means witness.

It's just a witness. He goes on to say.

A martyr is someone who gives evidence when they do, when,

when words read. Hold on, here we go.

Let's try again. Why then, do we call people who

die for their faith martyrs? Well, at one level at least.

Because in being prepared to die for their faith, they're showing

that they at least reckon that this faith is not just a set of

ideas, not merely a nice religious glow, but the very

living truth itself, worth more than one's own life.

Which is no doubt true. So we're going to witness the

first Christian witness, the first Christian martyr, the

first person to die for this gospel message of Jesus Christ

as Lord and King. And of course, that's bad for a

number of reasons because, well, murder is bad.

If that's a shock to you, we should probably talk after the

service. But friends, murder is bad.

OK, glad we got that out of the way.

But this is bad for a whole lot of other reasons too, because

think about where we've been so far.

So far we've been in a place where we saw what we called the

ideal church. We saw the church grow and

multiply. And within that multiplication,

it wasn't just a bunch of individuals who thought the same

way. What happened was it was a group

of individuals who said, you know what, I'm going to get rid

of this me first thing and I'm going to count others needs more

important than my own. And so we read that the church

had all things in common, which meant that people who had an

abundance, what they did was they let go of that.

They let go of a lifestyle they give, they gave till it hurt so

that other people could have the same opportunities that they do,

right? That's really important.

But maybe a greater extent why this hurts is because when the

first martyrdom happens, the church scatters, It runs for the

hills. That's a scary thing.

And The thing is, persecution is going to come.

If you really live out this Christian life, it's it's going

to happen. I don't have to promise to that

to you, because Jesus already did, and you can trust him.

It's going to happen. And So what happens is what

these people who these couple 1000 people, they lose their

church family. Now, I don't know about you and

I don't know all of you individually super well, but if

I lost you, if I lost my church family, it would break me.

It really would. I don't know what I would do.

So that's why this is difficult because the church scatters and

the family tree, the line seems to be broken.

But here's the thing, here's what we always have to remember.

God plays chess, not checkers. He's already 5 moves ahead of

this scattering. And so as the people are going

to get scattered, they're going to run for the hills.

God is already planting seeds and he's like, you know what?

I know it looks like this church family is dying.

I'm going to multiply it. I'm going to move you into

places that you never thought you would go so that I can grow

my church, so that I can have more people meet my son Jesus

and have their lives and their eternities changed.

And that's the gift. That's the gift that we're going

to see here. So let me let me just give you

again, I know some of you are kind of your, your note takers.

You kind of want to know what's going on.

So let me give you where we're going and what this text is

going to tell us today. It's going to tell us and show

us at least three things it's going to see.

We're going to see that the seeking and seeming devouring of

the church. We're going to watch that

happen, and that's hard to do. But we're also going to see the

fact that telling the truth is dangerous business.

And some of you know that we'll get to that.

More to that in a minute. But then through all of those

hard things, we're going to see that God is a faithful protector

and multiplier of His church and we can trust in that.

We can absolutely trust in that. So let's read the text.

We're going to be in Acts Chapter 7 and the very beginning

Acts 7 · chapter mention

of eight today if you want to follow along on your phones or

on the screen or however that works best for you.

We read this in the name of Jesus because it's His word.

You stiff necked people, uncircumcised in your heart and

in your ears. Wow, that went hard.

Let me pause. I'm remembering I failed to set

up this moment for you. You're like woo pastors going

hard today. No, what happens, Steven, the

first Christian martyr, he's been talking before basically

the council of what we call the Sanhedrin, the religious leaders

and he is, he is just whooped them up one side and down the

other. He started with Moses or Abraham

and he went through Moses and the prophet said and he said all

these things. He's he's in court basically

right now and he's, he's given like a 5 minute biblical history

in like 5 minutes. He covered the entire Old

Testament. It's really impressive.

You should go back and read all of Chapter 7 so you can get

this. So this is kind of the, the

tipping point of his talk. Let me try again.

You stiff necked people, uncircumcised in your heart and

in your ears. You always resist the Holy

Spirit. As your Father's did, so do you.

Which of the prophets did your Father's not persecute?

And they killed those who announced beforehand the coming

of the righteous One, whom you have now betrayed.

And you murdered you who received the law as delivered by

angels, did not keep it. Now when they'd heard these

things, they were enraged, and they ground 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 open, and the Son of Man

standing at the right hand of God.

But they cried out with a loud voice, and they stopped up their

ears, and they rushed together at him.

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 storming

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 this 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 regions of Judea and

Samaria, except the apostles. Devout men buried Stephen and

made a 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. Here is the reading of God's

Word. I remember it was April 27th,

2018. My family and I and A friend

were in downtown Chicago. It was opening night of this

movie that you see a photo from Avengers Infinity War.

Now if you don't know, it's OK. Your pastor is a comic book

nerd. It's fine.

It's fine. Don't worry about it, but what

this movie was, it was the build up of a 10 year group of movies

all coming up to a head. So 10 years worth of movies.

If you want to go back and watch them in order, you just need to

give up about 36 hours of your life.

I feel like it's worth it. Just letting you know, I feel

like it's worth it and I won't give too much away.

But here's the thing, we see this character, his name is

Thanos. In Greek, that means death.

It means Thanatos, it means death.

So we see this character at the end of the movie and he's really

happy. He's really happy.

I won't give you any details if you haven't seen it, but this

character named Death is really happy at the end of the movie.

And when I say the end of the movie, I mean the end.

Like this is the last thing screen goes black.

When I was there with my family and the theater was sold out in

downtown Chicago, the screen went black and we all just went.

I, I, I found I, I had this ridiculous feeling in the pit of

my stomach that no movie had ever caused me to have before.

And so I went back and I and I went, what did other people

think? And this is what came out of

this. A lot of why's and what's my

fiance and I spent the credits just staring in shock.

I just ugly cried right there. And I didn't even care who was

watching. Everyone walked out of the

theater silent. Everyone was so sad.

I will tell you, I experienced all those things and I, I'm not

afraid to say it. Weird moment.

Weird moment, but it was true. Why do I bring all this up?

Because sometimes it looks like the bad guy wins.

That's what it looks like. It looks like that the bad guy

gets to win. Saul, who we read about in this

text, he's a Deathbringer. He is the exterminator of the

early church and we can imagine where we stopped in Acts chapter

Acts 8:3

8, verse 3. We can imagine that he had a

smile on his face the way that Thanos did.

As he's dragging people out of their homes and putting them in

jail and approving the fact that they're going to be murdered on

the spot. We can see him smiling like the

villain he is. I want to show you something

here that is kind of interesting.

That word ravaging in the Greek, you know what that really means?

It's it brings the idea of a wild animal ripping apart its

prey without any concern for the harm it's doing.

That's what Saul is doing. He's ripping apart people and

he's ripping apart the church with no moral issue about it.

It's a terrible moment. There's, there's this, I read

this commentary and it really, it puts it in a, in a really

interesting way and I wanted to read it to you.

The New Testament record of Saul's persecution of the church

leaves no doubt of the savagery and the brutality with which it

was carried forward. There is no consideration of age

or sex or other circumstances. The youth ability and energetic

zeal of the leading persecutor, revealed here as Saul, testify

to the bitterness and the fury with which the Sanhedrin

brought, brought, or was sought to exterminate Christianity.

And you see, as much as God is at work through his Holy Spirit,

through his people, Satan is at work too.

We should not be surprised by that.

And if you are, again, we should probably talk after the service.

Here's here, let me give you a little fun fact.

In 37 AD, just a couple years after Jesus was crucified in in

ascends to heaven, as the young church is getting started, there

was a time frame where there was no Roman emperor in Israel.

Do you know what that means? That means that these religious

these religious leaders, they had the full run of the law.

They could do whatever they wanted to anybody they wanted

and there was no one there to stop them.

Imagine, imagine if right here in DeWitt, any police presence,

any, any civil presence at all, which stop people from harming

other people. Just exited the building, just

gone. Now, at first you say, well,

we're all civil people. We're not like these Barbarians

who murder people because of their opinion.

Oh, I don't think we're that much different.

You might be surprised what happens when somebody disagrees

with you and then throws that in your face.

Rage is very real, friends. I'll tell you something else.

Satan is still trying to devour the church today, as he did in

the 1st century. He's still trying.

And I'm going to give you 3 quick ways that he does that.

Because I think if we can recognize these things as

they're happening in and through US sinful people in real time,

if we can kind of see them for what they are, we have a chance

to maybe work against it a little bit.

So first and foremost, Satan is trying to devour his church

through division. We're all sitting here.

Not that many of us are probably related.

I know it's a small town. So you look around, you're like,

no, that's my second cousin twice removed, blah, blah.

OK, fine. But like we're all sitting here

as individual people, a part of different families and and all

this kind of stuff for one reason, because we have Jesus

Christ as our Lord and King. Or maybe because somebody drug

you here. I don't know the man.

Where's, where does division come in?

So many different personalities, so many different opinions.

If we decide to change the carpet tomorrow, we might have a

problem because we're going to have people are like, Oh no,

that's too bright. No, that's too dark.

The coffee stains will show up. You know, we're going to have

division, man. We need to guard against that.

We need to guard against that. There is a biblical way to work

out division and I don't have time to get into all that today,

but there is a biblical standard of how we disagree.

Let me keep moving forward. Satan wants to devour God's

church through twisting of his word.

We heard Pastor Mattis, he started the service this

morning, talk about the importance of keeping God's word

first, keeping that at the forefront of our minds, keeping

it authentic. I love to have my ears tickled

as much as anybody else and be told I'm right.

But then again, God's word has supreme authority over what's

right and wrong. And the second I disagree with

that, I've twisted it and made it something that suits me and

that's no longer helpful. One more God wants to or Satan

would love to devour the church through apathetic Christians.

What I'm, what I mean by that he would love to devour the church

by get by, by finding Christians who are just very casual, like,

yeah, I don't know, like it's cool.

Like I go to church, like, I don't know when I'm not tired.

If I did that, I would never be here.

No, but through, through just apathy of, of our faith, man,

it's really easy to get real casual and just kind of go,

yeah. I, I haven't been a part of my

church family. I haven't been in the midst of

my community in a while, but it's fine.

I've been busy. It's fine.

Don't even worry about it, man. That level of apathy, Satan will

get inside and he will grow like a tumor.

So what are we supposed to do? What are we supposed to do about

that? We need to encourage each other.

We need to hold each other accountable.

We need to do conflict the right way.

And I don't have time to get into the details of all those

things, but that's the start. And more than anything, man, we

need to speak the truth, the truth that goes beyond feelings.

Now I will tell you .2 the truth is dangerous.

Let me give you kind of a silly example because I'm kind of a

silly person. OK, so if your spouse wants to

walk out of the house looking like a blue Christmas tree where

their head is the star on top and they're like, what do you

think of my outfit? You might be like, oh, that's

fashionable. But you might.

Here's the thing. If you tell that person the

truth, you might be in trouble. Or let's say your husband is

like, well, it's casual day. I just got done mowing.

I need to go to the store and I'm wearing my mowing shorts to

the store. Oh, buddy women, you might want

to say that's a little bright up top.

Maybe you shouldn't wear that. But here's the thing.

That person could get very angry because how dare you.

I I look good in this. How how dare you friends, that

is a ridiculous illustration to prove the point that telling the

truth is dangerous. But that's real.

If your if your spouse, if you feel like your spouse dressed in

an embarrassing way to come to church, please don't look at

them right now. Don't elbow them.

Don't do any of that because then when you guys start a fight

because you told the truth, you're going to blame it on me.

Don't do that. Just just let it die.

Let it die. I I'm sorry.

I shouldn't have even Dom and I talked about this.

I shouldn't have even used that illustration, but I did.

It's too late. Oh, here's the thing.

Telling the truth hurts, it really does.

And when Steven tells these people the truth, this is what

he says. You stiff neck people,

uncircumcised in your heart and your ears, you always read this

Holy Spirit. He goes on to say you, you who

received the law as delivered by angels, you didn't even keep it.

What does he mean? Well, this idea of being stiff

necked and kind of stopped up in the ears, the idea is like

you're just stubborn. You can't receive criticism.

You're too hard hearted. You're always right.

You've probably worked with somebody like that.

You're helping them, you're trying to get them to do their

job more efficiently and they're like, no, no, no, I got this.

I know how to do it. Aren't those people fun?

What's more fun is if I say that and you're like, oh, no, I am

that person. Oops.

But that's what the idea when, when they hear this, they

literally close their ears, They cannot take the the criticism.

I'll tell you what, if you've got thin skin and you can't take

criticism, I'm going to tell you why you, you feel that way.

It's because your identity is in the wrong place.

Your identity isn't where it belongs.

Because if my identity is firmly put in the place of what Jesus

Christ says about me, you can be like, hey, Pastor Chris, that

joke didn't land. And I think your sermon stunk.

I'd be like, oh man, that's too bad, OK, and I move on with my

day. I'm not being insensitive to

your opinion, but guess what? You can't hurt my identity with

what you criticized me with because my identity isn't found

in my performance. Lord help you, I hope you're the

same way. I will walk off this stage today

and I will feel just fine. Regardless of what you think.

That's the way it is because I know who I am.

I know whose I am. I know that Jesus Christ calls

me his beloved Son. I know that he calls me

forgiven. I know that I don't need to have

any shame. That's awesome.

I hope you find that freedom too, because it's pretty great.

It allows you to do things like this.

It's awesome. Let me bring out one more thing.

He mentions to them, oh so gently, that they received the

law, but they don't even keep it.

Here's what he means by that. Essentially what he's saying is

God gave you the law so that you can love and glorify and bless

Him and care about those people who need your care.

That's what the law does. If you sum up all 10

commandments, if you sum up the law, it's all about that.

It's all about honoring and worshiping and loving God and

then treating other people the way we want to be treated.

Kindergarten lessons, friends, very simple, not complex at all.

And he said what you do is you've created these man made

customs, these traditions so that you can circumvent the law

and you can still feel good about yourself.

You can still look right, you can still act right.

You can still hang out with the right people.

You can say the right things and everyone will go, oh, they're so

cool. No, you're not.

No, you're not. You're not keeping the law.

You just look like you are and that is not helpful.

So what happens ultimately, Steven, is drug out of town.

We can understand that quite literally that they drug him out

of the city, right? We can do that.

And what historians tell us is that as they drug him out of the

city, they most likely found a small pit where you were digging

out stone and rock so that you can build buildings.

And so you shove them down in there.

And then what do you do? You take all those stones that

we're going to use to build a building and you drop them on

his head until he's dead. Now Steven is judged by a human

court and he is found guilty. And the thing about Steven is,

is that he has no advocate. He has no advocate, no one to

stand up for him. But then he sees something full

of the Holy Spirit. He gazed in heaven and he saw

the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of

God. And he said, behold, I see the

heavens opened up and I see the Son of Man standing at the right

hand of God. Why is that weird?

Because everywhere else in the Bible we see when, when, when

people see Jesus, he's, he's seated.

Why is he seated? Because the work's done.

And so he's resting and he's resting and interceding for his

people. But Stephen sees something

different, and we should take note.

Why would Jesus be standing? Let me ask you a different

question, friends. If you're in a courtroom, who's

the person standing up? It's probably the defense

counsel. I know you had an answer.

It's probably the the defense counsel making the case.

So here's the thing, Steven, he has the, he has somebody

defending him now. Not on this side of heaven,

unfortunately, but he's got somebody to defend him in the

heavenly courts, the only courts that matter, the only courts

whose decisions last forever, Steven has Jesus Christ standing

and defending him. And guess what, friends, you do

too. Sometimes you won't feel like

it. Sometimes you'll think, oh man,

I've blown it again. I've blown it again.

I've said I wasn't going to do it.

And I did it again and again. And I'm, I'm never going to get

this thing right. But you know what, in those

moments, I want you to imagine, I want you to remember that in

the throne of heaven, you have Jesus Christ standing up for you

and all the things that are thrown at you, all the truth

bombs that are like, well, he did that and that and that and

that. Yep, sure did.

But I paid for that. I paid for that.

Therefore you cannot find him guilty because I already took

the punishment of that. And God is just.

Therefore, he will not punish the same crime twice.

We have a a defense attorney who proves us innocent.

No matter what you've done. That should give us great hope

and encouragement. And it did for Steven.

It did for Steven. Because here's the thing,

Steven, by the power of the Holy Spirit, he sees this, he sees

this fragile life and this fragile body going away.

He feels that. I have 0 doubt about that.

And you know what? He dies in peace.

He dies as somebody who is OK with what's happening.

That's ridiculous. That doesn't even make sense.

And, and here's the thing, we could say, oh, that's really

cool. He died in peace.

And man, I hope when I die, I'm like peaceful and it's not

painful and I hope it doesn't hurt.

And I'm afraid not. Stephen.

Why do you think he could do that?

Why do you think he could do that?

I'll give you something. God, in his goodness to us,

there are moments where He opens up our vision to see things that

are right here that we can't see.

Stephen had that. I don't know how many of you,

Lord help you. I just thought about, I'm

wearing my Hospice jacket today. I have been in rooms where

people are dying and they see something.

They see something that I can't describe, but they see something

that gives them peace. I fully believe in my heart that

just like Stephen, they're seeing what God is going to

reveal to them so that way they can move forward in their

existence in peace. And because you can move forward

in peace, you know what you can do?

You can exercise radical forgiveness.

Radical forgiveness. There is no reason why Stephen

should have been able to have boulders dropped on his head and

said, Lord, don't hold it against them.

The only reason why he can do that is because God showed him

something remarkable. God showed him something that

makes the pains and the hurts of this world seem mundane and

small. That's what he saw.

Friends, I believe God still reveals that.

I believe that He reveals things that allow us to be radically

forgiving, forgiving of those who don't deserve it.

Why? Because He forgave us when we

didn't deserve it. And here's the whole point.

The whole point is there's no reason for you to hold on to any

bitterness, any sour feelings. You walked in here with some.

I have little doubt about that. But there's no reason to hold on

to those things. Why?

Because Jesus Christ, when he was on the cross, they gave him

the bitter drink and he drank it.

He took that bitterness, He drank it down so that you don't

have to. So friends, whatever you're

harboring, man, let that stuff go.

It doesn't belong in your life, doesn't belong in your heart.

It's not for you. Jesus drank that for you.

What are you doing? Get rid of it.

Another thing, there's no reason to worry about rejection.

Stephen was clearly rejected by a human court.

We don't need to fear rejection of man even when we tell a hard

truth, because Jesus was rejected for us, so that we can

come home, so that we have this great opportunity to see Christ

embrace us, to feel eternity of joy and peace.

And finally, you look death right in the face and you say

you can't hurt me. I will, I will because I know

that Jesus died for me and because he lives, I will live.

So you look at right in the face and you say, you know what, you

can't hurt me, you're only going to make me better.

That's what it's going to do. Have No Fear because your God

loves you and he's waiting to embrace you and he will.

Let's pray. Our Father in Heaven, you are

gracious beyond what we deserve. Your mercy goes beyond our human

understanding, but you give it to us anyway.

Father, it is my deep spirit filled prayer that we would let

go of those things that you've already taken away from us.

Lord, give us hearts for radical forgiveness the way you have

forgiven us so that we might live free.

And Lord, you know the heart of every single person in this

room. You know what they're holding on

to by your spirit, by the power of your spirit.

I pray that they would let it go, that it would not hold them

hostage anymore. That just like Stephen, we can

see you and we can have peace. Lord God, give us the grace that

we need. Fill us with your Spirit that we

might live the way you want us to live, and that we might

worship the way you want us to worship so that we can come

home. Father, it's a big prayer, but

you're a big God and I know you'll do it.

And so we pray all these things in the name of Jesus Christ, who

is our Lord and our King. Amen.

Thanks for listening to ERC Sundays.

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