What Stephen couldn't see | Sunday Sermon

Well, um we're gonna be in Acts chapter eight today, and the section that we're in is not a large section today, and so would you please rise for the reading of God's word if you're able, if you're able.

In Acts chapter eight, the Bible says, 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 great lamentation over him.

But Saul was ravaging the church and entering house after house, and he dragged off men and women and he committed them to prison.

Now those who were scattered went about preaching the word.

This is the word of the Lord, church.

Maybe seated.

In case you don't remember, we are in Acts chapter 8, but last week we were in Acts chapter 7, and we talked about Stephen.

Acts 8 · chapter mention Acts 7 · chapter mention

Okay, and Stephen was one of the seven deacons that was raised up by the apostles to help care for the needs of the widows, those who were poor or needy in Jerusalem, in the church.

And so he was one of those deacons, and yet God had really equipped him and empowered him to more than just simple service.

As he was disciples, as he devoted himself to the apostles' teaching, to the breaking of bread, to the fellowship and the prayers, God grew him on the inside, okay?

And he began to bring out his gifts, and one of those gifts was to share and preach the word of God.

And so Stephen was out preaching, and God's confirming his word with signs and wonders and doing amazing things through Stephen out there, and these people came across him and they began to oppose him, okay?

And so they didn't like the message that Stephen was preaching because he was really just out there saying, Listen, good news, guys, Jesus, the Messiah came.

Okay, and some of you missed him, but there's still time.

You know, you can come because God has sent his promised one.

He's come to deliver Israel.

And if you repent and turn from your sin and turn to the Messiah, Jesus Christ, your sins can be forgiven.

You can receive forgiveness and be received by the Father.

But some of those unbelieving Jewish people in the area, they didn't like that message.

And so it says some from the synagogue of the freedmen came and opposed him, but they couldn't overcome his wisdom or the spirit by which he spoke.

And so they didn't like that either.

They wanted to be able to overcome him.

They wanted to be able to refute his message, but they weren't able.

And so when they couldn't overcome him by reason and logic, instead they just turned to slander.

They turned to false accusation.

They dragged him before the Sanhedrin.

And last week we looked at the defense of Stephen.

Okay, the high priest stood before him, and these people said, these people said, This man never ceases to speak against Moses and the law and the temple, okay, and the customs.

And the high priest said, Is this so?

And Stephen began to answer that.

And he rehearsed the history of Israel and showed how everything in the Old Testament, everything, the law and the prophets and the patriarchs and Moses and the tabernacle and the tent, everything, all pointed to Jesus.

And then when Jesus had come, these men, just like their fathers had done for generations before, opposed the promised one.

They murdered him and betrayed him and they killed him.

And so he said, You stiff-necked people, uncircumcised and heart and ears, you always resist the Holy Spirit.

And they didn't like this, and so they rushed at him and they dragged him outside and they stoned him and they killed him.

But as he was dying, he looked up into heaven.

He saw the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.

And then after service, uh, we were in the fellowship hall, and Judy came up and she had a question, and she said, I've always wanted to know this.

And she said, Stephen was such a good person.

He was just such a good man.

He was out doing good things, he's out sharing the word, you know, God's doing signs and wonders, he's having all this, you know, this, you know, success, and he's excited to share about Jesus.

You know, why would God allow this to happen to him?

And I thought that's a really legitimate question.

Why did God let that happen to Stephen?

And he deserved to be saved from that situation, did he not?

I mean, if anybody ever was worthy of God's intervention in this situation, it was Stephen.

And so why didn't God intervene?

And that's the question we're gonna answer.

We're gonna answer Judy's question today in Sunday service.

Too bad Judy's not here.

But I did answer it for her that day.

I'm gonna tell you what I told Judy, okay?

But I'm just gonna take a really long time to do it.

So just get comfortable.

Anyway.

The question is why did God allow Stephen to be killed?

And I think we ask this question because we don't fully understand what God has in store for us.

We don't fully get that what we have coming after this life is better than what we have now.

The Bible says, eye has not seen, ear has not heard, neither has it entered into the heart of man the things that God has prepared for those of us who love him.

Stephen didn't lose anything.

In fact, the New Testament is very clear about the fact that the the the life to come is very, very good.

It's something to look forward to.

And that's why God gave him in this moment this vision of heaven.

When he saw the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of the Father.

And so we hear things like this.

Well, no eye has seen, no ear has heard, neither has entered the heart of man the things that God has prepared for those who love him.

Yeah.

And so we'll, you know, we'll intellectually agree with that, and we'll confess that to one another.

Maybe someone loses a loved one, and so we'll, you know, comfort them while he's in a better place, you know.

And and and so we believe that in a way, and what but what's funny about it is that we say that, we agree with it, and then we continue to live as if this life is all there is.

You know, and that that's the funny thing.

Like we're we're we're going after money, we're going after things, we're trying to accumulate stuff.

It's like we get, you know, as we get older, we start to think, oh man, like, you know, half my life is gone, or I only have so much time left.

I need to try to, you know, get these things in, or I need to accomplish these things, and yet, you know, the funny thing is, you might be 80 years old and you're thinking, man, I've lived most of my life and I don't know how much time I have left, and you're thinking about the things maybe you didn't do or you wish you had done, or maybe you did differently.

And yet the fact is, the truth is that what the Bible says, you're still living in the prelude.

It's like you're just still living in the teaser in the preview.

You haven't even started really living yet.

Paul the Apostle understood this at a deep level.

You know, the letter to the Philippians came when he was sitting in a Roman prison.

Okay?

And so the church in Philippi was a church that Paul had founded.

They were very close to him, one of the few churches he never had to send a mean letter to to correct some bad thing they were doing.

They were just loving people.

They loved Paul, Paul loved them, and so he's sitting in prison, and so they send a man named Epaphras to go visit him.

They send a gift, like a package with Epaphras to care for Paul's needs.

You know, even though Paul mentions the fact that they had their own needs, they weren't doing that well at the time, but they sacrificially just wanted to take care of Paul, and so they send him, and so Paul is sending back in that letter, he's sending back a letter to them thanking them for their gift.

And he's talking about what it's been like.

You know, this is the Apostle Paul, this is a man who was a go-getter from the time he was this big.

Okay, he lived his whole life like all the way out.

Everything he did, we did with his whole heart.

You know, he's out there building the church, he's going on missionary journeys, he's going into cities and towns where there is no gospel.

He's going into places where there's no Christians, he's preaching the gospel to the Jews first and then to the Gentiles, and he would take those who would be saved, disciple them, raise up elders, and move on to the next city, and then he'd come back through and visit them, or send other teachers to come back and visit them and establish those churches.

You know, and now he went back to Jerusalem with an offering and he ends up getting arrested, and he's stuck there for about two years.

And it must have been really frustrating for someone who is who is a highly capable person, who is who is focused on achieving and going, doing and making things happen.

Like if I could just be out there doing.

But he's stuck in this prison and now he's been taken to Rome, and now he's stuck in a prison in Rome.

He's waiting a trial with Caesar.

He doesn't know what the outcome of that trial is gonna be, whether he's gonna live or whether he's going to die.

And so he's talking about that while he's there, he said some people are using my imprisonment as a opportunity to advance themselves, their ministry, their kingdom.

He's like, they're trying to afflict me in my imprisonment.

But he says, you know what?

I just rejoice that the gospel's being preached.

They're out there preaching the gospel, thinking that they're gonna build me and take away from my ministry.

He's like, I don't care, I'm just happy that the gospel's being preached, whether it's from good motivation or bad motivation.

And he says this in verse 19, and I will rejoice, for I know that through your prayers and the help of the Spirit of Jesus Christ, this will turn out for my deliverance, as is my eager expectation and hope that I will not at all be ashamed, but that will with full courage, now as always, Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or by death.

For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.

In fact, he goes on, he says, if I'm to live in the flesh, that means fruitful labor for me.

Yet which I shall choose, I cannot tell.

He says, I'm hard-pressed.

My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that's far better.

You know, think about being able to say that.

Like I know that God's got me here for you, He's got me here for the gospel, He's got me here to accomplish His purposes, to reach people for Christ because you know His kingdom is here, and people need to be saved.

You know, life is short.

People are entering into eternity without salvation, they're going into eternal judgment.

I need to be out there sharing the gospel.

I need to be telling people.

And so I know I'm here for that reason, but man, I just want to be with Jesus.

I just can't wait for the next thing.

I can't wait for the next part, the next chapter of my life.

The one that goes on forever.

Like when we've been there 10,000 years, bright, shining as the sun, we're gonna have no less days to sing God's praise than when we first begun.

Amen.

And so Paul understood this.

And what's so amazing about this leads us to point number two.

Okay, the first point was that Stephen didn't lose anything by going to Jesus in that moment.

Now, he might have had loved ones, he might have had people that loved him, you know, that he loved, that he missed, and all that kind of thing.

They were going to miss him, but Stephen lost nothing by going to eternity.

He gained everything.

But the second point that this Paul, this Philippians verse leads us into is the guy that wrote that from the Roman prison cell.

That's the guy that we just read about in Acts chapter 8.

Acts 8 · chapter mention

Did you catch that?

And Saul approved of his execution.

And there arose on that day a great persecution against the church in Jerusalem, and they were scattered throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria except the apostles.

Devout men buried Stephen and made great lamentation over him, but Saul, who was the man that was later called Paul.

Now, people in this day they would often call themselves by their, you know, their native name, so he was a Jewish culture, so Saul, named after the tribe of Benjamin, the first king of Israel, okay?

And then his Greek name was Paul.

Saul was ravaging the church and entering house after house.

He dragged off men and women and committed them to prison.

So this isn't Paul's part of the gospel, of the book of Acts yet.

No, pretty soon the book of Acts is going to turn, it's going to become all about Paul's missionary journeys, about his ministry, about his trials, about all that stuff, but this isn't Paul's part yet.

And yet Luke makes a point in this part about Stephen and how he was the first martyr of the church, he makes a point of pointing out that Saul was there, that the witnesses laid their garments at the feet of a man named Saul, and then Saul was the one ravaging the church.

It was a man that was almost mad in his zeal to persecute and destroy the church.

And I always think about what he must have been like as a kid.

He was born in a city called Tarsus.

It was a Roman or a Greek city.

He wasn't born in Jerusalem, but he was born to a devout Jewish family.

And a father had Roman citizenship, so that gave him rights and privileges.

And at a young age, he sent him to Jerusalem to study under the famous teacher Gamaliel.

Okay, he was in one of the earlier chapters.

We've already studied in our in our book in our study through Acts, okay?

He studied under Gamaliel, the great teacher of Israel.

This was a little boy who grew up with the stories of the Bible.

How many of you grew up from the time you were a little kid in church?

And you read those stories, right, of David against Goliath, against Daniel and the lion's den, and that God closed the mouth of the lions.

Or how about Elijah standing before the prophets of Baal and calling down fire upon the altar?

He heard these stories, he read these stories of the heroes of the Bible, and he must have been inspired by them his whole childhood.

So much so that he committed his whole life to pursuing everything.

You know, Saul, he wasn't necessarily, he didn't have bad motivations.

Saul wanted to follow God with everything that was within him.

He wanted to be like the heroes.

This is what I'm thinking.

And you know, it doesn't tell us this in the Bible about Saul's childhood.

But if you just think about what it's like to be a kid, to be a young man, and to grow up and go to seminary and go and learn about how to teach the Bible.

And, you know, this was Saul.

And so I'm thinking, what did he see in those heroes?

He saw faith.

He saw courage in the face of life and death situations.

Some of those prophets were stoned to death.

They were sawn into, they were persecuted.

Jeremiah was thrown into a pit.

Okay?

They stood against kings, they stood against wicked, powerful people.

And God was with them.

And so all of his life, he's looked to this, and now he's pursued it with all of his heart, and yet somehow he hasn't quite attained to what he sees in the scripture.

That Holy Spirit coming upon you with power and moving in the spirit and doing these things with power, and now he's standing before this heretic, Stephen.

He thinks he's just some heretic.

And he says this Jesus guy is actually the Messiah, and Saul knows better, and he's standing before Stephen, and Stephen is standing there in the power of the Holy Spirit, and his words have been confirmed with signs and wonders, and he's standing in the face of the most powerful people in Israel, who's about to be condemned to death, and when they're about to run toward him, he's looking into heaven and saying, Behold, I see the glory of God, and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of the Father.

And as he's being stoned to death, he's saying, Father, forgive them.

Do not charge them with this sin.

Jesus, receive my spirit, and he falls asleep.

It's like he's standing with peace and courage.

He's speaking the indictment of God against these powerful people with no fear of death.

It's like everything that Saul has ever looked up to in the heroes of the Bible, he sees in this man Stephen.

Later on, Jesus is going to meet Paul.

It's actually just in the next chapter.

We're going to talk about that.

But one of the things Jesus said to him, he says, Saul, why are you persecuting me?

It's hard for you to kick against the goads.

And a goad was like a sharp stick you put behind the ox.

If he slows down, then the thing hits his little back of his legs and it keeps him moving.

It's like Jesus is saying, I'm goading you, I'm pushing you.

And I always think, you know, as Paul talks about later, that he he was always ashamed of this season in his life when he persecuted Christ's church.

I always thought when he'd put his head on the pillow at night, when he would close his eyes to go to sleep, he must have seen the face of Stephen.

Remember, it said that he had a face like an angel.

All who were present saw he had the face like an angel.

And what's so interesting is later in his ministry, Paul becomes like Stephen.

It's like he follows in his footsteps.

He stands before powerful people, he's stoned, he's beaten, he's left for dead.

Ultimately, he also is martyred for Jesus Christ.

See, why did God allow Stephen to die?

Well, because first of all, Stephen didn't lose anything by dying.

Stephen went into the presence of the glory of God and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of the Father.

He inherited eternal life.

He got to go to the actual real life, okay?

He got out of the prelude and the preview and the teaser, and he went into the real thing.

So Stephen lost nothing.

And secondly, God used his death to change a man who was vehemently opposed to the gospel and yet became the greatest apostle, who wrote almost two-thirds of the New Testament.

We also read that because of that persecution of Saul, of Saul of the church, that the gospel started to spread.

He dragged off men and women and committed them to prison.

Now those who were scattered went about preaching the word.

And so you know how it's really easy, you know, when things are good to go comfortable?

Clarissa and I, we lived in the girls, we lived in a condo in Stanton.

And we were pretty comfortable there, right?

Like we're things were pretty good there.

We're like, we're good.

Our payments nice and low, and you know, bills were manageable and the community was nice.

Maybe the surrounding area wasn't the greatest, but our little community was nice.

And so we were pretty content there.

And then we got some new neighbors, and they moved in downstairs.

And these neighbors just loved marijuana.

I mean, they loved it so much that you could smell it coming up through the walls and through the plumbing, through the dishwasher.

And we're like with our newborn baby up there in our condo, going, oh, this is great, you know, trying to open some windows.

And, you know, he's got us getting high upstairs.

And so we're we're like, could you guys maybe chilling on the on the pot smoking, you know, inside the apartment, open a window, go outside, something.

Anyway, this became this irritant, this motivation for us to do something that we probably wouldn't, we wouldn't have done that otherwise, right?

But in doing so, so cool is that we ended up selling the condo.

We ended up finding a home in a neighborhood that Clarissa had always wanted to live in.

We got to get into this home, into this house, and it's like we're better off, we're happier now, right?

But it took something that was irritating to get us to move.

See, things were pretty sweet in Jerusalem up to this point for the church.

They had koin and ea, everything in common.

There was no one who had any need among them.

They would just sell their property in their homes and bring it to the apostles' feet.

It would be distributed to any as each had need, right?

Everything was great for them.

Why would they leave?

But Jesus had told them in Acts 1.8.

He says, You're gonna be my witnesses.

You're gonna receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, and you're gonna be my witnesses in Jerusalem.

And they just were like, okay, that part's good.

We'll just stick with that.

No, he said, Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.

And so this death of Stephen, it's like that first spark that starts the wildfire.

We know about wildfires in California, don't we?

Some PG and E line just drops or something and hits some brush, and then boom, one spark, and there's a wildfire.

Whole town's gone, right?

Thousands and thousands of acres burned.

This was like that spark that just started a fire.

The kindling was there, everything was ready, and now the death of Stephen sort of opens the floodgate, and the persecution comes, and Saul and others like him are going into people's homes and dragging them out, wives and husbands, and throwing them into prison.

And later on, he even says committing some of them to death.

And so the church is terrified and they start to scatter.

Only the apostles stay in Jerusalem.

But the disciples go out and they wherever they go, what does it say?

Now those who were scattered went about preaching the word.

I went to a big church for a long time, and I went to their school of ministry and I went through all kinds of stuff, and I was in their choir, was on their worship team.

You know, I was an altar worker, which means when somebody accepted Christ, I'd go work, you know, go pray with them and talk to them and make sure they knew next steps and all that kind of stuff.

I did lots of stuff.

I was youth ministry there, all kinds of things.

And I was very cozy and comfortable there.

Then after a while, some stuff happened, and I sort of felt myself like needing to go somewhere else.

And so I ended up in this smaller church, okay?

And I found out there's these little churches everywhere that need people that are trained, that need people that have gifts and talents.

But like we were all concentrated in this big old church.

And so I went back to the big church like years later to visit for something.

And I saw a bunch of people I knew, and it was great to see them.

I'm like, how you doing?

And they're like, why did you leave?

And I looked at them and I'm like, why are you still here?

Why are you still here?

Like you went to the same school of ministry I did.

You received the same training I did.

You received the same gifts and calling and anointing and everything that I did.

And there's thousands of churches out there that need people who are equipped and ready to preach the gospel, that are equipped and ready to play music and do worship and pray for people and disciple people.

And you're sitting here where there's 10,000 other people just like you and me.

The church needed to be moved from the comfortable out.

God didn't cause Stephen's death.

God wasn't the author of Stephen's death.

But every time the enemy thinks he's doing something to win, he thought he was like, Yeah, I'm gonna crush him.

Boo! And he just does this big blow, takes out Stephen.

Every time the enemy thinks he's winning, God's already anticipated.

Why?

Because he's eternal and he's omniscient.

He knows all things.

You can't outmaneuver, you can't outsmart God.

And so God anticipates it and he makes it all serve his purposes.

Like Joseph ends up in G Egypt because he gets betrayed by his brothers, right?

And he's in Egypt, and his brothers are like, We're so sorry.

And he's like, Don't worry, what you meant for evil, God meant for good.

He meant it for the deliverance of our people, of our family.

And so, why did God allow Stephen to die?

Well, one, because Stephen didn't lose anything by dying.

Two, because his death was probably one of the key things that changed a man named Saul into a man named the Apostle Paul.

And number three, because it was the spark that was needed for Jesus' mission to continue beyond Jerusalem into Judea and Samaria and eventually to the ends of the whole earth.

But you know, there's a question behind Judy's question.

And that question is why does God allow us to experience pain and sorrow in our lives?

And so the first question is related to the answer to the other one.

The first answer is this world's not our home.

Second Peter chapter 3.

2 Peter 3 · chapter mention

The Bible says, Do not overlook this one fact, beloved.

That with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years is as one day.

The Lord's not slow to fulfill his promises as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.

Now, this this response, this is a response to someone saying, but where's the promise of his coming?

Why hasn't Jesus returned?

Why hasn't he brought the new heavens and the new earth where righteousness dwells?

What where is he?

Does he just forget?

Like, is he coming back?

Like, what's the deal?

You know, Christian, where's your Lord?

Where's your Savior?

He says, don't count it as slowness.

God's not slack concerning his promises.

The reason he hasn't come back is because he's long-suffering for us and he's not willing that any should perish, that all should come to repentance.

And guess what?

All who will come have not yet come.

And so God delays his coming.

Jesus delays his coming as he's patient with those who need to come.

And so our job in this world is not to settle down here and make this our permanent one.

This is everything, this is all it is.

I'm gonna build up my legacy and make my mark on this world.

Guess what?

This whole world's gonna burn.

Everything in it's gonna burn.

Can you pull the verse back up?

2 Peter 3, it says, according to his promise, we're awaiting a new heavens and a new earth where righteousness dwells.

He goes on in this passage, he says, Since all these things, the elements of the earth and the heavens are to be dissolved, what manner of people ought we to be as we live in the world?

We live for the stuff of this world, we live for the things of this earth, and we live for the things that Jesus said, don't store up treasure for yourselves on earth where moth and rust destroy, where thieves can come in and steal it.

Store up treasure for yourself in heaven where moth and rust can't destroy, and there's no thieves in heaven.

He says, We're waiting in new heavens and a new earth.

That's our home.

Why does God allow us to experience pain and sorrow in this life?

Because it's a testimony to those who watch our lives.

Because when we suffer, when we die, we really lose nothing because eternity's waiting.

But it's a testimony to those who watch, just like it was to Saul when he watched Stephen suffer, wasn't it?

Secondly, because he's sending us out to preach the gospel out there in ways that we never would if everything went good.

You know, we get really comfortable when everything's good and everything's comfortable, when the bank accounts flush, right?

We have lots of stuff stored up for a long time.

We tend to kind of relax, we tend to settle down, we tend to start taking it easy.

We don't feel the urgency of things because we're very comfortable.

And so sometimes God needs to shake up our life a little bit.

You know, there's I do some ministry with the Pakistan church, and I have it in a little bit because I've been so busy right here, but I do some work with some Pakistani pastors, and what's funny about them is they try to emulate the way we do things.

They want to emulate the Western church, the American church, the European church.

You know, it's like they want big crowds and big evangelistic events, and I'm telling them, no, no, no, stop, don't emulate us.

We're fat and lazy.

We don't do the thing in here, the things that this says to do, we don't take it seriously.

We just listen in church and we go, oh, yeah, that's great, Pastor.

Good.

And then we go about our lives and we don't do any of it because we're lazy and we're fat and we're spoiled, rotten.

Don't emulate us.

Be what this says.

Go into all the world, preach the gospel to every creature, go from house to house, devote yourself to the apostles' teaching, break bread, have fellowship, have prayers, don't copy us, we're sick.

He shakes things up in our lives so that we'll see what actually matters.

You know, when you're on your deathbed at the end of your life, what are you thinking about?

You're thinking about, man, oh, my kids, my grandkids, my loved ones.

You're thinking about the people in your life.

You're not thinking about the stuff.

People in the third world live this way because they have to.

You know, in China, China's cracking down on churches again.

They're going into churches and they're, you know, hey, you're not following the official, you know, communist doctrine within your church, what we've allowed you to say, and so we're gonna take you and take you, you're gonna go to prison.

There was one that just got taken the other day, and there's two elders still in prison right now.

Try being a Christian in North Korea, see what happens to you.

Because in a place like that, you don't say you're a Christian unless you are.

Amen.

You don't pop your head up and say, I believe in Jesus Christ, because someone will take you and throw you into labor camp.

So the only way you're gonna say that is if you really are.

It's like people saying the apostles made all this up.

Well, they just made it all up.

Okay.

And so they went to their deaths, and all they had to do is say, I made it all up, and they would have been allowed to live.

But they made it all up.

You don't, you don't confess Christ in a world that's hostile to your faith unless you really believe.

And so the first reason is this world's not our home.

The second reason is he needs us to be about the Father's business, and sometimes we get comfortable and he needs to shake our lives up.

He's forming Christ in us so that others will see him, both in our lives and in our deaths, in our blessing and in our abundance.

Because that's the purpose of our lives.

Because the whole point is Jesus.

The whole point has always been Jesus from Genesis 1-1 to Revelation and now the whole point is Jesus.

I'm gonna end with a little passage from Hebrews.

Have you ever read Hebrews chapter 11?

Hebrews 11 · chapter mention

In Hebrews 11, it's called the hall of faith.

And so if I read Hebrews 11, it'd probably take us 10 minutes to read through it, so we're not gonna do that.

But in Hebrews 11, he basically goes through, the writer of the Hebrews goes through and he starts talking about these people who live their lives in faith.

He talks about Abraham, who was called out of Ur the Chaldeans, to go out to a land.

He didn't even know where he was going, but he went and he followed and he obeyed God.

Okay, he didn't get to have a child until he was an old man.

He never got, he lived in the promised land, but he lived like a stranger in the promised land.

He never got to actually have it.

He didn't get to actually receive the promise, but he believed God and he was obedient to God despite that.

He lived with Isaac and Jacob as a sojourner.

Okay, he he, Sarah, his wife, she counted him worthy who promised, even though she was 90 something years old and had been barren her whole life.

The angel God told her, You're gonna have a child, and she believed, and she had a child.

It says of Abraham, he was looking to that city with foundations whose builder and designer is God.

Jacob.

He blessed the two sons of Jacob, uh, Josh Joseph in Egypt.

He's in Egypt, but he believes the promises of God, and so he blesses the two sons of Joseph based upon what God promised.

Joseph gives the children of Israel instructions.

Hey, when God delivers us like he promised, I want you to take my bones, I don't want you to bury them with Abraham.

Okay?

He's talking about these people who had faith.

Moses endured.

He says he didn't enjoy the pleasures of Egypt.

He got raised in Egypt as a child all the way until he was 40 years old.

He could have just lived his luxurious life.

But he didn't he endured as him who is, as seeing him who is invisible.

He didn't look to his circumstances that he had to face.

He didn't look to the threats of Pharaoh, he looked to the reward.

And in the end of chapter 11, verse 32, it says, And what more shall I say?

For time would fail to tell of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, of David, and Samuel and the prophets, who through faith conquered kingdoms, enforced justice, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the power of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, were made strong out of weakness, became mighty in war, put foreign armies to flight, women received their dead back by resurrection.

Does it go on?

Some were tortured, refusing to accept release so that they might rise again to a better life.

Others suffered mocking and flogging and in even chains and imprisonment.

They were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were killed with the sword, they went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, afflicted, mistreated, of whom the world was not worthy, wandering about in deserts and mountains and in dens and in caves of the earth.

It's talking about this is the pattern of all of the Bible.

That we don't always get pampered and we don't always get what we want, but God's accomplishing his purposes in the good times and in the bad times, on the hills and in the valleys, God's doing what he needs to do on the earth to redeem people who need to know him.

And in chapter 12, it says, Therefore, therefore, since we're surrounded by that great cloud of witnesses, let us run with endurance the race that is God has set before us, right?

Let us not run their race, not run Stephen's race, not run Paul's race.

Let's run with endurance the race that God has set before us.

Looking to Jesus.

What did Stephen see when he looked up facing his own death?

What did he see?

He looked up, and his eyes weren't on the people who were picking up stones and already mad at him and coming at him.

He didn't even look at them.

His eyes were on Jesus.

Since we're surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and the finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him, what was the joy?

You.

That for you, for an eternity of relationship with you.

He endured the cross despising the shame.

That word despising it means he thought nothing of it.

It was nothing in comparison to winning you, to redeeming you.

He endured the cross, despising the shame, and sat down at the right hand of God.

Church, we're not living for ourselves.

This knife is not about ourselves.

This life is about him.

It's always been about him, it's all about him.

And we can rejoice in the good times and the bad.

We can rejoice in the blessing and in the suffering.

Because the suffering refines us.

It makes us more like Jesus.

Makes our witness more powerful.

It helps us be more effective in the mission he's given us.

Like all the heroes of Hebrews chapter 11.

Hebrews 11 · chapter mention

Like Stephen.

Like the Apostle Paul.

And like all the generations who came before us, you know, they couldn't see the outcome.

Stephen didn't see the Apostle Paul converted.

He didn't see the church spread from Jerusalem to Judea and Samaria.

He never saw the gospel go to the ends of the earth.

He never got to see the finished New Testament, did he?

But his eyes were on Jesus, and he ran the race that God had set before him.

That's what he's calling us to do today.

You run the race that he set before you.

That's what you're called to be faithful in.

Amen.

Father, thank you for your word.