Review:
Why dying for Jesus is a Glorious Thing:
- You experience God's Glory! (Acts 7:54-56)
- You give the ultimate Witness! (Acts 7:57-58)
- You go to Heaven! (Acts 7:59)
- You get to reflect Jesus! (Acts 7:60)
See 1 Peter 4:13-14
See Matt 26:63-64 | Acts 22:20
See 2 Corinthians 5:8 | Philippians 1:23
Sermon Notes (PDF): BLANK
Hint: Highlight blanks above for answers!
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00:00-00:05
Turn in your Bibles with me please to the book of Acts chapter 7.
00:07-00:08
Acts chapter 7.
00:10-00:12
Have you been following the news?
00:12-00:17
Did you see this thing last week about the gorilla?
00:17-00:22
In Cincinnati, the three-year-old boy fell into the gorilla enclosure.
00:22-00:26
In case there's anybody here who hadn't heard about this, it was all over the news.
00:27-00:43
a three-year-old boy had fallen into the gorilla habitat, and a 400-pound male gorilla was standing with the boy and was actually kind of dragging him and didn't look aggressive.
00:45-00:51
But in those situations, you're not sure, but the gorilla was actually killed in order to save the boy.
00:52-00:59
And I'm sure if you didn't see the original news story, that you have been hearing about is just the outrage.
00:59-01:02
The outrage that followed that event.
01:04-01:05
Where was the mother?
01:07-01:14
I heard people say this past week, why in the world didn't that mother jump in and save that boy from the gorilla?
01:16-01:21
Why didn't they just tranquilize the gorilla?
01:23-01:26
There are so many outrageous reactions.
01:28-01:45
And I would respond to some of these this way, you know, for the people that want to blame the mother, to say, "What a horrible parent!" Those of you who are parents here today, have you ever lost sight of your kid for even a second?
01:46-01:47
I have.
01:48-01:49
I'm just going to shoot straight with you.
01:49-01:57
There are times that we'll be out somewhere Maybe Cade has my attention talking about something, and all of a sudden I look at Aaron, and I'm like, where's Owen?
01:57-01:58
He's gone.
01:59-02:00
And that's happened to me.
02:01-02:04
I don't know of any parent that hasn't lost sight of their kid for a second.
02:05-02:11
So I have a hard time with the people that want to say that this is the worst mother of the year.
02:11-02:20
Yeah, granted, at the zoo there's other things you need to keep in mind for safety and whatnot, but it's very hard for me to be outraged at the mother.
02:22-02:25
The other thing was, why didn't they just tranquilize?
02:26-02:28
Why did they have to kill the gorilla?
02:28-02:34
And there's so many people who are suddenly experts on gorillas.
02:35-02:40
And that gorilla wouldn't have hurt the boy, and there's no reason that it had to happen.
02:42-02:56
But the one question that really intrigued me, with people asking, not just about the mother per se, but all the other witnesses, why didn't somebody else jump in and save the boy from the gorilla?
02:56-02:58
And I thought that was an interesting question.
02:58-03:02
With all the other witnesses around, why didn't somebody else jump in?
03:02-03:03
So let's put ourselves in the scene.
03:05-03:06
We're at the zoo.
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You hear a couple of cries.
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A boy has fallen in.
03:10-03:19
The 400-pound gorilla approaches the boy has his hand on the boy, and you're standing there watching.
03:19-03:21
How many people here would jump in to save the boy?
03:23-03:25
In the moment, you're not going to have time to think about it.
03:26-03:26
Right?
03:28-03:35
But that leads to an even bigger question that our hearts need to examine as we look at this text.
03:36-03:37
What are you willing to die for?
03:41-03:44
Maybe some of you here are like, I wouldn't jump in. I don't know that kid.
03:45-03:48
That was my kid I probably would, but I wouldn't do it for somebody else's kid.
03:48-03:52
Ok. But my question now is what would you be willing to die for?
03:55-04:05
Because the Bible says that you are called as a follower of Jesus to carry your cross.
04:05-04:20
Jesus in Luke 9:23 said if anyone would be My disciple, let him deny himself, Pick up His cross daily and follow Me." And you see, in our American culture a couple thousand years later, we want to turn that into a metaphor.
04:21-04:26
Like, my health issues - that's my cross to bear.
04:26-04:29
Or my annoying spouse - that's my cross to bear.
04:30-04:33
Or my boss is a jerk - I guess that's just my cross to bear.
04:33-04:44
But when Jesus said those words, "Pick up your cross," the people that He was speaking to exactly what that was about, because they would have seen it over and over and over.
04:45-04:52
When they hear "carry your cross," they would have seen condemned criminals walking through the street carrying their cross.
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They knew what it meant.
04:54-04:55
They knew Jesus wasn't giving a metaphor.
04:56-04:59
They knew Jesus was saying you need to be willing to die.
05:01-05:11
And in the book of Acts, we've been talking about Stephen, this servant of God who was so influential in the early church.
05:11-05:20
And we saw a couple of weeks ago that certain Hellenistic Jews - Greek culture Jews - started spreading these false rumors about Stephen.
05:20-05:29
They said Stephen was speaking against - you remember, he was speaking against Moses, speaking against God, speaking against the holy place, speaking against the law.
05:30-05:38
And they got all these rumors started, these false accusations, and Stephen was arrested and brought to the council.
05:40-05:42
So Stephen's on trial.
05:42-05:46
Last week we saw Stephen give a defense for his beliefs.
05:47-05:49
Stephen actually passes the verdict on to the council.
05:50-05:51
You remember Stephen's sermon.
05:51-05:53
It's really just summed up like this.
05:54-06:00
Stephen was telling the religious leaders, you sort of look at history through rose-colored glasses, don't you?
06:00-06:03
Let me tell you what the history of Israel is really about.
06:03-06:11
It's about you rebelling against God You're rejecting everybody that God sends, and you're doing it right now, you did it to Jesus Christ.
06:13-06:15
"I'm not the one guilty of blasphemy," Stephen says, "you are.
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You're guilty of blasphemy because you rejected Jesus Christ." Just like the fathers rejected the prophets who said that Christ was coming.
06:23-06:30
And in this passage, we're going to see the fallout from Stephen's bold sermon.
06:33-06:40
You know, any time that anyone dies, in any circumstance, it's a shame.
06:41-06:43
We feel the pain of that.
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Being a pastor, I've been to probably more funerals than you.
06:47-06:51
But I've been to funerals of children where there have been hundreds of people.
06:52-07:04
And I've been to funerals of people who passed in their late 90's where there were only six people at the funeral because they've that lived all of their years.
07:06-07:17
But the common denominator in the dozens or hundreds - I don't know how many it's been over the years - but the common denominator every time it just seems like a tragedy that a life has passed.
07:20-07:24
Young or old, whatever the circumstances, it always seems a shame.
07:26-07:34
But it seems even more a shame He had his whole life ahead of him.
07:36-07:40
And it's even more a shame when somebody is murdered.
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This person didn't get to live their life.
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Somebody took their life from them.
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And in this story, we have somebody who dies, somebody who's young that dies, and somebody who is murdered.
07:54-07:56
And you can look at the story of Stephen.
07:58-07:59
We're going to look at how his life ends.
08:00-08:02
You can look at this and say, What a tragedy.
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Here's a guy that had everything gone for him.
08:05-08:07
Everybody in the church loved him.
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He was serving people.
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He gave his life for serving people.
08:11-08:17
And he preached - as far as we can see in Scripture, he preached like one big sermon and they killed him.
08:17-08:18
What a tragedy.
08:20-08:23
Actually, the details that the Bible gives you shows that this is not a tragedy.
08:23-08:24
This is a victory.
08:26-08:28
That's why in your outline, I want you to jot some things down.
08:29-08:40
the subtitle here for our sermon points today, "Why Dying for Jesus is a Glorious Thing." Why dying for Jesus is a glorious thing.
08:42-08:45
Number one, jot this down.
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You experience God's glory.
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You experience God's glory.
08:50-08:51
Let's look at verse 54.
08:52-08:58
It says, "Now when they heard these things, they were enraged." When they heard what things?
08:59-09:00
Stephen's sermon.
09:02-09:13
And the text would indicate that it wasn't like Stephen had done preaching, and then they were like, "Okay, now I'm mad." The text, the verbiage would indicate that they've been mad through the whole sermon.
09:13-09:22
They're listening to this sermon, and they're like, "Can you believe what this guy's saying?" They were enraged at what he was saying while he was speaking.
09:25-09:26
It says they were enraged.
09:27-09:35
Literally, the Greek translation of that word "enraged" is "sawed in half." When they heard these things, they were sawed in half.
09:35-09:36
What does that mean?
09:37-09:40
We use sort of a different phrase, don't we?
09:41-09:45
We say, "He was beside himself." Right?
09:45-09:49
"He was beside himself." That seems like a weird phrase just like this, but you get the point.
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So angry!
09:53-09:57
and they ground their teeth at Him.
09:58-10:04
Your Bible might say, "gnashed His teeth." That's an interesting phrase.
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When you hear the phrase "gnashing teeth," what's the first thing that you typically think of?
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Hell, right?
10:10-10:18
You know, something like seven times when Jesus was talking about hell, He said it was a place of gnashing of teeth.
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What Jesus is teaching by that - I had to unlearn this.
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Hell is not a place of people saying, "I'm so sorry.
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I made such a mistake.
10:33-10:35
I wish I could receive Jesus now.
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Oh, I'm so sorry." People in hell are not saying that.
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Hell is a place of bitterness and resentment and hatred towards God.
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Just like these people, angry at Stephen, were gnashing their teeth.
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What does gnashing your teeth sound like?
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Does anybody want to demonstrate that for us?
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"Stand up and gnash your teeth at me.
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I'll say something you don't like and you can gnash your teeth at me." Anybody?
10:59-11:04
That fury, that rage, that's how the Bible describes people in hell.
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Resentment towards God.
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So a very ugly scene turns beautiful because by inspiration of the Holy Spirit, You get to see what Stephen actually saw.
11:23-11:36
Verse 55, it says, "But he, full of the Holy Spirit, gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God." Now it says he gazed into heaven, it doesn't just mean that he looked at the sky.
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You're going to see here that God opened the window into the spiritual realm in this moment.
11:43-11:52
Stephen got to look into heaven in God's heaven, as in the place where God lives, resides.
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What does your Bible say?
11:56-12:08
"And gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God." Wait a second.
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Okay, the Bible says here that Jesus is standing, but I thought the Bible says that Jesus was actually seated at the right hand of God.
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So which is it?
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Well, understand when the Bible says that Jesus is seated at the right hand, this is all through the book of Hebrews, seated is a picture of rest.
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The work of salvation has been completely accomplished by Jesus.
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Understand that.
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When Jesus died on the cross to take away your sin, to pay for your sin, when Jesus rose from the dead to give you eternal life, He went back to heaven and sat down because he was done working.
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It's not like Jesus is up in heaven like, "Okay, Father, now we have to do something else to get them saved." He's done. He's seated.
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The work of salvation is done.
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But it's very significant that in this passage, Jesus is standing.
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And some of you may have heard this story.
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I've told it a couple of years ago.
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I can't ever read this passage without thinking of this story.
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and when I was in seventh grade, there was another student who was a grade ahead of me, but he was like five years older than me.
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Let that sink in for a second.
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He was like the only kid in junior high that had a mustache and drove himself to school.
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But he was a grade ahead of me, but he was five years older than me.
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And I remember he said, if you go to the dance on Friday, I'm going to kill you.
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And this was the type of person that, again, I don't think he was speaking metaphorically, like he was going to rough me up.
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He literally was planning on killing me.
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And I had this knucklehead friend came to me in the spirit of one of Job's friends.
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This knucklehead friend comes to me.
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He's like, yeah, he's probably going to take a knife and try to stab you, maybe try to get it between the ribs.
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And if he punctures your heart, you're probably going to die quick.
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But it's going to hurt a lot.
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I'm like, why are you telling me this?
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OK, but like an idiot-- anybody ever do anything stupid when you're a kid?
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I sure did a lot.
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And like an idiot, I go to the dance anyways, even though this guy says he's going to kill me.
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And I'll never forget the moment as long as I live.
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You know, I show up, and this guy comes up to me.
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And I just remember that feeling of my heart falling into my belly, just-- I'm like, I didn't even get to say goodbye to my mom.
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And I thought, this is it.
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He started to say a few words when all of a sudden, This hand appears on his shoulder.
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And it was big brother, Darren.
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He says, "Hey Carl, what are you doing?" And this guy turns around and he goes, "I was just leaving." And Darren says, "Yeah, you were just leaving." And I, I said, "Yeah!
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Yeshu was just leaving!
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Because you don't want none of this.
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Yeshu was leaving.
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He was like - you know in the cartoons when a character runs and there's just this cloud of smoke?
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That was this guy.
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He was gone.
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And I think of that story every time I read this passage of Scripture, because on that day, I had the most confidence in the world because there was somebody so powerful in my sight who was standing for me.
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So my point is, think about Stephen in this passage.
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As he is being attacked by this seething mob, imagine all these emotions are going on and he just pours his heart out preaching to these people.
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Imagine, you know, Stephen looking up at what he sees!
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As somebody even more powerful than big brother, he sees God Himself!
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Jesus Christ!
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Standing!
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And looking. Think of the confidence that that would have given Stephen on that day.
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Awesome.
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Awesome stuff.
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All the confidence when somebody powerful It makes sense for you.
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And in any tragedy, in any tragedy, people ask, "Doesn't God know?
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Doesn't God care?
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Stephen, in this passage, got to actually see, oh, he cares." This event got the attention of Jesus Himself.
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Jesus standing, watching, leading to welcome Stephen into glory.
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In the previous passage, we saw that Stephen stood for Jesus.
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Now we see Jesus standing for Stephen.
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Right?
17:27-17:29
There are so many parallels.
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We talked about them.
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Tony, we were talking about this last week.
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Aren't there so many parallels between Stephen's life and Jesus' life?
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Both righteous people, both falsely accused, both put on trial, both hastily executed.
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There are so many parallels between Stephen and Jesus.
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I was thinking about that this week.
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There's one huge difference between Stephen and Jesus, besides the fact that Jesus is God and Stephen is just a guy.
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But there's another huge difference in their events, and it is this.
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When Jesus was on the cross, He was forsaken.
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As He was bearing the penalty of God's wrath, as Jesus Himself became sin - the Bible says in 2 Corinthians 5-21, Jesus became sin on the cross.
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And as He was bearing the wrath of God, Jesus cried out, "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?" Jesus felt forsaken because God was judging my sin and your sin on Him.
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That's where the big difference is.
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You see, Stephen, on the other hand, didn't feel forsaken.
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He didn't say, "God, where are You?" Stephen got to look up and see Jesus standing.
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One of the glorious things about dying for Christ is getting to experience His glory.
18:48-19:01
So many times I hear people say whether you're talking about somebody that has a sick kid or being at the bedside of somebody dying or going through some accident or tragedy, I hear people say, "I don't know how they do that.
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I could never get through that if that happened to me." And listen, church, the answer is you can when the time comes.
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I mean, you feel you can't now.
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And if I were to ask you, "Would you boldly die for Jesus?" You might feel like you can't now.
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But you don't need the grace for that now.
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What you find is when God brings you to the moment, He supplies the grace to get through it.
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You might not see Jesus the way that Stephen did.
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Maybe you will, I don't know.
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But I do know this for a fact.
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The Bible promises God's glorious grace to come in a very special way when somebody is suffering for Jesus.
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1 Peter 4:13-14.
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Do we have those verses?
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"But rejoice insofar as you share Christ's sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when His glory is revealed." If you are insulted for the name of Christ, are blessed - look at this last phrase - because the Spirit of glory and of God rests upon you.
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There's a special glory, there's a special grace that comes upon someone when they are suffering for Jesus Christ.
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So why dying for Jesus is a glorious thing?
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You get to experience God's glory in a powerful way.
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Number two, jot this down.
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You give the ultimate witness.
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You give the ultimate witness.
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Let's go back to the text.
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So Stephen looks up and sees Jesus standing.
20:50-21:07
Verse 56, "And he said, 'Behold, I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.' But they cried out with a loud voice and stopped their ears and rushed together at him.
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Then they cast him out of the city and stoned him.
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And the witnesses laid down their garments at the feet of a young man named Saul." Pause there. You give the ultimate witness.
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It says that these people cried out, covered their ears, and rushed at him.
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The word "rushed" is an interesting word.
21:31-21:39
It's the same word used - Remember the man that had all the demons in him?
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The legion of demons inside him, and Jesus cast the demons out?
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And where did those demons go?
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Do you remember that story?
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They went into the pigs, right?
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And what did the pigs do?
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It was like they all rushed down to the water.
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And it's the same word "rushed" here.
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this picture of unrestrained moving forward.
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And that shows how angry these people were at Steve.
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And have you ever been so mad at someone, you heard somebody say something, and you're just like, let me at 'em.
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Like you just physically can't even restrain yourself.
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Have you ever done that?
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I can't remember that ever happening to me, where I couldn't stop myself from attacking someone.
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I couldn't remember me, but I remember one time my mom doing that.
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And it was one of those deals, we were kids up at camp, and my mom and my sister were having some kind of an argument in the camper.
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My sister walks out and my mom says, "Not one more word." Of course, my sister being my sister, I love her to death, but she got that last word in.
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And my mom, like the council here, rushed at her.
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But this actually ended up kind of funny because the porch was wet.
22:57-23:06
So mom's like rushing at my sister and falls off the porch and just like does this flying body press splash on my sister and they both end up laughing.
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But my point of that story is, she was so angry that she couldn't withhold herself from rushing at person making so angry.
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So what was it that did it?
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Look at verse 56 again.
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What made them so angry?
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Look at this phrase.
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When Stephen said, "Behold, I see the heavens open, and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God." Understand that that phrase is what did it.
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The Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.
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Why would that phrase have made them so angry?
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John 10 Matthew 26:63-64 When Jesus was on trial just a couple months earlier, and he stood before the high priest.
23:55-23:56
Do you remember?
23:56-24:00
"Are you the Christ?" Do you remember what Jesus' answer was?
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He said, "You will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of power and coming on the clouds of glory." That's a reference from the book of Daniel.
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Jesus was basically saying to the high priest, "I'm the Christ.
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I'm the Promised One." And when Jesus said that, the high priest was so angry, the Bible says he ripped his robes.
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He was so mad he just shredded his clothes.
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So imagine now, fast forward, Stephen's on trial.
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And what do you have to say for yourself, Stephen?
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And he says almost the exact thing that Jesus did?
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I see the Son of Man standing at the right hand, furious.
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and they went after him.
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The Bible says they stoned him.
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They stoned him.
24:58-25:00
Standard operating procedure - I didn't know this.
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I learned some stuff this week.
25:02-25:14
The standard operating procedure for stoning was they would actually take a victim, and it was prescribed that you had to push the victim off of a precipice that was two times his height, meaning about 10 feet.
25:15-25:24
And if you pushed him off of that precipice, was 10 feet and he was still alive, that's when the stoning actually began.
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And I was thinking, I can't imagine a scenario where a fall from 10 feet would kill a person, but this was how they did it.
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First witness of the person's crime that deserved capital punishment would actually be the one to push him.
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He was still alive.
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The next witness of the crime, the next accuser, so to speak, would actually take a large rock and drop it so that it landed on the man's chest.
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And if he was still alive, a second witness would come and drop a large rock so that it landed on the chest.
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And that was how they executed, typically.
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But this scene isn't exactly how that happened.
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Somebody here might be thinking like I was.
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Wait a minute, I thought that the Jews being under Roman occupation were not allowed to execute people.
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That's why the Jews, remember the Jews had to convince the Romans to crucify Jesus because the Jews didn't have the authority to execute themselves.
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Well, this passage was not a legal execution.
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Okay, this passage is not, we went through the proper court proceedings and verdict has been passed.
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And now we are proceeding with the proper death penalty.
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This was a mob attack.
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And that's what the verbiage is about here, where they were so angry and rushed at him.
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These people in cold blood carried out a mob attack and stoned Stephen.
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Didn't go through the standard procedure.
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It says they took him out of the city.
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I imagine they took him out of the city and everybody just grabbed a rock.
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And we're just going to keep pelting him until he's dead.
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Interestingly, in the midst of this scene with the glory of God and this angry mob, making a cameo is the coat man.
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And that might seem a little out of place.
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Why does it mention that there's this coat man Saul?
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"Hey, I want your coats, guys, while you kill that guy." Why is he mentioned?
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Well, this is the same Saul who later comes to Christ His name changes to Paul.
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And he took the Gospel to the Gentiles and actually wrote a huge chunk of your New Testament.
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So why is he mentioned here?
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Because in Acts 22:20, the Apostle Paul talks about how this event had a huge impact on him.
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God sovereignly used this event - we're going to talk about this next week - So that the gospel would spread.
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But I want you to see that God also used this execution of Stephen to eventually bring Saul to salvation.
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Like I said, the story of Stephen on one hand seems sort of a shame.
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Here's this young man, he came and went, angel-faced.
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Looked like he had so much potential.
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And you can look at his life and say, That poor guy never really had a chance to make the kind of impact that God really could have made through him.
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That's not true, is it?
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God used Stephen to make the exact impact that he wanted to make.
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Church, I want to remind you that God's agenda is bigger than you.
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God's agenda was bigger than Stephen.
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God wanted to use Paul to take the Gospel to the Gentiles, to write so much of the New Testament.
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So God used Stephen to get to Paul.
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It's sort of like Peter and Andrew.
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If I asked you which of these disciples had the bigger impact for the kingdom of Jesus Christ?
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Peter or his brother Andrew?
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Most people would say Peter, right?
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Peter preached at Pentecost and Peter's in the first 12 chapters of Acts.
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And Peter this and Peter that.
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Thousands of people came to Christ under the teachings of Peter.
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He obviously had the bigger impact.
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But I'd like to remind you that Peter would not have come to Christ unless his brother Andrew brought him.
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The question is who had the bigger impact?
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It's irrelevant.
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In God's sovereignty, He used Andrew to bring Peter to Christ.
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So you can't look at Stephen's life.
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And I want to challenge you this morning, your own life and say I don't see the global impact that I hoped God would make through me. You can't look at our church and say we're only a church of about a hundred we're not making the type of impact that a church of a couple thousand you know there's some big churches in the area we're not making the impact that those size churches are making we can't say that Because that would be like saying Stephen's life was a waste.
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We don't know how many people came to Christ through Stephen.
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We don't see names listed.
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We don't see numbers recorded.
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But what we do see is it made an impact on a man who eventually came to Christ.
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And we're still talking about this guy to this day.
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We're still reading Paul's letters to this day.
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We're still preaching through what Paul wrote to this day.
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And God used Stephen to get to him.
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I want to encourage you, maybe God will, or maybe God is using you to influence someone who He will use to have an even bigger impact than you.
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Maybe it's your kid.
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Maybe God's using you to pour into your kid because God's going to use your kid to make an impact on the mission field.
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Maybe it's somebody else in this church Right now, God is using this little church to get to that person for a ministry of much greater capacity than this church.
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Maybe God's doing that.
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The voice of the Gospel died in Stephen on this day.
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We see it came alive in Saul.
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It's a glorious thing to die for Christ because you get to experience God's glory to give the ultimate witness.
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A couple more. Thirdly, this is a pretty obvious one why it's a glorious thing to die for Christ.
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You go to heaven.
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You go to heaven.
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I love this.
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It was on the front of an issue of Voice of the Martyrs.
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There was a phrase that said something like, "You're going to die someday anyways.
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You may as well die for Jesus." In verse 59, it says, "And as they were stoning Stephen, he called out, 'Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.' Just like Jesus in Luke 23, verse 46, 'Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.' Stephen cries out something similar." I would like to remind you quickly, in this passage, once again, we see that when someone is in Christ, when they leave this earth, they immediately go to heaven.
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The Bible doesn't talk about purgatory or soul sleep or some intermediate stage where you go to wait or to get the remainder of your sins burned off or whatever.
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The Bible doesn't speak about that.
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The Bible only speaks about leaving this existence, going into the presence of Christ.
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A couple great verses for that.
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Corinthians chapter 5 verse 8 we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord Paul says those are really our two choices when we're away from the body we're at home with the Lord also Philippians chapter 1 and verse 23 again the Apostle Paul says my desire is to depart and go to purgatory now he didn't say that he says my desire is to depart and be with Christ so I And it is true, church, that death is described as an enemy.
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The Bible even says death is an enemy.
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But death is a defeated enemy because for the believer, death is a doorway into glory.
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And you can't let the fear of death stop you from serving Christ.
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You can't let the fear of death stop you from serving God.
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that stop you from serving Christ?
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I've been on several mission trips over the years, and one question that constantly comes up is the question, "Is it dangerous?" I have moms who are sending their kids on these trips with me and some other adult leaders, and a question that moms often ask, "Pastor Jeff, is it dangerous?" "Is it dangerous?" The answer is, yeah, it is.
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We've sent a, you know, Darla's gone to Moldova, we've sent a crew to Romania, Thailand, and we've got more things in the works.
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Is it dangerous?
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Yeah. It is dangerous.
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It is dangerous.
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The first time I went to Thailand was back in 1996.
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And I remember my mom was so scared because our missionary friend over there said, yeah, there's, there are some wild tigers.
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There's a lot of wild dogs and snakes and scorpions and the jungle was full of animals that can kill you and mom was so worried and she was actually talking to Darren about this and she goes, "I'm not crazy about Jeff going to Thailand!" and Darren, the voice of reason in the family, he goes, "Oh, just don't worry about it. Jeff's gonna be just fine." Mom says, "Darren, Jeff can't outrun a tiger!" And Darren just smiled. He says, "Jeff doesn't have to outrun a tiger. Jeff just has to outrun Pastor Bob." So yeah, it's dangerous. Whether we go to Romania or Thailand or wherever we end up, yeah, it's dangerous.
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Not just from the wild animals, but from maybe people there that don't want the gospel being proclaimed.
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It's dangerous.
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But the worst thing that can happen to you is you get to go to heaven.
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That doesn't sound like a bad day.
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Finally, number four, you get to reflect Jesus.
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You get to reflect Jesus.
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Something you see in the life of Stephen, there was no bitterness towards his attackers, there were no cries of vengeance, There was no cursing.
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It was just grace.
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Look at v. 60.
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It says, "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." Does that sound familiar?
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In Luke 23 v. 34, when Jesus was being crucified, remember what Jesus said like Stephen?
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"Father, forgive them.
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They do not know what they're doing." Stephen crying out, "Lord, do not hold this sin against them." With his dying breath, Stephen reflected the grace and love of Jesus.
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And you're like, "How in the world did that happen?" And the answer is in verse 55.
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It says that Stephen was full of the Holy Spirit.
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That's how that happened.
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Do you have that perspective on the people of Israel?
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that would insult and persecute you.
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Do you have that perspective on them?
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When someone insults you?
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When atheists in our country get another victory?
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We have another Ten Commandments monument taken down.
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We've gotten prayer taken out of this school function and atheists get another victory.
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Or we hear that ISIS has slaughtered more Christians.
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What's our typical reaction?
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I'll be glad to see the day that those people go straight to hell.
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God's going to judge them. You just wait.
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The day's going to come that they're going to stand before God.
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That wasn't Stephen's attitude.
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Stephen cried out, "God, please, save them. Save them." And Stephen's prayer was answered, at least in the case of the Apostle Paul, right?
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So we can look at this passage, and if we didn't have the right to do it, We didn't have this detail that the Bible gives us.
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If the Bible just said Stephen preached his sermon and then the council killed him, we would just kind of read that passage and walk away saying, "Man, that's a shame.
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That is a shame." But with the details and sort of looking at this passage and the events from over Stephen's shoulder, we can't say what a shame.
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according to Stephen, I don't think it was a shame to him. I'm not going to speak for him but I will just encourage you when you get to heaven look him up and ask him about this. Say, "Stephen, on that day that you preached your servant and they killed you, was that, would you consider that a tragedy?" What do you think Stephen would say about that? "Tragedy? Are you kidding? I looked up and I saw Jesus standing and then I like went right to heaven.
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That was the best day of my life on the earth because it was my first day of life in heaven.
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I think Stephen might even say something like this, you know, the gospel of Jesus Christ makes life worth living and the gospel of Jesus Christ makes death worth dying.
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Let's pray.
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Our Father in heaven.
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We are so I guess just naturally protective of ourselves and our well-being.
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And it's a scary thing to think that right now in the world people are being executed because they believe in Jesus Christ.
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It's a scary thing to think that that could happen to us.
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But it is reality because a servant is not above his master.
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Father, I just thank you today for the example of Stephen.
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And I pray, Father, over this church that you would help us to view death differently.
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That yes, death is an enemy, but your Word tells us that death is a defeated enemy.
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For us, death is just simply the door from life on this earth into your presence forever.
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The Father let us not shrink back.
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Like Stephen, what an example.
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He wasn't abrasive.
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He wasn't condemning.
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He cried out in prayer for their souls.
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And even though the words that he preached in his sermon were hard, he loved them enough to tell them the truth.
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God help us.
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Help us, Father, to reflect the grace that we see in Stephen's life.
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Help us, Father, to see this life for what it really is from Your perspective.
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It's a few years of opportunity to glorify Jesus Christ.
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Father, let us see the glory of picking up our cross and carrying it.
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In the name of Jesus Christ, and Savior that we pray.
Small Group Questions (Whole Group):
Read Acts 7:54-60
Icebreaker: Besides Jesus / the Gospel, what or who would you be willing to die for (if anything)?
What is the significance of Jesus standing up in this scene? How does this give YOU confidence?
Would you be ready to die for Christ? Do you think you’d feel differently when the time came? Why or why not?
Breakout Questions:
Be honest: have you ever thought about dying for Christ? Would you take a mission trip to a country hostile towards the Gospel if you believed God called you to? If you are struggling with this willingness to give it all for Jesus, pray about that as a breakout group!