Benjamin Murphy
Small Group Questions
Benjamin Murphy
Sermon Series Highlights
Sermon Series Highlights

The Power of the Word.

Using the Word of God to defend your faith, the Stephen way.

  1. State the Facts: Israel has a history of constantly Rebeling against God and Rejecting the people God sends. (Acts 7:1-50)

    • God: (Acts 7:1-16)
    • Moses: (Acts 7:17-37)
    • Law: (Acts 7:38-43)
    • Temple: (Acts 7:44-50)

      • See Isaiah 66:1-2


  2. Make Your Point: History is Repeating itself. (Acts 7:51-53)

Sermon Notes (PDF): BLANK
Hint: Highlight blanks above for answers!

  • 00:00-00:02

    Turn in your Bibles to Acts chapter 7.

    00:04-00:13

    Remember a couple of weeks ago we met a man named Stephen, and he was involved in the early church with meeting needs for the Hellenistic Jewish widows.

    00:14-00:16

    Stephen was part of the team that was helping meet the needs.

    00:16-00:32

    And then last week we saw that some of the certain Jews from certain synagogues actually He started to debate with Stephen over who Christ is and the purpose of the law and the temple and those types of things.

    00:32-00:35

    And Stephen debated with them, and he actually beat them.

    00:35-00:38

    He actually won the argument.

    00:40-00:44

    Instead of admitting defeat, what they did was they spread false rumors about him.

    00:45-00:57

    And they said that Stephen was speaking against Moses and God and the holy place and the law And they brought him to the council in Acts 7, verse 1.

    00:57-01:12

    It says, "And the high priest said, 'Are these things so?'" You're like, "What things?" Well, the accusations that were being made that Stephen was speaking against Moses, God, the holy place, and the law.

    01:13-01:23

    So verse 2 says, "And Stephen said," and then he launches into his defense, which is actually a sermon.

    01:26-01:29

    Today we're going to be looking at the entirety of Stephen's sermon.

    01:30-01:33

    And it's a lot of verses, and we're gonna go through it very quickly.

    01:34-01:37

    And somebody's going to be saying, "Well, why don't you just break it up?

    01:38-01:41

    "Why are we looking at?" Basically, it's all of chapter seven.

    01:42-01:43

    Somebody's gonna say, "Well, why didn't you break it up?

    01:43-01:44

    "What are we gonna do next week?

    01:44-01:49

    "You're gonna preach like through "the entirety of Deuteronomy?" I tried to break it up, but here's the problem.

    01:49-01:51

    with Stephen's sermon, you really can't break it up.

    01:53-01:55

    Or you'll miss the point of the sermon.

    01:57-02:02

    It would be like, let's really expound one of these jokes.

    02:03-02:08

    And we'll take the classic, for example, why did the chicken cross the road to get to the other side?

    02:08-02:09

    That's the classic joke.

    02:10-02:11

    We've heard it so many times, it's not funny anymore.

    02:12-02:18

    But imagine if I said, for the next five weeks, we're going to be talking about that chicken joke.

    02:19-02:21

    So here's what we're talking about for the next five weeks.

    02:21-02:22

    Why did the chicken cross the road?

    02:23-02:24

    First, we're gonna ask the question, why?

    02:25-02:28

    And imagine you show up next week, and that's my whole sermon.

    02:28-02:29

    We're gonna talk about why.

    02:30-02:32

    Why gets to matters of the heart.

    02:32-02:36

    Why is really digging deep down to try to understand the motives.

    02:36-02:39

    And I spend 40 minutes talking about the question, why?

    02:39-02:42

    And I say, come back next week, and we're gonna talk about chickens.

    02:43-02:46

    Then you come back next week, and I spend 40 minutes talking about chickens.

    02:46-02:54

    And chickens are delicious, and my wife wants to raise chickens in the yard, and we talk about chickens.

    02:54-03:14

    And you'd be like, "Dude, that's not the point." The point of the joke is in its simplicity, and you sort of miss the purpose of it if you're spending all of that time expounding on every one of these words.

    03:14-03:16

    And that's what we have in Acts chapter 7.

    03:17-03:26

    If I spent weeks talking about each of these individual little elements of Stephen's sermon, you're going to miss the point of the whole sermon.

    03:26-03:28

    It's like one of those jokes.

    03:28-03:40

    Because what Stephen's doing in Acts chapter 7 is he's giving a really, really big setup, and then he hits them with the punchline.

    03:41-03:42

    Okay, is everybody with me?

    03:44-03:45

    I've got this down, number one, on your outline.

    03:47-03:52

    This is using the Word of God to defend your faith the Stephen way.

    03:53-03:54

    Number one, state the facts.

    03:55-03:57

    And this is what Stephen's sermon is about.

    03:57-04:02

    I'm going to tell you on the front end because we're going to go through this quickly and you're going to see Stephen's point.

    04:02-04:03

    State the facts.

    04:05-04:16

    Israel has a history of constantly rebelling against God and rejecting the people God sends.

    04:17-04:18

    This is Stephen's sermon.

    04:20-04:23

    So Stephen's brought before the council, "You've been accused of blasphemy.

    04:25-04:26

    What do you have to say for yourself?

    04:26-04:35

    Are these things so?" Stephen's sermon is, "I'm going to give you a history lesson about Israel, and I'm going to tell you something about Israel.

    04:36-04:42

    Israel has a history of constantly rebelling against God and rejecting the people that God sends.

    04:44-04:55

    So Stephen's defense against a history lesson, he's gonna cover Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, David, he's gonna go through Genesis, Exodus, Joshua, first Kings.

    04:55-05:47

    And through this, he's going to show what he actually believes about Moses, God, the holy place, the law, these things that they accuse him of blaspheming so in your outline underneath number one states the facts write down god because this is what steven addresses first you've been accused of blaspheming god steven launches right into his belief about god brothers and fathers Hear me, the God of glory appeared to our father Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia, before he had lived in Haran, and said to him, "Go out from your land and from your kindred and go to the land that I will show you." And he went out from the land of the Chaldeans and lived in Haran.

    05:48-05:53

    And after his father died, God removed him from there into this land in which you are now living.

    05:54-06:04

    Yet he gave him no inheritance in it, not even a foot's length, and promised to give it to him as a possession and to his offspring after him, though he had no child.

    06:06-06:15

    And God spoke to this effect, that his offspring would be sojourners in a land belonging to others who would enslave them and afflict them for 400 years.

    06:17-06:22

    But I will judge the nation that they serve, said God, and after that, they shall come and worship me in this place.

    06:23-06:25

    And he gave him the covenant of circumcision.

    06:27-06:30

    And so Abraham became the father of Isaac and circumcised him on the eighth day.

    06:30-06:34

    And Isaac became the father of Jacob and Jacob of the 12 patriarchs.

    06:35-06:36

    This is Stephen's sermon.

    06:36-06:41

    And at this point, the council is just like, yeah, yeah, we, yeah, we're familiar with this.

    06:41-06:41

    Keep going.

    06:42-06:47

    And the patriarchs, jealous of Joseph, sold him into Egypt.

    06:49-06:52

    But God was with him and rescued him out of all his afflictions.

    06:52-08:01

    He gave him favor and wisdom before Pharaoh, king of Egypt, who made him ruler over Egypt household. And these events are all in the book of Genesis. It says, "Now there came a famine throughout all of Egypt and Canaan and great affliction and our fathers could find no food. But when Jacob heard that there was grain in Egypt, he sent out our fathers on their first visit. Now on their second visit, Joseph made himself known to his brothers and Joseph's family became known to Pharaoh. And Joseph sent and summoned Jacob his father and all his kindred, 75 persons in all. And Jacob went down into Egypt and he died, he and our fathers, and they were carried back to Shechem and laid in the tomb that Abraham had bought for a sum of silver from the sons of Hamar in Shechem." Okay, so first of all, Stephen's making a point. He says, "God was at work even back in the days of Father Abraham, but you see that even the patriarchs were opposing God's work. Nothing that the council can really argue here.

    08:02-08:11

    But secondly, write down Moses. That's a little bit about God, the God of glory. You're going to see more of Stephen's view towards God as we go through the passage. Write down Moses.

    08:14-08:23

    Here's the point in this section about Moses. Stephen's going to show us, as he showed the God sent Moses and Israel kept opposing him.

    08:25-08:27

    Look at verse 17.

    08:28-08:42

    It says, "But as the time of the promise drew near, which God had granted to Abraham, the people increased and multiplied in Egypt, until there arose over Egypt another king who did not know Joseph.

    08:44-08:50

    He dealt shrewdly with our race and forced our fathers to expose their infants so that they would not be kept alive.

    08:51-08:52

    And this is in the book of Exodus.

    08:53-08:58

    It was actually the male infants were to be killed, sort of population control.

    09:00-09:04

    At this time Moses was born, and he was beautiful in God's sight.

    09:04-09:06

    He was brought up for three months in his father's house.

    09:07-09:11

    And when he was exposed, Pharaoh's daughter adopted him and brought him up as her own son.

    09:11-09:18

    And Moses was instructed in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and he was mighty in his words and deeds.

    09:20-09:27

    Verse 23, it says, "When he was forty years old, it came into his heart to visit his brothers, the children of Israel.

    09:28-09:36

    And seeing one of them being wronged, he defended the oppressed man and avenged him by striking down the Egyptian." Do you remember that story?

    09:37-09:42

    Moses comes back to visit and he sees an Egyptian oppressing an Israelite And he just strikes him dead.

    09:44-09:48

    He supposed that his brothers, this is a key phrase here, verse 25.

    09:50-09:56

    He supposed that his brothers would understand that God was giving them salvation by his hand.

    09:57-09:59

    But they did not understand.

    10:00-10:01

    See what's happening here?

    10:01-10:07

    Moses was like, "All right, now they're going to see that I'm their hero.

    10:07-10:11

    I'm like Superman swooping in and I'm going to save them.

    10:11-10:15

    And if I have to save them by killing one Egyptian at a time, I'll do it.

    10:17-10:18

    I'll do it, but look at what happened.

    10:19-10:24

    The following day, he appeared to them as they were quarreling and tried to reconcile them.

    10:25-10:28

    These are two Jewish men who were arguing.

    10:29-10:30

    Moses stepped in trying to make the peace.

    10:32-10:34

    Men, you are brothers, why do you wrong each other?

    10:35-10:40

    But the man who was wronging his neighbor thrust him aside saying, "Who made you a ruler and judge over us?

    10:42-10:53

    Do you want to kill me as you killed the Egyptian yesterday?" So these two Jewish guys are fighting and Moses steps in, he's like, "Hey guys, what's going on here?" They're like, "Hey, hey, hey, who made you our boss?

    10:54-10:54

    You're not our dad.

    10:55-10:55

    What are you going to do?

    10:56-11:17

    You going to kill me like you killed the Egyptian?" And now Moses was like, "Man, they know." With this retort, Moses fled and became an exile in the land of Midian, where he became the father of two sons." You see, they didn't recognize Moses as some kind of a deliverer.

    11:18-11:21

    They didn't recognize Moses as some kind of a peacekeeper.

    11:22-11:26

    God sent Moses, and initially he was rejected.

    11:29-11:29

    Look at verse 30.

    11:31-11:37

    It says, "Now when 40 years had passed, an angel appeared to him in a wilderness of Mount Sinai and a flame of fire and a bush.

    11:38-11:40

    When Moses saw it, he was amazed at the sight.

    11:40-11:43

    And as he drew near to look, there came the voice of the Lord.

    11:43-11:48

    I am the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham and of Isaac and of Jacob.

    11:48-11:50

    And Moses trembled and did not dare to look.

    11:52-11:56

    And the Lord said to him, take off the sandals from your feet for the place where you are standing is holy ground.

    11:57-12:02

    I have surely seen the affliction of my people here in Egypt and I have heard their groaning And I've come down to deliver them.

    12:03-12:25

    Now come, I will send you to Egypt." So this Moses, verse 35, "This Moses whom they rejected, saying, 'Who made you a ruler and a judge?' This man God sent as both ruler and redeemer by the hand of the angel who appeared to him in the bush.

    12:26-12:47

    This man led them out performing wonders and signs in Egypt and at the Red Sea and in the wilderness for 40 years." This is the Moses who said to the Israelites, "God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your brothers." So you see Stephen's point.

    12:47-12:49

    Moses again goes back.

    12:51-13:03

    Verse 35, "This Moses whom they rejected." Pointing out again that Israel has a history of rejecting deliverers.

    13:05-13:10

    And you know the story with Moses because of persistent sin and hard-heartedness.

    13:11-13:22

    God allowed the Israelites to wander for 40 years through the wilderness until an entire generation died out they persisted in rebellion.

    13:24-13:34

    You know, at this point in Israel's history, as Stephen is giving this sermon to the council and they're looking back at Moses, they sort of idealized Moses and the times of Moses.

    13:34-13:42

    You know, they kind of look back like Moses was a hero and Moses was one of the, you know, the greatest people, if not the greatest person to ever come out of Israel.

    13:44-14:20

    And Stephen's reminding him, you know what, back in Moses' day, it wasn't all red crossings. It wasn't all songs of praise. It wasn't all celebration. You know what it was like in Moses day? Read the account for yourself. It was nothing but rebellion and rejection and hard-heartedness and Israel just consistently was rebelling against Moses. Lousy job cooperating with God, God-heartedness, rejection, that's sort of what it was like, Israel's reaction to Moses.

    14:22-14:23

    So that's a little bit about God and Moses.

    14:23-14:25

    Now let's look at the law, verse 38.

    14:27-14:33

    He says, "This is the one who was in the congregation in the wilderness with the angel who spoke to him at Mount Sinai and with our fathers.

    14:35-14:43

    He received living oracles to give to us." Now somehow the angels were involved in giving of the law.

    14:43-14:47

    We're not really sure how, but Galatians 3.19, Hebrews 2.2.

    14:48-14:52

    Here's another passage, but the angels were part of giving the law.

    14:54-14:55

    Look at verse 39.

    14:55-15:01

    It says, "Our fathers refused to obey him, but thrust him aside.

    15:02-15:17

    And in their hearts, they turned to Egypt, saying to Aaron," Moses' brother, it was, Moses is up receiving the law, Aaron's down with the Israelites, the base of the mountain.

    15:18-15:22

    Verse 40, "Saying to Aaron, 'Make for us gods who will go before us.

    15:22-15:38

    As for this Moses who led us out from the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.' And they made a calf in those days and offered a sacrifice to the idol and rejoicing in the works of their hands." Again, Israel would have a tendency to idealize the exodus.

    15:38-16:00

    Like, "Remember how great it was when we were slaves and God freed us?" And Stephen said, "Do you remember what actually happened?" "Yeah, God sent a deliverer whom you persistently rejected and rebelled against, but even when he brought you out, Israel's hearts were turned back to Egypt." And this is one of the worst moments in Israel's history.

    16:01-16:05

    God was up receiving the Ten Commandments from God Himself.

    16:06-16:09

    Moses was up receiving the commandments from God Himself.

    16:10-16:18

    You would think the Israelites were having a worship service, or "Let's pray for Moses," or just so excited to see what Moses was going to come back down with.

    16:20-16:28

    Instead, they had a wild party that included idolatry.

    16:29-16:37

    "Make for us a calf. We need a God to worship." Again, it's another testimony of hard-hearted, persistent rebellion.

    16:39-16:52

    Verse 42 says, "But God turned away and gave them over to worship the host of heaven as it is written in the book of the prophets," and this is from Amos chapter 5, verses 25 through 27.

    16:53-16:58

    "Did you bring to me slain beasts and sacrifices during the 40 years in the wilderness, O house of Israel?

    16:59-17:16

    You took up the tent of Molech and the star of your God, Raphan, the images that you made to worship, and I will send you into exile beyond Babylon." So that's a little bit about the law that Stephen was accused of blaspheming.

    17:16-17:20

    Homestretch here, now he's going to be talking about the temple.

    17:21-17:23

    So we have God, we have Moses, we have the law.

    17:25-17:29

    Israel was opposing God at the time God was giving the law, incredibly.

    17:30-17:31

    Now finally, the temple.

    17:33-17:43

    Our fathers had a tent of witness in the wilderness, just as He who spoke to Moses directed Him to make it, according to the pattern that He had seen.

    17:45-17:52

    Our fathers in turn brought it in with Joshua when they dispossessed the nations that God drove out before the fathers.

    17:53-18:03

    So it wasn't until the days of David who found favor in the sight of God and asked to find a dwelling place for the God of Jacob, but it was Solomon who built a house for him.

    18:03-18:08

    So here, Stephen said, "Okay, I was accused of blaspheming the temple.

    18:08-18:13

    Let me give you a little history of the temple." The temple actually started as a tent.

    18:13-18:15

    It was called the tabernacle. It was the portable version.

    18:15-18:19

    As Israel was wandering through the wilderness and camping, they would set it up.

    18:21-18:25

    and it wasn't until the time of David he wanted to build the house for God.

    18:25-18:30

    God says, "No, you're a man of war. Your son's going to do that for me." And Solomon built the temple.

    18:32-18:33

    Look at what Stephen does next.

    18:33-18:37

    He turns to a passage in Isaiah chapter 66.

    18:37-18:40

    He says, "Yet the Most High does not dwell in houses made by hands.

    18:41-18:45

    As the prophet says, 'Heaven is my throne and earth is my footstool.

    18:46-18:48

    What kind of house will you build for me?' says the Lord.

    18:48-18:50

    What is the place of my rest?

    18:52-19:04

    Did not my hand make all these things?" You see, with all this reverence that the council would have had for the temple, Stephen was saying here, "You guys are actually restricting God.

    19:04-19:14

    You think that God's presence only dwells in the temple." He says, "But even our own writings tell us that God is beyond living in just a building.

    19:14-19:17

    You can't constrain God to a building.

    19:17-19:18

    The temple isn't God's prison.

    19:19-19:22

    It's not like God's on house arrest and he can't leave this building.

    19:23-19:30

    He says, "God is so much bigger "than any house that we make him." God doesn't dwell in buildings.

    19:31-19:32

    Yeah, we had the tabernacle.

    19:32-19:33

    Yeah, we had the temple.

    19:33-19:38

    But even Isaiah declared that God was bigger than any house that we could make for him.

    19:39-19:40

    I know that's a lot.

    19:41-19:52

    But what I want you to see, one point from all of that, Stephen is saying Israel has a history of constantly rebelling against God and rejecting the people that God sends.

    19:54-19:56

    Stop looking at your history through your rose-colored glasses.

    19:58-20:02

    You look at our ancient fathers, they rejected.

    20:04-20:08

    Every time God would send a deliverer, he was met with rejection from his own people.

    20:10-20:14

    The number two, make your point.

    20:17-20:19

    We see Stephen's point, look at verse 51.

    20:19-20:26

    He says, "You stiff-necked people, uncircumcised in heart and ears, you always resist the Holy Spirit.

    20:27-20:32

    As your fathers did, so do you." That's where number two, write this down.

    20:33-20:35

    Stephen's saying history's repeating itself.

    20:36-20:38

    History's repeating itself right now.

    20:40-20:44

    He says, "You stiff-necked people." What does that mean, stiff-necked?

    20:44-20:46

    It means persistent rebellion.

    20:47-20:55

    It doesn't just mean somebody that sinned because they had a momentary lapse of judgment or they were a victim of circumstances.

    20:55-20:58

    It's somebody that they're committed to sin.

    20:58-21:00

    It's like, "I'm not going to bow my head to the Lord.

    21:01-21:03

    I'm going to do what I want to do." That's being stiff-necked.

    21:06-21:37

    that next he says uh... uncircumcised in heart and ears see the side of circumcision was assigned for israel the call someone on circumcised was basically another way of saying you act like somebody doesn't know the lord you act like somebody that's never read the bible you act like someone that this is all news to you that's like some godless pagan this is as your father's did so do you look at first fifty two which of the profits that your father's not persecuted.

    21:39-21:48

    And they killed those who announced beforehand the coming of the righteous one, whom you have now betrayed and murdered." He says, look at our history, people.

    21:48-21:52

    Every time God sends a prophet, he's rejected.

    21:53-21:57

    Their blood stains the history of the nation of Israel.

    21:59-22:03

    They were promising that the Christ would come, this righteous one.

    22:03-22:33

    And then he says, "Whom you have now betrayed and murdered." He says, "You're just like the fathers." Verse 53, he says, "You who received the law "as delivered by angels and did not keep it." Stephen says, "Don't give me this, "hey, we know the law stuff." He goes, "You acknowledge the law, "but you don't believe it, "because if you did believe the law, you would see that it points to Jesus Christ.

    22:34-22:36

    So you see the point of Stephen's sermon.

    22:37-22:40

    Stephen says, "God sends someone and Israel rejects him.

    22:41-22:43

    God sends someone and Israel rejects him.

    22:43-22:45

    God sends someone and Israel rejects him.

    22:45-22:48

    God sends Jesus and guess what?

    22:48-22:49

    You rejected him.

    22:50-22:54

    You are once again doing what we've seen throughout our entire history.

    22:55-23:00

    You're doing it again." This is the punchline that Stephen delivers.

    23:01-23:10

    You see, Stephen, those, you know, 50 verses or whatever, was just setting the ball on the tee, saying, "You're familiar with our history, right?

    23:11-23:12

    You're repeating it.

    23:14-23:16

    This is how it's always been, and you're still doing it.

    23:17-23:22

    And you know it's the sin of the church." You know, we can look at this and be like, "Well, that's interesting.

    23:23-23:25

    What'd you do in church today?" We get a little history of Israel.

    23:25-23:28

    It was fascinating, covered a lot of verses.

    23:28-23:30

    But it's the sin of the church.

    23:31-23:33

    You know, but you don't believe.

    23:34-23:36

    You sin and you won't repent.

    23:37-23:44

    You think God's happy with the religious attitude, but you haven't truly received Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior.

    23:46-23:52

    You see, people hop from church to church because they don't like what the preacher said.

    23:53-24:00

    Maybe the church hopper is rejecting all of the messengers that God is sending their way.

    24:02-24:05

    And you see, it all boils down to the sin that Stephen talks about in verse 51.

    24:06-24:22

    He says to this council, which is true of so many people in churches today, he says, "You always resist the Holy Spirit." You see, God's Holy Spirit testifies to the truthfulness of His Word.

    24:22-24:39

    Holy Spirit points to Jesus, God's Holy Spirit calls you to turn from your sin and you keep saying no. You say, "I'm not that bad. I'll get real serious about the Lord when, you know, I'm just going through a rough season in my life and I'm going to get my act together.

    24:39-25:00

    I'm going to get serious about the Lord and I'm going to stop playing games." And when you do that, you're resisting the Holy Spirit. Or like in this case, maybe like the council you're saying, "Well, this, I hear what he's saying, but this isn't for me. This doesn't apply to me. This is really for somebody else." You're just like the council.

    25:01-25:03

    You see, today, church, the council had a choice.

    25:04-25:09

    When Stephen delivered this message, they could step back and be objective and say, "You know what? He's right.

    25:11-25:17

    We are just as thick-headed and hard-hearted as the people that rejected Moses.

    25:18-25:51

    We're just as foolish as our very own patriarchs who rejected Joseph. You know what Stephen's right guys We're wrong They could have either embraced evens message or They can once again reject another messenger and We've already spoiled the ending for you know next week we're going to study they viciously In cold blood just murder Stephen an act of vengeance.

    25:53-25:55

    Just take a second, rather, to note the irony.

    25:56-25:59

    Once again, God sends them a messenger to tell them the truth.

    26:00-26:02

    And once again, God's messenger is rejected.

    26:05-26:16

    Church, in the same way you have a choice today, there are some of you that come to church because it's a religious duty.

    26:17-26:30

    and I feel better about myself if I go, and I think God's happy with me if I go, and you start trusting this religion, thinking that your works are going to make God happy.

    26:31-26:33

    And when you do that, you're just like the council.

    26:35-26:40

    There's people here that need to get serious about walking with Christ.

    26:41-26:48

    There are people here that need to say, you know what, I've been pretending for a long time, and I want to be done pretending.

    26:50-26:52

    There are people here that are like the council.

    26:52-26:55

    You know, these guys would have had like the entire Old Testament memorized.

    26:56-26:58

    They didn't just know the Bible, they had it memorized.

    26:59-27:01

    So it wasn't like they were ignorant.

    27:02-27:03

    They should have known better.

    27:04-27:12

    And there's people here that have been coming to this church and have been hearing what the Bible says and have not received the eternal life that Jesus Christ has offered.

    27:13-27:13

    You should know better.

    27:16-27:18

    But see, the good news is today you have a choice.

    27:20-27:34

    You can walk out of here and say, "I don't know who that message was for, "but that was for somebody else." You can walk out of here and say, "I don't agree with what he's saying, "I don't like what he's saying." Or you can say, "You know what, he's right.

    27:37-27:39

    "I've been ignorant, I've been hard-hearted, "I've been stubborn.

    27:42-27:44

    "Today, I'm gonna fall on my knees.

    27:44-27:46

    Today I'm going to stop being stiff-necked.

    27:46-27:52

    Today I'm going to cry out to God and say, "Please, God, I have a history of rejecting you.

    27:52-27:53

    I have a history of playing games.

    27:54-27:59

    I have a history of shutting out the people that you sent to teach me about you.

    27:59-28:00

    God, I'm done with that today.

    28:02-28:03

    God, I want a real thing with you.

    28:05-28:06

    I'm tired of playing games.

    28:06-28:12

    Is there somebody like that today that needs to be done?" Would you bow your heads with me, please?

    28:14-28:21

    Father in heaven, I pray, for my brothers and sisters here, I know we covered a lot of text today.

    28:22-28:28

    Father, I pray that we wouldn't be so blind as to miss the point that your word is making.

    28:31-28:38

    Throughout history, people who should know better, people who have the information still persist in hard-hearted rebellion.

    28:40-30:02

    who know what your word says, people who can quote it almost as good as you God, don't have the eternal life that Christ offers. They're just going through religious motions. They just want to look good. They just want to somehow think that they can come to you on their own terms when the truth is you have established the terms in Jesus Christ so father today I pray that as Stephen and his defense he actually brought the verdict to the council before they had a chance to bring the verdict to him his verdict was they were a people that were always resisting the Holy Spirit father I pray for this church that we would be a people who do not resist your Holy Spirit when your Holy Spirit calls us Father we would be a people who would respond immediately when your Holy Spirit Father is calling us whether there's somebody here who needs to receive Christ or there's somebody here father who needs to turn from a sin or make a step in ministry work father whatever it is don't let us be people who resist the Holy Spirit let us cooperate with him and walk and step with you, Father. We pray in Jesus' name, Amen.

Small Group Questions (Whole Group):
Read Acts 7:1-53

  1.  Say it in a sentence: what was Stephen’s sermon about? What was his main point?

  2. What are some things Stephen did in his sermon to defend his faith? How is this an example for us?

  3. What is resisting the Holy Spirit (Acts 7:51)? How do you know if someone is resisting the Holy Spirit?

Breakout Questions:

  1. Is there any area of your life where you are resisting the Holy Spirit? Pray over these things.

The Power of Persecution.

The Profile of Persecutors:

  1. Persecutors target Godly people. (Acts 6:8)

    2. Why Persecution? (1 Pet 2:21 | 1 Pet 4:12-19)

    1. So I won't be surprised
    2. So I will know how to respond
    3. So I may share in the sufferings of Jesus
    4. So I may be a strong witness (1 Tim 2:3)

  2. Persecutors are often Religious people. (Acts 6:9-10)

  3. Persecutors will Lie about you. (Acts 6:11-14)

  4. Persecutors will not Pity you. (Acts 6:15)

Sermon Notes (PDF): BLANK
Hint: Highlight blanks above for answers!

  • 00:00-00:03

    Open up your Bibles with me please to Acts 6.

    00:06-00:07

    Acts 6.

    00:07-00:11

    This year we really have our theme hanging on one verse.

    00:11-00:30

    It's Acts 1.8 when Jesus promised His disciples that after He ascends into heaven, Jesus said, "You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, and you will be My witnesses." And I don't know how you view your vocation, whatever that might be.

    00:32-00:46

    I look back in the course of the last 20-some years of my life when I've had jobs and I've realized that no matter what job I've had, I've always taken my job very seriously.

    00:47-00:48

    Very seriously.

    00:49-00:52

    Whether it was as a teenager, raking leaves.

    00:53-00:56

    There wasn't a leaf left in the yard when I was done.

    00:56-00:58

    I was serious about that.

    00:59-01:01

    And then when I was in high school, I worked at Burger King.

    01:02-01:05

    Those were the longest three months of my life.

    01:07-01:10

    But while I was there, I took that seriously.

    01:10-01:15

    And there was nobody that could make a better Whopper than I could or faster.

    01:16-01:18

    Then I spent about 4 and 1/2 years at Walmart.

    01:20-01:22

    I think I still hold the record at Butler Walmart.

    01:22-01:25

    You know now when you go and you see them getting the carts and they have the little motorized thing?

    01:25-01:26

    Have you seen this?

    01:26-01:29

    They got the little buggy that pushes the carts.

    01:29-01:33

    Well, back in my day, you had to push the carts.

    01:33-01:36

    And you'd get somebody else to steer the front one.

    01:36-01:37

    And I still hold the record.

    01:38-01:43

    One day, I literally pushed 100 carts because I took my job seriously.

    01:43-01:44

    You don't seem impressed.

    01:46-01:48

    My point is I took my job seriously.

    01:48-01:53

    When I worked for Anderson Austin News, I was in charge of magazines for four different retail stores.

    01:53-01:57

    and I took that job very seriously.

    01:59-02:08

    Several years ago, remember when I took the census and I needed people to go around to the neighborhoods and count people that didn't turn in their census form?

    02:09-02:10

    I did that for a while.

    02:11-02:12

    And I took it very seriously.

    02:15-02:20

    But since 1996, in some way, shape, or form, I've been in pastoral ministry.

    02:22-02:25

    And you have to know that I take this job very seriously.

    02:27-02:32

    And my job is not primarily to entertain you.

    02:33-02:34

    Want to hear a joke?

    02:36-02:38

    Ok, well, come over to my house later and I'll tell you one.

    02:38-02:40

    But my job is not to entertain you.

    02:41-02:43

    My job is not to empower you.

    02:43-02:46

    I'm not some cheerleader getting up saying, "The world is yours!

    02:47-02:50

    Go seize the day!" My job is not primarily to empower you.

    02:51-03:00

    Honestly, my job isn't even primarily to encourage you to get up and say, "Life is hard. Hang in there." My job really isn't to entertain or empower or encourage.

    03:00-03:04

    My job, according to Ephesians 4:12, is to equip.

    03:05-03:07

    Equip the saints for the work of the ministry.

    03:08-03:11

    And sure, when we do that, these other things happen along the way.

    03:11-03:12

    I'm sure at times you're entertained.

    03:12-03:15

    At times you feel empowered.

    03:16-03:17

    And at times you're encouraged.

    03:20-03:22

    My primary job is to equip you.

    03:24-03:30

    And we're going to be spending the next few weeks talking about persecution.

    03:32-03:33

    Because it's the topic of the text.

    03:36-03:40

    I want you to know on the front end, this is why we're going through this.

    03:42-03:43

    I want you now, parents, I want you to look at your kids.

    03:44-03:45

    Don't look at me, look at your kids.

    03:46-03:50

    If you don't have children, I want you to pick a child in the church to look at.

    03:51-03:53

    Because you're like a spiritual uncle or whatever.

    03:54-03:55

    Look at the kids in this church.

    03:58-03:59

    Are you looking at them?

    04:01-04:09

    Your children are inheriting a world that's becoming more and more hostile towards Jesus Christ.

    04:10-04:11

    Look at your kids.

    04:12-04:14

    When I say kids, I mean young people too.

    04:14-04:15

    Ok, Jesse, you're not a kid.

    04:16-04:18

    You're not a kid. You're a young man.

    04:19-04:25

    You're inheriting a world that is becoming more and more hostile towards Jesus Christ.

    04:25-04:27

    Look at Evan, my nephew.

    04:28-04:35

    He's inheriting a world that more and more is hating Jesus Christ and hates the people that align with Him.

    04:38-04:55

    1 Peter 2:21 says, "For this you've been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving an example so that you might follow in His steps." And when Peter's talking about Christ's suffering, He's not talking about the kind of suffering that comes with the flu or having an annoying spouse or car problems or whatever.

    04:55-04:58

    The suffering he's talking about is persecution.

    05:00-05:10

    And we've seen this in Acts, and we're going to continue to see it, but there's been a very clear progression of the level of persecution that came upon the early church.

    05:10-05:12

    It started with threatening them.

    05:13-05:14

    "Shut your mouth about Jesus!

    05:14-05:19

    We don't want to hear it!" And then it progressed in Acts 4.21.

    05:20-05:22

    And then it progressed to beatings.

    05:22-05:23

    Acts 5.40.

    05:23-05:27

    They were beaten half to death because they preached Jesus.

    05:30-05:34

    And in just a couple of weeks, we're going to see that the persecution even got to the point of death.

    05:35-05:38

    People were being killed because they believed in Jesus.

    05:39-05:42

    So we see this progression in Acts.

    05:42-05:44

    Can you see this progression in our culture?

    05:46-05:55

    I seem crazy to say that our culture is escalating with the amount and type of persecution that we're seeing upon Christians.

    05:56-05:57

    Do I need to wear a tinfoil hat?

    05:57-05:58

    Am I crazy?

    05:59-05:59

    Am I crazy?

    06:00-06:01

    Do you see it too?

    06:02-06:04

    More and more and more.

    06:05-06:10

    The only message that isn't tolerated is the message of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

    06:12-06:18

    So as you're looking at your kids, some of you stop, but when you look at your kids, My question for you is, do you want them prepared?

    06:21-06:22

    Do you want them to know what to expect?

    06:24-06:27

    Do you want your kids to be able to handle it like Jesus?

    06:29-06:31

    Another sermon on persecution?

    06:31-06:34

    Didn't we already hear a sermon on persecution?

    06:34-06:35

    Yes, yes, you did.

    06:36-06:38

    So why are we hearing another one?

    06:39-06:41

    I'm going to give you some application points now.

    06:41-06:43

    This all comes from 1 Peter 4.

    06:44-06:45

    This is a whole other sermon.

    06:46-06:47

    I want you to jot some things down.

    06:47-06:53

    Why are we doing more sermons on persecution aside from the fact it's in the text and we go through the Bible verse by verse?

    06:54-06:58

    Here's some application points in case you're wondering why persecution?

    06:58-06:59

    Why are we talking about persecution?

    07:01-07:05

    1 Peter 4:12-19.

    07:07-07:10

    This all comes from there and some other verses, but here's why we're doing this.

    07:11-07:12

    And I'll get this up on the website.

    07:13-07:17

    Number one, how to apply a series on persecution.

    07:18-07:19

    Number one is so I won't be surprised.

    07:21-07:23

    I won't be surprised. It's coming.

    07:24-07:27

    I'm not doing you any favors by sugarcoating it.

    07:27-07:29

    It's coming. It's getting worse.

    07:30-07:31

    So I won't be surprised.

    07:32-07:33

    That's 1 Peter 4.12, by the way.

    07:33-07:36

    Number two, so I will know how to respond.

    07:37-07:42

    1 Peter 4.13 I don't want you to be surprised, I want you to know how to respond.

    07:43-07:46

    We'll be talking about that over the next couple of weeks.

    07:46-07:49

    Number three, so I may - this is huge.

    07:50-07:53

    Number three, so I may share in the sufferings of Jesus.

    07:54-07:56

    This is what people miss about persecution.

    07:59-08:08

    Persecution is one of the most glorious things that you will ever experience in your life because the Bible says you are sharing in the sufferings of Jesus Christ.

    08:10-08:11

    Look at Peter 4.13.

    08:12-08:14

    Remember when we were in Acts 5.41.

    08:14-08:15

    Do you remember the disciples?

    08:15-08:19

    They were rejoicing that they were considered worthy enough to take a beating for Jesus.

    08:21-08:23

    Remember what the Apostle Paul said in Philippians 3.10.

    08:23-08:27

    He says, "I want to know the power of the resurrection.

    08:27-08:35

    I want to share in the sufferings of Christ." It is a glorious thing to suffer for Jesus.

    08:36-08:37

    You're sharing that.

    08:40-08:44

    I will apply a series on persecution so I won't be surprised, so I know how to respond, so I may share in the sufferings of Jesus.

    08:45-08:47

    Number four, so I may be a strong witness.

    08:48-08:52

    1 Peter 4:16, 2 Timothy 2:3.

    08:53-08:55

    So I may be a strong witness.

    08:57-09:01

    And this section that we're looking at is going to equip us.

    09:02-09:04

    Because we're going to be talking about a man named Stephen.

    09:04-09:06

    He was introduced in the passage last week.

    09:06-09:07

    Remember?

    09:08-09:09

    and needs weren't being met in the church.

    09:10-09:12

    And the leaders of the church appointed seven people.

    09:12-09:27

    "Hey, you guys need to make sure that everybody's being taken care of." And one of the people on the list was a man named Stephen, and he becomes the focal point of Acts at this point, all the way up until chapter 8.

    09:27-09:29

    Let's look at Acts 6.

    09:29-09:32

    Let's look at verses 8-15.

    09:33-09:38

    It says, "And Stephen, full of grace and power, doing great wonders and signs among the people.

    09:39-09:53

    And some of those who belonged to the synagogue of the freed men, as it was called, and of the Cyrenians and of the Alexandrians and of those from Cilicia and Asia, rose up and disputed with Stephen.

    09:55-09:59

    But they could not withstand the wisdom and the spirit with which he was speaking.

    10:00-10:06

    Then they secretly instigated men who said, "We've heard him speak blasphemous words against Moses and God.

    10:07-10:10

    And they stirred up the people and the elders and the scribes.

    10:10-10:15

    And they came upon Him and seized Him and brought Him before the council.

    10:17-10:24

    And they set up false witnesses who said, this man never ceases to speak words against this holy place and the law.

    10:25-10:32

    For we've heard him say that this Jesus of Nazareth will destroy this place and will change the customs that Moses delivered to us.

    10:34-10:59

    "And pleasing to Him, all who sat in the council saw that His face was like the face of an angel." So on your outline - I hope you're taking notes on your outline today - the subheading says, "The Profile of Persecutors." We're going to be talking about Stephen, but we're going to be looking at this passage from the perspective of the people who are persecuting.

    11:00-11:07

    Because like I said, one of my goals here So we're not surprised when persecution comes upon us.

    11:07-11:12

    So one of the questions that we need to answer is what does it look like when persecution comes?

    11:12-11:17

    Or specifically, what are the persecutors going to be like?

    11:17-11:20

    What's it like when someone persecutes the church?

    11:20-11:21

    What does that look like?

    11:21-11:22

    What are they like?

    11:22-11:23

    We're going to be looking at them.

    11:23-11:24

    What are they like?

    11:24-11:25

    The profile persecutors.

    11:25-11:26

    Everybody with me?

    11:27-11:30

    Alright, number one, persecutors target godly people.

    11:32-11:34

    Persecutors target godly people.

    11:34-11:35

    Look at verse 8 again.

    11:36-11:46

    "And Stephen, full of grace and power, was doing great wonders and signs among the people." Recall, we've already learned some things about Stephen.

    11:47-11:48

    Here's a little profile about Stephen.

    11:48-11:51

    Before we get to the persecutors, let's talk about Stephen for a second.

    11:52-11:56

    Remember last week in verse 3, we saw that Stephen was full of the Holy Spirit.

    11:57-12:11

    God's Holy Spirit comes in and dwells in every person that believes in Jesus Christ When you turn from your sin, when you repent, when you're born again, when you receive the gift of salvation that God offers in Jesus Christ, you receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.

    12:12-12:15

    It's not just for preachers and elders.

    12:15-12:18

    The Holy Spirit comes and dwells in all of God's people.

    12:20-12:27

    And the fruit of the Spirit is manifest as the Holy Spirit is working the life of Christ through you.

    12:28-12:32

    Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

    12:32-12:38

    These are qualities that you should see in your life growing and maturing as the Holy Spirit is at work.

    12:38-12:41

    Stephen was full of the Holy Spirit.

    12:41-12:44

    We saw in verse 3 that Stephen was full of wisdom.

    12:46-12:49

    Wisdom is not just knowing facts.

    12:50-12:51

    It's knowing what to do with the facts.

    12:52-12:56

    Wisdom is knowing how to live.

    12:56-12:57

    That's wisdom.

    12:57-12:59

    Wisdom is knowing how to live.

    13:00-13:01

    Knowledge is just facts.

    13:02-13:06

    Knowledge says it's raining, the road's wet, the road's windy.

    13:06-13:07

    Those are just facts.

    13:07-13:10

    Wisdom is knowing how to drive in those conditions.

    13:10-13:11

    It's applying the knowledge.

    13:13-13:14

    It affects the way you live.

    13:16-13:21

    Biblically, wisdom is knowing how the Word of God applies in everyday living.

    13:22-13:23

    What else about Stephen?

    13:23-13:25

    Verse 5, we saw he was full of faith.

    13:25-13:27

    He trusted the sovereignty of God.

    13:27-13:28

    Full of faith.

    13:30-13:33

    So often we trust God for eternity, but what about every day?

    13:34-13:36

    God isn't just your ticket to heaven.

    13:39-13:42

    God is with you every moment of every day.

    13:45-13:45

    Full of faith.

    13:46-13:48

    And here we see in verse 8, He was full of grace and power.

    13:50-13:52

    He understood grace and He knew how to apply grace.

    13:52-13:54

    We're going to see that as we continue with this story.

    13:55-14:03

    He understood what it was to receive undeserved mercy and love from God, and he reflected that to other people.

    14:03-14:04

    That's grace.

    14:05-14:07

    Verse 8 also talks about his power.

    14:08-14:09

    His walk led to his witness.

    14:13-14:15

    God's hand was obviously on his life and ministry.

    14:17-14:19

    So that was a little bit about Stephen.

    14:19-14:26

    In other words, we can take all of these attributes and say this is the kind of person that's targeted for persecution.

    14:27-14:30

    Persecutors target godly people.

    14:32-14:34

    Persecutors target godly people.

    14:35-14:40

    When was the last time you've heard of a CEO Christian being targeted for persecution?

    14:40-14:42

    Do you know what a CEO Christian is?

    14:42-14:44

    That's a Christmas and Easter only.

    14:44-14:48

    That's the person that just wants their twice-a-year punch on the card.

    14:48-14:52

    Not too serious, but just enough church that hopefully God's happy with that.

    14:53-15:00

    When's the last time you've heard some lukewarm, mamby-pamby - When's the last time you heard somebody like that being persecuted for their faith?

    15:01-15:02

    Nobody goes after those people.

    15:03-15:07

    The people that are targeted are people that have strong walks with Jesus Christ.

    15:10-15:17

    So church, let's dispel the notion that if you do well, you won't be persecuted.

    15:17-15:21

    Let's dispel the notion that persecution is punishment from God for doing something wrong.

    15:22-15:24

    Persecution means that you're doing something right.

    15:26-15:31

    Persecution means that the world recognizes that you're connected to Jesus.

    15:33-15:36

    I had the incredible opportunity a couple of weeks ago.

    15:37-15:40

    Stanley Cup Eastern Finals went to game one.

    15:42-15:50

    We got down, we sat in our section, and unbelievably, Corrine, we saw two people walk in wearing Tampa Bay Lightning jerseys.

    15:52-15:57

    And as soon as they walked in, I could feel my entire section just...

    15:58-15:58

    (grunts)

    15:59-16:01

    And you know, I was thinking about that.

    16:02-16:06

    Those people wearing those Tampa Bay Lightning jerseys, they might be the sweetest people on the planet.

    16:07-16:10

    Maybe they're from Tampa Bay and they're in Pittsburgh visiting their dear sweet grandma.

    16:11-16:16

    You know, or maybe they came to hand out muffins you know, downtown and encourage people.

    16:16-16:18

    Or you know, maybe they all had free hug signs or whatever.

    16:18-16:19

    I don't know.

    16:20-16:21

    Here's what I do know.

    16:21-16:27

    Those people were instantly despised for no other reason than they were wearing Tampa Bay Lightning jerseys.

    16:29-16:31

    In other words, it's guilt by association.

    16:33-16:33

    Right?

    16:33-16:39

    We don't know a thing about them, but we know who they're aligned with, therefore we don't like them, and we don't care anything else about them.

    16:40-16:43

    All we needed to know, Penguin's fans, was that they were for Tampa Bay.

    16:43-16:44

    That's all we needed to know.

    16:46-16:53

    In a much greater sense, understand the world is going to hate you for no other reason than you align Jesus Christ.

    16:54-16:56

    Not that you're wearing a Jesus Christ hockey jersey.

    16:58-17:01

    But the fact that they're seeing the life of Christ live through you.

    17:01-17:03

    They see that association with Jesus.

    17:03-17:05

    The world loves darkness.

    17:05-17:08

    And when they see the light of Christ in you, they're going to hate you.

    17:08-17:11

    They don't care how nice you are to Grandma, or how many free hugs you give out.

    17:11-17:15

    All they know is you're aligned with Jesus and they're going to hate you for that.

    17:16-17:17

    Like Stephen.

    17:18-17:22

    When you read the description of the guy, doesn't he sound like the kind of guy out with?

    17:23-17:26

    That didn't sound like the kind of guy you'd trust with your family.

    17:28-17:29

    They hated him.

    17:31-17:40

    When you believe in Jesus Christ, when you stand on the Word of God, the world's going to hate you just simply for that.

    17:40-17:41

    Are you teaching your kids that?

    17:43-17:44

    If you're not, you need to.

    17:45-17:47

    Because this is the world they're inheriting.

    17:49-17:54

    Tell your kids, yes, stand for the Lord, but also tell them that persecutors target godly people.

    17:55-17:58

    Number two, persecutors are often religious people.

    17:58-17:58

    Huh.

    17:59-18:01

    It seems backwards, but it's true.

    18:01-18:03

    Persecutors are often religious people.

    18:03-18:07

    Verse 9 talks about who it was in this passage.

    18:07-18:14

    Some of those who belonged to the synagogue of the freedmen, as it was called in Cyrenians, Alexandrians, those from Cilician Asia.

    18:15-18:16

    What's going on there?

    18:17-18:20

    There are several synagogues represented here in this passage.

    18:21-18:27

    A synagogue - the whole concept of a synagogue actually originated back to the Babylonian captivity.

    18:27-18:36

    Synagogues were just simply these Jewish meeting places where they would get together and they would worship and they would read the Law and the Prophets - what we call the Old Testament.

    18:36-18:38

    They'd get together and read their Scriptures.

    18:40-18:42

    But the synagogues - think of it this way.

    18:42-18:46

    The synagogues were sort of like denominations in a sense.

    18:49-18:52

    And these synagogues were represented in Jerusalem.

    18:52-18:54

    You know, like, you have all these different denominations.

    18:55-19:04

    Like you might have the Ukrainian Orthodox church that's not just in the Ukraine, they also have representation here and in this city and in this city.

    19:04-19:05

    Well, that was what happened in Jerusalem.

    19:06-19:11

    You had all these different sort of synagogue denominations that met in Jerusalem.

    19:13-19:14

    And who were they?

    19:15-19:16

    about the freedmen.

    19:16-19:18

    These were actually descendants of Jewish slaves.

    19:19-19:20

    The Cyrenians and Alexandrians.

    19:21-19:24

    These were Jews from North Africa.

    19:25-19:29

    And Cilicia and Asia, those were actually Roman provinces in Asia Minor.

    19:30-19:33

    But these other places had representation right here in Jerusalem.

    19:34-19:36

    They were actually Hellenistic Jews.

    19:36-19:38

    We talked about what that means last week.

    19:40-19:45

    And it says that they rose up I'm disputed with Stephen.

    19:45-19:46

    What do you think they were arguing about?

    19:47-19:48

    They were arguing about Jesus.

    19:50-19:53

    You see, there's a huge transition that happened in history.

    19:54-20:01

    No longer was it about God's people living under the old covenant of the law written on stone.

    20:01-20:02

    It's the new covenant.

    20:02-20:05

    Christ has died for the forgiveness of sin.

    20:05-20:06

    He rose to give eternal life.

    20:06-20:07

    And God's law is written on your heart.

    20:08-20:10

    And God's Holy Spirit indwells you.

    20:10-20:11

    And it's the new covenant.

    20:12-20:13

    in all circles around the person of Jesus.

    20:14-20:15

    That's what they were disputing.

    20:16-20:18

    We'll talk more about that in a second.

    20:19-20:36

    Then what you see in v. 10, I love this, it says, "But they could not withstand the wisdom and the spirit with which He was speaking." That's one of the reasons I appreciate so much Dan Thompson with the youth works so hard on apologetics - understanding how to defend your faith; how to anticipate when attacks come and what to say.

    20:36-20:38

    And Stephen would have been the master of that.

    20:39-20:46

    who knew how to answer all the challenges that came around Jesus Christ the Messiah.

    20:48-20:51

    Why are religious people so against the Gospel?

    20:51-20:52

    Do you ever wonder that?

    20:54-20:57

    Why are religious people so against the Gospel?

    20:58-21:04

    When you think of the word "religion," I hate that word.

    21:04-21:05

    Religion.

    21:06-21:09

    Do you know why I hate the word "religion"?

    21:09-21:10

    Religion is Satan's favorite word.

    21:12-21:14

    Religion is Satan's favorite word.

    21:15-21:31

    Because religion means if I do things, if I do the right things, and if I act the right way, and if I go through these religious ceremonies or whatever, obey this law, keep these rules, religion says God's going to be happy with me because of that.

    21:32-21:33

    I do things to make God happy.

    21:34-21:35

    The Gospel is different.

    21:36-21:38

    The Gospel isn't about what we can do for God.

    21:38-21:41

    The Gospel is about what God has already accomplished for me.

    21:43-21:51

    So when you share the Gospel with a religious person, what they're saying out loud or in their head or in their heart, they're saying, "You're telling me that my efforts are worthless.

    21:52-22:11

    What you're telling me with all this Jesus talk is that I'm wasting all my time trying to do all this stuff that I'm doing for God." Okay, so you're telling me that salvation is only in Jesus, And I need to turn from all my ways and receive Him.

    22:13-22:15

    The Gospel message is offensive enough alone.

    22:18-22:23

    But on top of that, when you're dealing with religious people, you're stepping on the toes of tradition.

    22:24-22:26

    You're stepping on the toes of lifestyle.

    22:27-22:35

    It is so hard to share the Gospel with somebody has been steeped in a religion of works for decades.

    22:36-22:40

    Because what they're thinking is, I've given my whole life to this.

    22:41-22:42

    My grandparents believed this.

    22:42-22:43

    My parents believed this.

    22:43-22:45

    And I've believed this for 50 years!

    22:46-22:50

    And now you're coming along saying, because of Jesus, I don't need to do all this stuff.

    22:51-22:52

    It's hard.

    22:53-22:55

    It's a hard message. It's a hard audience.

    22:57-23:02

    And yet, over my ministry, I've had occasions where the Gospel has offended non-church people.

    23:02-23:13

    But I can honestly tell you, the worst backlashes I have ever experienced have been from "religious people." Those are stories for another time.

    23:15-23:18

    It's something you are going to have to disciple your kids.

    23:18-23:19

    Prepare your kids.

    23:20-23:24

    Not only do persecutors target godly people, but persecutors are often religious people.

    23:25-23:28

    Persecutors don't often come as people that are like, "I hate the Lord.

    23:29-23:29

    They hate the Bible.

    23:30-23:34

    They often come as people that would say they're very devout.

    23:35-23:39

    Thirdly, I've got this down, persecutors will lie about you.

    23:41-23:42

    Persecutors will lie about you.

    23:43-23:52

    You see, they couldn't put Stephen in his place debating because obviously, your Bible tells you that they couldn't withstand the wisdom and the spirit with which he was speaking.

    23:52-23:55

    They couldn't put him in his place by debating, so they switched up the approach.

    23:56-24:04

    You see, they stirred up false witnesses to accuse Him of blasphemy, which by the way, under the Old Covenant, was punishable by death.

    24:04-24:06

    Look at these verses with me again.

    24:08-24:23

    It says, "Then they secretly instigated men who said, 'We've heard Him speak - here it is - blasphemous words against Moses and God.'" I think it's interesting that they listed Moses first.

    24:23-24:27

    be indicative what they really believed.

    24:30-24:34

    It's like God's up here, Moses and the law are right about here.

    24:36-24:51

    And they stirred up the people, by the way, you circle this in your Bible, this is the first time in the book of Acts that I can see where actually like John Q Public was stirred up against the church. At this point the people seemed amazed, the people seemed like in awe, the people People respected them.

    24:52-24:57

    It seems that this is the first point in Acts that somebody other than one of the religious leaders hated the church.

    25:00-25:01

    People were stirred up.

    25:01-25:03

    Oh, here they are. Here comes the rest.

    25:03-25:08

    And the elders and the scribes, and they came upon him and seized him and brought him before the council.

    25:08-25:10

    Now, wait a second.

    25:12-25:13

    Wasn't it just a couple weeks ago?

    25:14-25:16

    What did the council decide they were going to do with the Christians?

    25:17-25:18

    Didn't they say they were going to leave them alone?

    25:18-25:19

    Do you remember that?

    25:20-25:21

    I was like, "Let him alone.

    25:21-25:23

    If it's an act of man, it's going to fail.

    25:23-25:31

    It's of God. You're not going to stop it." I thought they were going to leave these people alone, but persecution is relentless.

    25:33-25:34

    And they went after Stephen.

    25:37-25:38

    Verse 13, here it is again.

    25:38-25:58

    They set up false witnesses who said, "This man never ceases to speak words against this holy place and the law." We heard him say that Jesus of Nazareth, by the way, Nazareth, or to call someone a Nazarene, that was such an insult back in that day.

    25:59-26:01

    Can anything good come from Nazareth?

    26:01-26:08

    I was trying to think, is there a city that we know of that we can use to insult people?

    26:09-26:10

    Like, oh, he must be from this city.

    26:10-26:12

    What city is that?

    26:13-26:15

    Cleveland. Okay, thank you.

    26:16-26:17

    Any other suggestions?

    26:19-26:20

    Philadelphia? Okay, thank you.

    26:20-26:22

    That was the first one that I thought of was Philadelphia.

    26:24-26:25

    It was used as an insult.

    26:26-26:28

    "Oh, he's a Nazarene." Nazareth was the name of a town.

    26:29-26:32

    But the idea was if you're from Nazareth, you are scum.

    26:33-26:35

    So, a little bit of an insult inserted here.

    26:39-26:39

    I'm kidding.

    26:41-26:46

    Jesus of Nazareth will destroy this place and will change the customs that Moses delivered to us.

    26:47-26:49

    He said that destroy the temple thing.

    26:49-26:53

    Remember Jesus said in John 2, He was speaking of His body if you destroy this temple and rebuild it.

    26:54-26:56

    And He's talking about His resurrection.

    26:57-27:01

    And they actually used that against Jesus on His trial.

    27:01-27:06

    And here, they were twisting Stephen's words.

    27:07-27:15

    Now how many people think that Stephen was literally speaking against the holy place and the law?

    27:16-27:16

    I don't.

    27:17-27:27

    How many people think that Stephen was literally speaking that Jesus was going to destroy the temple and change the customs that Moses delivered?

    27:28-27:30

    I think Stephen's words got twisted.

    27:32-27:38

    And I know, I know that I repeat myself sometimes.

    27:39-27:41

    I'm going to tell you why I do that.

    27:42-27:43

    I'll give you an excuse.

    27:44-27:45

    I repeat myself sometimes.

    27:47-27:48

    Because I'm paranoid.

    27:49-27:57

    Because when you speak for a living, and you've been doing it a while, you're going to be misquoted.

    27:59-28:01

    And I've been misquoted so many times over the years.

    28:01-28:10

    One of my favorites was I did a sermon one time on evangelism, and I was talking about when you look at what the Bible says about evangelism, the Bible doesn't really say to pray for unbelievers.

    28:11-28:17

    The Bible says that our prayer efforts should go towards praying for the ministers, praying for the witnesses.

    28:17-28:21

    Jesus has prayed that the Lord of the harvest would raise up workers for the field, right?

    28:21-28:26

    The Apostle Paul would often say, "Pray for us that we may have an opportunity to share the Gospel." That was the point of my sermon.

    28:27-28:32

    Most evangelism prayers in the Bible are directed at the people sharing the Gospel, not at the people that are the target for the Gospel.

    28:32-28:33

    Does that make sense?

    28:35-28:37

    I can start over if that didn't make sense.

    28:38-28:44

    But I had somebody months later come up to me Ticked off.

    28:45-28:46

    He was like, yeah, people were talking.

    28:46-28:50

    They were pretty upset that you were telling people that they shouldn't pray for unbelievers.

    28:52-28:53

    Do you think that's what I said?

    28:54-28:57

    Do you think I got up and said, "Thus saith the Lord, don't pray for an unbeliever"?

    28:57-28:59

    That wasn't my point at all.

    28:59-29:05

    My point was, according to the Bible, the prayers go towards the ministers and the people sharing the Gospel.

    29:05-29:08

    Those are the people that we should focus our prayer attention on.

    29:08-29:11

    And this guy said, "No, you said I pray for unbelievers.

    29:15-29:18

    One time I was called into a meeting at the prison with some of the staff.

    29:19-29:23

    They said, "We need to talk to you." I said, "What's going on?" They called me and went to this meeting.

    29:23-29:40

    They said, "Yeah, we've got some complaints about you." I'm like, "Oh?" "Who told?" They said, "Yeah, we had an inmate say that you're in there preaching all Catholics go to hell." I wouldn't say that.

    29:41-29:46

    They're like, "Well, that's what they said you said." Not "they," it was one guy.

    29:47-30:08

    "That's what one of the inmates said that you said." I'm like, "So, I've been coming in here for years at no cost to you, giving Bibles and praying with men and preaching, and here you have an inmate, and you're going to naturally default to taking his word over mine." He said, "That's what you said all Catholics go to hell." I said, "First of all, I don't believe that." and preach it.

    30:10-30:12

    But something I said got twisted.

    30:14-30:15

    And that's what happened with Stephen.

    30:16-30:27

    I'm sure they took a piece of his sermon or pieces of his sermon and twisted them in such a way they knew what to tell people he said that would make them mad.

    30:29-30:31

    You need to disciple your children.

    30:31-30:32

    Tell them it doesn't matter.

    30:33-30:41

    It doesn't matter what you say because some people are going to twist it I'm sorry, I had to laugh.

    30:41-30:45

    These accusations, let's just take their accusations at face value.

    30:47-30:52

    Can we just recognize that these accusations that they're making against Stephen are insane?

    30:52-30:53

    Can we recognize that?

    30:53-30:54

    Look at verse 13 again.

    30:55-30:56

    I don't know, I was cracking up at this.

    30:57-30:59

    This is what the false witnesses, this is what they came up with.

    31:00-31:04

    This man never ceases to speak words against this holy place.

    31:05-31:06

    He never ceases.

    31:07-31:08

    So this is Stephen's day.

    31:09-31:10

    He rolls out of bed.

    31:11-31:13

    He's like, "Oh, the holy place stinks.

    31:13-31:14

    "The holy place stinks.

    31:14-31:15

    "Let me tell you something about the holy place.

    31:15-31:20

    "It stinks." And then Stephen goes to the breakfast table and his wife's like, "How you doing, Stephen?" He goes, "Let me tell you something.

    31:20-31:23

    "The holy place stinks." And then Stephen goes to Walmart or whatever.

    31:24-31:25

    "Hey, how are you doing today, sir?

    31:25-31:28

    "The holy place stinks." Like, what's Stephen's problem?

    31:28-31:29

    He never ceases.

    31:29-31:30

    That's all he talks about.

    31:31-31:32

    He speaks against the holy place.

    31:33-31:33

    Never ceases.

    31:34-31:35

    That's all he can talk about.

    31:35-31:37

    Hey, how do you think the penguins are going to do?

    31:37-31:38

    The holy place stinks!

    31:39-31:40

    He never ceases.

    31:40-31:41

    He never ceases.

    31:41-31:42

    That's all he talks about.

    31:44-31:44

    Mmm.

    31:46-31:47

    Not sure about that.

    31:49-31:52

    Never ceases to speak words against this holy place and the law.

    31:53-31:55

    I've got to kick out of this one.

    31:55-32:03

    "For we have heard Him say that this Jesus of Nazareth will destroy this place, the temple, will change the customs that Moses delivered to us.

    32:03-32:06

    According to these Jews, where was Jesus at this point?

    32:08-32:09

    Where was Jesus?

    32:09-32:12

    According to the Jews, not according to Stephen, but according to these Jews, Jesus was what?

    32:13-32:13

    He was dead.

    32:14-32:14

    Right?

    32:15-32:17

    Jesus was this religious fanatic.

    32:17-32:18

    Not religious.

    32:18-32:19

    You know what I mean.

    32:19-32:19

    You know what I mean.

    32:20-32:24

    Jesus was this fanatic and we killed him and he's dead.

    32:25-32:26

    So what kind of accusation is this?

    32:28-32:31

    You're saying that Stephen's threatening you with the words of a dead man?

    32:32-32:35

    It would be like if I stood up and said, "Hey, let me tell you something.

    32:36-32:42

    George Washington is going to overthrow the White House tomorrow!" You'd be like, "He's been dead for how many centuries?

    32:43-32:44

    What kind of a threat is that?

    32:44-33:01

    That's stupid." Or, "Abraham Lincoln is going to completely change the laws of our land." You'd be like, "That's idiotic that you would even threaten us with that because he's dead." So according to these people, Jesus was dead, but somehow, he was still a threat to them.

    33:01-33:01

    I don't get it.

    33:02-33:03

    Can you see with me how insane this is?

    33:05-33:06

    Why are they saying this stuff?

    33:06-33:08

    Because they know it's going to get a reaction.

    33:11-33:14

    And we can see how they would have twisted what Stephen actually said.

    33:15-33:17

    Stephen says salvation is in Jesus the Messiah.

    33:18-33:20

    We can't be saved by the law.

    33:21-33:23

    They took that - oh, he's bashing Moses and the law.

    33:24-33:25

    That's what he's saying.

    33:26-33:29

    Stephen would have been saying the temple of God is inside his people.

    33:30-33:31

    Do you hear what he's saying?

    33:32-33:33

    He's operating the temple.

    33:34-33:39

    This is the place where we've gone to worship and now Stephen says it's irrelevant because God lives inside.

    33:39-33:41

    He's speaking against the temple.

    33:43-33:45

    You need to tell your kids that people are going to lie about them.

    33:46-33:47

    They're going to mix stuff up.

    33:47-33:50

    They're going to take something they say and they're going to twist it.

    33:52-33:53

    You just see it over and over.

    33:53-33:54

    It's right in your face. Can you see it?

    33:55-34:01

    What happens when anybody says I believe in the biblical definition of marriage?

    34:02-34:03

    How does the media report that?

    34:05-34:06

    He's homophobic.

    34:06-34:07

    He hates homosexuals.

    34:08-34:10

    He never said a word about that.

    34:10-34:23

    All he said was, "I believe in the biblical definition of marriage." The words get twisted because when we say words like homophobic or hate or bigoted or whatever, we get people's attention.

    34:26-34:28

    They did it to Stephen.

    34:30-34:31

    You need to train your kids or you're going to be doing it to them.

    34:33-34:37

    And finally for today, persecutors will not pity you.

    34:38-34:47

    I've got to be honest with you, there's not many, but there's a handful of verses in the Bible that I just read and I'm just kind of like, what's going on there?

    34:47-34:48

    Have you ever done that?

    34:48-34:53

    You're just like reading the Bible, you're like I get it, I get it, I get it, I get it, I get it, and then you get to this verse and you're like, what's going on here?

    34:53-34:54

    Has that happened to anybody else?

    34:55-34:55

    Oh, just the preacher.

    34:56-34:56

    Fantastic!

    34:57-34:58

    Anybody else?

    34:59-35:04

    "Don't leave me hanging." It scared me there for a second.

    35:05-35:08

    Like, wow, Pastor Jeff is the only person that doesn't get parts of the Bible.

    35:09-35:17

    But this is one of those verses that I was looking at, and I thought a lot about it this week, and I did a lot of studying and reading.

    35:18-35:25

    It says, "And gazing at him, all who sat in the council saw that his face was like the face of an angel." What does that mean?

    35:27-35:30

    Does that just mean that Stephen was a beautiful human being?

    35:32-35:38

    A lot of people say that God's glory was radiating on Stephen's face just like Moses.

    35:39-35:46

    I read where people said, "Well, remember Moses had the Shekinah glory of God radiating off his face?" That's what's happening to Stephen.

    35:48-35:52

    The only reason I haven't really subscribed to that is what did Moses have to do?

    35:52-35:53

    Remember he had to put the veil up?

    35:53-35:54

    Do you remember that?

    35:57-36:00

    I wonder if that's reading more into the passage than is presented.

    36:01-36:03

    So let's just look at what the verse actually says.

    36:03-36:19

    It says, "And gazing at him, all who sat in the council saw that his face was like the face of an angel." So whatever your belief is about, or your perspective, opinion is about Stephen's face, here's something we can be sure of from this verse.

    36:19-36:23

    And I always go with what I'm absolutely sure of in the verse, and here it is.

    36:24-36:27

    This wasn't Peter's opinion about Stephen.

    36:29-36:32

    This wasn't Stephen's mom's opinion about Stephen.

    36:33-36:35

    You know, at that moment before the council, they called Stephen's mom.

    36:36-36:37

    "Hey, what do you think about your son?

    36:37-36:41

    He's got the face of an angel!" This wasn't Stephen's mom.

    36:43-36:49

    It says that the council was gazing at Stephen.

    36:49-37:00

    They saw that his face was like the face of an angel Spoiler alert, next chapter, they're going to ruthlessly murder him.

    37:02-37:06

    So whatever you believe about Stephen's face, here's something I believe is absolutely true about this verse.

    37:07-37:12

    This is a testimony to the ruthlessness of people committed to sin, to persecution.

    37:13-37:16

    That they can look at you and recognize that you are innocent.

    37:16-37:20

    They can look at you and think, that guy's got the face of an angel.

    37:21-37:22

    they will still kill you.

    37:25-37:29

    You're like, well, surely if I plead my case before them, surely if they see, no.

    37:31-37:33

    Well, can't they see I just wanna share the truth with them?

    37:34-37:34

    No.

    37:36-37:41

    Well, can't they see that I just, I care about their souls and I love them and I just, that's why I'm telling them about Jesus.

    37:42-37:43

    No, they don't care.

    37:45-37:53

    Somebody here in this church, because of Jesus, because of your belief in the Bible, Somebody in this church is going to be sued over that.

    37:54-37:58

    Somebody in this church is going to lose their job because of their belief in Christ.

    38:00-38:04

    Somebody in this church is going to be physically attacked because you believe in Jesus.

    38:05-38:06

    Somebody here is going to be maligned.

    38:08-38:19

    Somebody in this church - my generation or the next one - somebody in this church is going to be killed because you love Jesus and you're committed to His mission.

    38:22-39:04

    I'd like to remind you, as we did a couple of weeks ago, Matthew 10:24, John 13, 16, John 15, 20, Jesus said, "Remember the word that I said to you, 'A servant is not greater than his master.' They persecuted Me, they will also persecute you." I wonder if those words are echoing in this moment for Stephen, because I was absolutely floored this week as I was studying this passage how Jesus and Stephen have parallel stories.

    39:05-39:06

    This was like "phew" for me.

    39:08-39:08

    Like what do you mean?

    39:09-39:11

    Jesus and Stephen both were godly people.

    39:12-39:18

    Both were debated and triumphed Both were arrested and brought before the Sanhedrin.

    39:18-39:22

    Both are accused by false witnesses.

    39:23-39:26

    Both were accused of speaking against the temple and the law.

    39:28-39:29

    Both were put to death.

    39:31-39:32

    It happened to Jesus.

    39:34-39:35

    It happened to Stephen.

    39:37-39:38

    And it's going to happen to you.

    39:39-39:40

    Why?

    39:41-39:44

    as a servant, not greater than his master.

    39:46-39:47

    Are you preparing your kids for that?

    39:48-39:48

    Right.

    39:50-39:59

    Father in Heaven, as we close up our time here today, I again ask that You are training us.

    40:01-40:07

    And I'm sure in some years, it seems maybe harsh that we have to have talks like this with our children.

    40:10-40:20

    We pray in those same ears, Father, You are echoing something that Your Son taught us over and over and over when Jesus said a servant is not greater than his master.

    40:20-40:30

    Why do we think we're exempt from persecution when they took the most perfect man who ever walked the planet and publicly humiliated and executed him?

    40:31-40:34

    Jesus promised that if they did that to Him, they'll do it to us.

    40:36-40:38

    Father, we pray for our country.

    40:41-40:42

    We pray for our country, Father.

    40:43-40:45

    I pray for Your churches to stand up.

    40:46-40:55

    The people who have received Christ, the people, Father, that have been called out of the world, that have been called to represent You.

    40:55-40:57

    I pray, Father, You would have them stand up.

    41:00-41:04

    I pray, Father, for a revival to come.

    41:05-41:11

    We would see people come to You in the midst of this avalanche of sin.

    41:13-41:18

    I pray, Father, through that, we would see people getting saved like never before.

    41:19-41:36

    And it's going to happen through people that are sitting in this room right now, that are going back to their families, going back to their workplaces, going back to their friends, and telling them the good news of Jesus Christ that while we were yet sinners, You sent Your Son to die for us.

    41:38-41:40

    Father, I pray for the children of this church.

    41:40-41:45

    We are a church that is blessed with so many children and babies.

    41:48-42:01

    Having two kids of my own, I just, Father, you know in the flesh sometimes I just shudder to think of the world they're inheriting ten years from now, twenty years from now.

    42:03-42:13

    We need people that are disciples, that are going to stand like Stephen in the manner of Jesus, that are going to stand for the truth of Your Word.

    42:15-42:21

    And it might cost jobs, it might cost money, it might cost some of their lives.

    42:23-42:25

    But a servant is not greater than his master.

    42:27-42:30

    We pray in Jesus' name, Amen.

Small Group Questions (Whole Group):
Read Acts 6:8-15

  1. Do we have to “have our act together” to be a good witness? How does our character tie into our witness?
    Which character quality of Stephen’s do you most need to focus on for your own walk? The Bible says he was full of the Spirit, wisdom, faith, grace, and power (Acts 6:3,5,8). How will you go about working on it?

  2. *Why are some “religious” people, those that actually go to church and say they believe in God and His Word (like the religious Jews in this passage), so hard to reach with the Gospel? How can we help religious people to see their need for forgiveness and eternal life only found in Jesus?

  3. What motivates people to make up accusations, and spread them to others, regarding Christians (Acts 6:11-13)? How should you respond when this happens to you?

  4. Bonus question: Acts 6:15 says the council saw that Stephen had the face of an angel. What does that mean, and what is the significance?

Breakout Questions:
Pray for one another.

The Power of the Team

We All Serve on the Team...

  1. So Needs can be met. (Acts 6:1-3)

  2. So Conflict can be avoided. (Acts 6:1)

  3. So Everyone can use their spiritual gifts. (Acts 6:4-5)

  4. So the church will continue to Grow. (Acts 6:6-7)

Sermon Notes (PDF): BLANK
Hint: Highlight blanks above for answers!

  • 00:00-00:03

    Open up your Bibles with me please to Acts 6.

    00:05-00:06

    Acts 6.

    00:08-00:27

    You know, when I was growing up, we experienced a lot of different pastors in churches growing up, and I've told you before about pastors who had wives that would tell the children they're going to hell every week, and we had pastors that would preach out of the Reader's Digest, and all sorts of things.

    00:28-00:35

    But when I grew up, I've always had this mentality that the pastor is the one that does the work of the ministry.

    00:35-00:41

    That we just show up and we listen to him and he does all the ministry work.

    00:44-00:51

    And over the years after reading God's Word, I realized that that isn't really how ministry works.

    00:53-00:58

    If you think about it, having one person that does all the work, It doesn't work on any other team.

    01:00-01:02

    Right now we're in the middle of Penguins playoff hockey.

    01:02-01:04

    How many people are following the Penguins right now?

    01:06-01:13

    Sidney Crosby, the face of the NHL, one of the greatest players, if not the greatest player in the world.

    01:16-01:17

    They're not going to put him in goalie.

    01:18-01:19

    You understand that.

    01:19-01:21

    Sid, we're really having a hard time backing the goal.

    01:21-01:22

    We're going to need you to put the pads on.

    01:23-01:25

    Well, who's going to center the first line?

    01:25-01:27

    Well, you're going to do that too.

    01:29-01:30

    You're also going to kill penalties.

    01:30-01:31

    We're going to put you on the power play.

    01:31-01:35

    That doesn't work to have one guy that's doing everything.

    01:36-01:38

    Think about it with the Steelers.

    01:39-01:41

    The face of the Steelers is Ben Roethlisberger.

    01:42-01:44

    And his job is to be the quarterback, yes.

    01:45-01:49

    But you're not likely to see Ben Roethlisberger blocking and running routes and kicking.

    01:51-01:55

    Now, we have a lot of baseball fans in our church.

    01:55-02:05

    You're not likely to see Andrew McCutcheon come out and be the starting pitcher, but also be the catcher and also play center field.

    02:07-02:23

    So the title of today's message is "The Power of the Team." And just as in organized sports, just as in any effective team, you need people that are fulfilling their roles for the health and the advancement of the team, so it goes with the church.

    02:24-02:30

    As we talk about organization in the church, I know this is how our minds typically work.

    02:30-02:33

    We tend to gravitate towards the extremes.

    02:35-02:39

    But there are some people when they look at the church, they say there should be no organization in the church.

    02:39-02:45

    We should just sort of show up and just go as the Spirit leads, and there doesn't really need to be any organization.

    02:45-02:48

    Organization is of the devil.

    02:48-02:49

    And that's not true.

    02:50-02:55

    But the other extreme are the people that think the church to run purely as a business.

    02:56-03:07

    Like, let's take some secular business model and we'll apply business principles to the church and it's almost this idea of well, we'll do a bunch of stuff and we'll hope that the Holy Spirit shows up.

    03:08-03:19

    We'll be really well structured and then when we meet, we'll make sure that we pray and we'll invite the Holy Spirit to hopefully come and bless the things that we're already doing.

    03:19-03:20

    And that's not right either.

    03:22-03:29

    As we've been walking through the book of Acts, you have to see that already there's been some level of organization in the church.

    03:30-03:36

    For example, they met at specific places and times that had to be organized.

    03:37-03:38

    They distributed money.

    03:39-03:41

    There had to be some organization.

    03:41-03:43

    We've seen them dealing with sin.

    03:43-03:46

    There had to be some organization and thought behind that.

    03:46-03:51

    And even to a point, they were actually counting the people who came to Christ.

    03:54-04:03

    So we're going to see today in this passage that the church was growing to the point that more organization was needed.

    04:05-04:09

    And so it goes with Harvest Bible Chapel just like the first century church as we grow.

    04:11-04:15

    So also, our team is going to need to grow.

    04:17-04:26

    If you're taking notes on your outline to the heading, "We all serve on the team." Why do we all serve on the team?

    04:26-04:27

    Number one, jot this down.

    04:28-04:29

    So needs can be met.

    04:29-04:31

    Look at the first three verses with me.

    04:33-04:34

    So needs can be met.

    04:35-04:48

    It says, "Now in these days when the disciples were increasing in number, a complaint by the Hellenists arose against the Hebrews, because their widows were being neglected in the daily distribution.

    04:50-05:02

    And the twelve - that's the twelve apostles - summoned the full number of the disciples and said, "It is not right that we should give up preaching the Word of God to serve tables.

    05:04-05:21

    Therefore, brothers, pick out from among you seven men of good repute, full of the Spirit and of wisdom, whom we will appoint to this duty." First of all, the reason that we all need to be serving on the team is so that needs can be met.

    05:23-05:29

    Again, as the church grew, the needs grew and some of the widows in the church were being neglected.

    05:30-05:44

    Now understand, when the apostle said it's not right that we should give up preaching the Word of God to serve tables, that phrase "serve tables" - this is the first time I've ever really dug really deep in this passage.

    05:44-05:45

    I mean, I understood what it meant.

    05:45-05:47

    It's pretty obvious what's going on here.

    05:47-06:07

    But I guess in my mind, without ever studying this concept of serving tables before, I just had this different idea that people would show up at these big banquets and the disciples would come with a napkin over their arm and "what will you be having today, mademoiselle?" And we should be serving tables!

    06:07-06:09

    And it's not like they were waiters.

    06:10-06:12

    That's not what it means.

    06:14-06:27

    Actually, the word for "table" could have meant like a dinner table, but that word for "table" was also used to describe the table of the money changers like the tax collectors and the money changers in the temple.

    06:28-06:33

    It was a word used to talk about people that were distributing and exchanging money.

    06:35-06:45

    So whatever the intention was, it's clear that the main point, rather, we're talking about meeting physical needs.

    06:47-06:58

    See, the apostles were saying, look, we can't be serving the Word of God and trying to serve the tables at the same time; meeting people's needs at the same time.

    06:59-07:04

    And I've got to tell you, it's really easy for pastors and elders to get sidetracked.

    07:07-07:21

    It is so easy to neglect prayer to neglect study - not intentionally - it's so easy to neglect these things in order to meet needs.

    07:22-07:26

    Because you see, pastors and elders - let me tell you something about that group of people.

    07:28-07:30

    Pastors and elders are typically people persons.

    07:33-07:35

    And because of that, we love meeting needs.

    07:37-07:38

    We love counseling.

    07:38-07:39

    We love outreach events.

    07:40-07:41

    We love children.

    07:41-07:44

    We love doing all these things to meet needs.

    07:47-07:48

    But what we have here is a time issue.

    07:51-08:03

    Because as pastors and elders, we can't be involved in meeting all of the needs and give the time to prayer and the Word that God has called us to.

    08:05-08:06

    Like, well, how much time does that take?

    08:09-08:12

    Let's just discuss the elephant in the room.

    08:13-08:15

    You know everybody's favorite joke to pastors.

    08:16-08:19

    Go ahead, what do people say to pastors?

    08:21-08:24

    "You only work on Sunday!" That joke never gets old.

    08:25-08:28

    I've been doing this 20 years, and it never gets old.

    08:28-08:34

    But there's a variation of that one that's even a little harsher.

    08:35-08:39

    "Yes, you only work for an hour a week!" How many people have heard that one?

    08:39-08:40

    Raise your hands.

    08:40-08:41

    How many people have said that to a pastor?

    08:42-08:43

    Shame on you!

    08:44-08:46

    You only work for an hour a week.

    08:46-08:55

    My response is - when people say that to me, my response is, well, technically, there's worship and prayer, so I actually only work about 35 minutes a week.

    08:56-08:57

    That's how I respond to that.

    08:58-09:00

    But you only work for an hour a week.

    09:00-09:19

    I know there are people that think that every week, it's Saturday night, I just sit down at my computer and log on to my email and James McDonald has sent me a message and I just preach this and I spend five minutes memorizing it and I just show up on Sunday and here we are.

    09:20-09:22

    And that's not how it works.

    09:23-09:31

    You're like, "Well, what you do, Pastor Jeff, really doesn't look that hard." Well, let's put it into perspective.

    09:31-09:34

    Now look, we're not comparing how hard jobs are, okay?

    09:34-09:43

    "Hey, you work hard at your job, right?" "You work hard at your job." "Well, I work hard at my job, too." Let me just give you a little insight to what it's like.

    09:45-09:50

    Those of you that have preached here before, you know, Jay and Mark, Dan, you've preached here before.

    09:51-09:52

    I'll give you a little perspective.

    09:52-09:57

    How many people remember in high school or college writing term papers?

    09:58-10:00

    How many people remember writing term papers in school?

    10:01-10:04

    You know, you get a subject, and you've got to research the subject.

    10:05-10:07

    And back in our day, we didn't have Google.

    10:07-10:08

    You had to go to the library.

    10:08-10:09

    Remember the card catalog?

    10:10-10:12

    And you went through all the little 3x5 cards.

    10:12-10:14

    And then you had to go to the library and find the book.

    10:14-10:16

    Some of you guys are looking at me like you have no idea what I'm talking about.

    10:18-10:20

    Google card catalog when you get home.

    10:21-10:21

    When you get home.

    10:22-10:26

    But then you would have to go on this mad hunt through the library to find the book.

    10:28-10:29

    I remember one of the greatest days of my life.

    10:29-10:32

    Yeah, I got married and had kids and that was all fun.

    10:32-10:42

    One of the greatest days of my life was the last paper that I handed in at Bible College.

    10:42-10:43

    I will never forget that day.

    10:43-10:46

    I can picture that day so vividly.

    10:46-10:57

    I remember walking down the sidewalk from the building that had some classrooms down to the professor's offices and I had that last paper in my hand.

    10:57-11:00

    And I remember handing it in.

    11:00-11:05

    And I remember when it left my hand, I remember walking away going, I'm done.

    11:08-11:09

    No more studying.

    11:10-11:15

    No more time-constrained crunch of preparing material.

    11:16-11:16

    I'm done.

    11:17-11:20

    And then somebody said, you're a pastor now.

    11:21-11:26

    You get to do that every single week of your life for the rest of your life.

    11:26-11:28

    I was like, well, wait a second.

    11:29-11:36

    So, just imagine, you know, writing a term paper - here's your assignment.

    11:36-11:38

    You have to write a persuasive paper.

    11:39-11:57

    And when you write the paper, you're not just concerned about the content of the subject matter - which, by the way, you have to study from a book that was written in three other languages a long time ago on the other side of the planet in a completely different culture by the Almighty.

    12:01-12:08

    But you have to take this persuasive paper and present it in a creative and engaging way.

    12:08-12:15

    And in a way particularly suited to the audience that you know is coming to receive the information.

    12:16-12:22

    And concerning that audience, you have to keep in mind with that audience, there's going to be great differences in age.

    12:22-12:24

    There's going to be some children listening.

    12:24-12:29

    There's going to be some much older people listening as you present this.

    12:29-12:32

    And there's going to be different stages of maturity.

    12:33-12:36

    And there's going to be different people in different stages of life.

    12:36-12:41

    There are going to be retired and young families and going through school.

    12:42-12:54

    And while you put this together, you need to make sure that you tie in current cultural issues so the audience knows how what you're sharing is relevant with what's happening today.

    12:54-13:01

    And then once you put all this information together, you have to stand up and deliver it verbally and publicly.

    13:03-13:09

    And then after you do that, you go home and you start it all over again.

    13:12-13:13

    Now, I'm not complaining.

    13:14-13:16

    This is simply my point.

    13:17-13:20

    It takes some time to put all of that together.

    13:22-13:23

    That's all I'm saying.

    13:25-13:26

    It takes time to put it together.

    13:27-13:39

    And with the preaching and with the shepherding, all the other things that go along with this position, now you put on top of that dealing with physical needs of people, it's hard to keep up.

    13:40-13:43

    And inevitably, somebody's needs are going to be overlooked.

    13:44-13:46

    Which is what we see here in this passage.

    13:48-13:56

    So the apostles saw the problem They saw that they didn't have the time to handle it themselves, and they said we've got to get some help.

    13:58-14:04

    And as more people come to the church, more needs are going to come to the church because everyone has needs of some type.

    14:06-14:12

    Whether it's counseling, prayer, physical needs, hospital visits, visiting shut-ins, taking care of children, taking care of the youth.

    14:14-14:15

    And it's all important.

    14:18-14:27

    The elders can't meet these needs ourselves and focus on the doctrine, direction, and discipline of the church.

    14:28-14:29

    So we see here in the passage the solution.

    14:31-14:32

    Look again, v. 3.

    14:32-14:46

    "Therefore, brothers, pick out from among you appoint people from the church to supervise ministry so that people's needs are being taken care of." But notice it's not just warm bodies.

    14:47-14:51

    The apostles didn't say just grab seven people - any seven people.

    14:51-14:53

    It doesn't matter who, just grab seven people.

    14:53-14:55

    Look again at the text.

    14:56-14:59

    "Seven men of..." Look at the qualifications here.

    14:59-15:02

    "Good reputes." That means integrity.

    15:04-15:05

    Not just grabbing anybody.

    15:05-15:06

    You find somebody with integrity.

    15:07-15:17

    As money's being distributed or food is being distributed or whatever it is, we need to make sure that there are people of integrity doing this work.

    15:18-15:18

    What else?

    15:19-15:20

    Full of the Spirit.

    15:21-15:24

    Meaning, just simply this, people that are walking with Jesus Christ.

    15:27-15:32

    You see, it wasn't like just find somebody that's got a degree in serving tables and hire that guy to do it.

    15:34-15:40

    The number one criteria was that the person, the people that were doing these jobs were born again.

    15:41-15:45

    That integrity, that good repute that comes from walking in the Spirit.

    15:47-15:50

    People that have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

    15:51-15:53

    Those are the people that we want serving.

    15:56-15:56

    Those that have wisdom.

    15:57-15:58

    What's wisdom?

    15:58-16:01

    Wisdom is simply applying knowledge.

    16:02-16:06

    Wisdom is using biblical discernment to put a plan into place.

    16:08-16:16

    So you find people that have integrity, love the Lord, and know how to get the job done.

    16:18-16:19

    He says we'll appoint them to this duty.

    16:21-16:22

    So we have to have leaders, church.

    16:23-16:29

    We have to have leaders in place to organize ministries in order to meet needs.

    16:31-16:32

    Number two, jot this down.

    16:33-16:33

    We all serve in a team.

    16:34-16:37

    First of all, some needs can be met, but we all serve in a team so conflict can be avoided.

    16:40-16:41

    Jump back to verse 1 for a second.

    16:42-16:44

    I'm going to see this right in the text.

    16:46-16:49

    It says that there was a complaint by the Hellenists.

    16:52-16:53

    Who are the Hellenists?

    16:53-16:57

    Well, remember we've talked about this before in the Old Testament times.

    16:57-17:01

    God judged the nation of Israel through the Assyrians and then through the Babylonians.

    17:01-17:05

    And after the judgment through the Babylonians, Israel was scattered all over.

    17:05-17:11

    And there were a group of Israelites that sort of absorbed Greek culture.

    17:11-17:12

    They spoke Greek.

    17:13-17:18

    Even though they were Jews, they were Greeks by appearance.

    17:20-17:22

    They just absorbed that culture.

    17:24-17:25

    Those are Hellenists.

    17:27-17:44

    It says, "A complaint by the Hellenists arose against the Hebrews because their widows were being neglected in the daily distribution." See, this was the potential for racial and cultural hostility.

    17:44-17:47

    These Hellenists would have been the minority in the church.

    17:48-17:52

    At this point, the church was mostly Jews.

    17:53-18:02

    So now you have this little sect of Greek Jews - potential for racial conflict, cultural conflict.

    18:03-18:04

    Because look at how it's worded.

    18:05-18:10

    It says, "A complaint by the Hellenists arose against the Hebrews their widows are being neglected.

    18:10-18:11

    Do you see the word "their"?

    18:13-18:14

    Do you see the potential for conflict?

    18:17-18:25

    It wasn't, "Hey, we have some widows that aren't being taken care of." You see, they're like, "Hey, our widows aren't being taken care of.

    18:26-18:30

    I don't notice any of the Hebrew widows going without, but you know what I see?

    18:30-18:41

    I see our widows going without." When needs aren't met, people don't usually give the leaders the benefit of the doubt.

    18:41-18:50

    It's typically not, well, you know, our widows - their needs aren't being met, but I know the leaders are preparing sermons and counseling and visiting people.

    18:50-18:54

    I know the leaders are putting in way too many hours a week.

    18:55-18:57

    It's not usually benefit of the doubt.

    18:57-19:16

    Often, automatically, it jumps to the idea - you kind of sense it in this passage - It's almost like the Hellenists had the idea that the apostles were sitting around the table going, hey, here's what we're gonna do in our meeting today.

    19:16-19:20

    We're gonna come up with ideas to really stick it to the Hellenists, okay?

    19:20-19:21

    Who's got ideas?

    19:21-19:22

    Who's got ideas?

    19:23-19:26

    Well, like maybe we can get some anti-Greek t-shirts.

    19:26-19:28

    Nah, nah, nah, that's lame, it's lame.

    19:28-19:29

    What else do you got?

    19:29-19:30

    I got an idea.

    19:31-19:36

    When we're distributing to the widows, Let's not give any to their widows.

    19:36-19:38

    Like, oh, that's a fantastic idea.

    19:38-19:38

    Let's do that.

    19:39-19:42

    People have the mindset like, you guys are against us!

    19:44-19:48

    And at this point in Acts, persecution didn't stop the church.

    19:48-19:49

    Persecution grew the church.

    19:50-19:52

    Sin didn't stop the church.

    19:53-19:56

    God struck Ananias and Sapphira dead on the spot.

    19:58-20:03

    So now we have a new problem that is a potential powder keg in the church, That's dissension.

    20:06-20:08

    We're not criticizing when people have needs.

    20:08-20:12

    We're not minimizing the pain when somebody's going through needs.

    20:12-20:14

    We're just saying this is reality.

    20:14-20:21

    Many, many times when someone's needs aren't met, it is perceived as an intentional slight against them.

    20:22-20:23

    What about me?

    20:23-20:25

    What's the church going to do for me?

    20:25-20:27

    Why am I not the priority of the church?

    20:27-20:29

    Doesn't anybody in the church care about me?

    20:31-20:42

    Listen, if a need in this church is not being met, I can promise you, it is for one reason and one reason alone.

    20:43-20:45

    And that is because the elders are unaware of it.

    20:47-20:57

    If there's someone in need in this church, and that need is not being addressed, it is because the elders are unaware of the need.

    20:58-21:02

    Because once we are aware, Our leaders do as leaders did in this passage.

    21:02-21:03

    They get right on it.

    21:05-21:10

    At Harvest Bible Chapel, we care for people primarily through our small group ministry.

    21:12-21:17

    Through small groups, we have the way that people are known and loved.

    21:17-21:18

    That's where relationships happen.

    21:19-21:20

    And that's where needs are met.

    21:20-21:24

    It's been amazing to see the way people are meeting needs through small group ministry.

    21:25-21:33

    We've seen small groups rallying around to help people with everything to yard work, to car work, hospital visits, meals for new moms.

    21:34-21:38

    We've seen so many ways that the small groups have been taking care of their own.

    21:41-21:50

    That's why so often at Harvest Bible Chapel we say we want everybody involved in a small group - not because it's a fad or how we tally attendance, but it's how we make disciples.

    21:52-21:53

    And it's how we do outreach.

    21:54-21:58

    And it's how we care for people.

    22:01-22:09

    If you're not involved in a small group, I encourage you, email small groups at HarvestPittsburghNorth.org and say I want to be a part of this.

    22:10-22:12

    I want to be proactive in caring for people.

    22:14-22:16

    That's why we all serve on the team.

    22:16-22:21

    So needs can be met and, secondarily, so conflict can be avoided.

    22:24-22:25

    Thirdly, why are we all on the team?

    22:25-22:26

    Why does everybody serve on the team?

    22:27-22:29

    Number three, so everyone can use their spiritual gifts.

    22:33-22:34

    Look at verse 4 and 5 again.

    22:36-22:49

    "But we," this is the Apostle still speaking, "but we will devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the Word." What they said pleased the whole gathering.

    22:52-22:57

    They chose some men to head up the ministry here.

    22:58-23:08

    And they chose Stephen - I love this description of Stephen - "a man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit." What a great testimony that is.

    23:08-23:11

    If you were mentioned in the Bible, how would you be described?

    23:11-23:13

    Like Stephen had a really good one here.

    23:14-23:17

    "A man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit." Okay, we're going to keep playing.

    23:19-23:19

    Philip.

    23:21-23:21

    And?

    23:23-23:25

    Not as easy as you think, is it?

    23:26-23:28

    Nicanor? Can we go with Nicanor?

    23:29-23:29

    And?

    23:31-23:33

    Okay. Excellent.

    23:33-23:36

    A proselyte of Antioch.

    23:37-23:41

    A proselyte is somebody that was a Gentile and became a Jew.

    23:43-23:46

    These they set before the apostles and they prayed and laid their hands on them.

    23:46-23:47

    I'll stop there for a second.

    23:50-23:55

    You see, the main things that the elders and the pastors needed, the apostles needed to focus on, you see it right in verse 4.

    23:57-24:00

    Our two priorities - prayer and the ministry of the Word.

    24:00-24:09

    You have to know when we have an elders meeting, we don't sit around and talk about the color of the bulletin or the font of the bulletin or different gadgets to put on the website.

    24:09-24:10

    When our elders get together, we pray.

    24:13-24:16

    And we deal with matters pertaining in congregational care.

    24:16-24:16

    Absolutely.

    24:16-24:19

    In administration and oversight and shepherding.

    24:19-24:20

    Absolutely.

    24:20-24:23

    What our elders will tell you, our priority at our meetings is prayer.

    24:26-24:29

    And at our meetings, we always front-load the meetings with prayer, don't we Mark?

    24:30-24:36

    Let's talk about church business for three hours and then we'll throw up a "keep us safe as we go home" prayer at the end.

    24:37-24:41

    We devote our meetings to prayer.

    24:45-24:47

    was devoted to the ministry of the Word.

    24:47-24:53

    So these others were appointed so that everyone can use their spiritual gifts.

    24:57-24:58

    I'm going to give you a phrase.

    25:00-25:01

    And I want you to say it.

    25:03-25:05

    I want you to say it with conviction.

    25:06-25:09

    Because I don't want anybody to misunderstand what we're communicating here.

    25:10-25:11

    It's all important.

    25:12-25:12

    Say that.

    25:15-25:16

    It's all important.

    25:17-25:17

    Say it again.

    25:19-25:20

    It's all important.

    25:23-25:33

    This passage and what I'm communicating, we are not saying, look, the elders and the pastors have the important job, and we need somebody else to handle the menial jobs.

    25:33-25:35

    It's all important. Say it.

    25:37-25:38

    All important.

    25:40-25:49

    Again, using our sports analogy, if we had Ben Roethlisberger here and we said, "What's the most important position on the team?" What do you think he would say?

    25:50-26:02

    I don't think he would say, "The quarterback's the most important position," because he knows if the defense isn't doing their job, it doesn't matter how well he's playing.

    26:02-26:10

    He knows that if the offensive line isn't giving him time to do what he needs to do, he's not going to score a point.

    26:12-26:16

    How many football games have you seen won by the kicker in the last second of the game?

    26:17-26:19

    And I can't even remember the name of the kicker on the team.

    26:19-26:20

    What's his name?

    26:23-26:24

    Apparently you don't remember it either.

    26:25-26:25

    I don't know.

    26:25-26:29

    But how many times has the kicker come through and won the game?

    26:30-26:40

    So those might be the people that say, "Look, they're all important." So we're not saying - and the passage isn't saying these guys had the big job and they had to hand out the little jobs.

    26:41-26:42

    That's not the case at all.

    26:42-26:43

    It's all important.

    26:44-26:47

    Because we can't have church if the stuff isn't brought here.

    26:48-26:53

    We can't have families come and worship with us if we don't have a kids' ministry.

    26:55-26:58

    We won't see guests come back we don't have people in place loving them.

    27:00-27:04

    We can't disciple people and build relationships without small groups and small group leaders.

    27:05-27:19

    1 Corinthians 12:7 says, "To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good." The Bible says that every believer in Jesus Christ - every born-again believer - receives the Holy Spirit.

    27:19-27:25

    And part of receiving the Holy Spirit is receiving a spiritual gift for the benefit of the church.

    27:27-27:28

    For the benefit of the church.

    27:30-27:35

    Your spirit gift isn't something that's designed for you to go use at home by yourself.

    27:37-27:41

    Your spiritual gift is to be used - again, 1 Corinthians 12:7 - for the common good.

    27:44-27:45

    For the benefit of the church.

    27:46-27:53

    The Bible says the church is a body, and just like in a human body, we are healthy when every part of working together.

    27:56-27:58

    God's team has no bench warmers.

    28:00-28:08

    You - if you've been born again, if you've received Christ as your Lord and Savior, you've been uniquely gifted to serve Jesus by serving in His church.

    28:10-28:12

    If you're not serving, we want to get you plugged in.

    28:14-28:19

    Not just so the church benefits, but so that you get to benefit what God created you to do.

    28:23-28:23

    That's one reason.

    28:24-28:24

    One more reason.

    28:24-28:25

    Everyone's on the team.

    28:26-28:28

    Everyone can use their spiritual gifts.

    28:29-28:32

    And finally, the church will continue to grow.

    28:34-28:35

    The church will continue to grow.

    28:36-28:37

    Again, verse 6, we'll pick up there again.

    28:38-28:44

    It says, "These seven they set before the apostles and they prayed and laid hands on them.

    28:47-28:49

    And the Word of God continued to increase.

    28:52-28:53

    Interesting.

    28:54-28:58

    Verse 2 - it's not right to give up preaching the Word to serve tables.

    28:58-29:01

    Verse 4 - devote ourselves to the ministry of the Word.

    29:01-29:03

    Verse 7 - what increased? The Word.

    29:05-29:13

    The point is the apostles were now free to do what God called them to do because other ministers were raised up to do what God called them to do.

    29:15-29:22

    The Word of God continued to increase of disciples multiplied greatly in Jerusalem.

    29:23-29:29

    And a great many of the priests became obedient to the faith.

    29:32-29:34

    Verse 1 says the church was growing.

    29:34-29:35

    Then the needs showed up.

    29:35-29:38

    The needs met. The church continues to grow.

    29:40-29:41

    So it goes with our church.

    29:42-29:44

    We grow. New needs come up.

    29:45-29:46

    We meet the need.

    29:46-29:47

    and it continues to grow.

    29:48-29:54

    But notice the evangelism was effective because they were meeting the needs; because they were organized.

    29:55-30:05

    They were in a position where they weren't all huddled up with this internal conflict and trying to figure out how the pastors can preach the Word and meet the needs.

    30:05-30:10

    Because ministry was happening naturally, evangelism was happening naturally.

    30:12-30:15

    It says a great many of the priests became obedient to the faith.

    30:16-30:33

    people who worked at the temple, people who otherwise were so steeped in the old covenant and the religion of Judaism, were now coming to saving faith in Jesus Christ as the church continued to grow.

    30:35-30:45

    What better way to close our passage today by immediately applying what the Word says.

    30:46-30:48

    I'm going to ask our elders if they would come forward.

    30:49-30:52

    We're operating with a bit of a skeleton crew today.

    30:52-30:53

    One of our elders is out of town.

    30:54-31:00

    And with our ministry team, we just have a lot of people in our church out with sickness, and we have some people out of town on vacation.

    31:01-31:02

    But I want to ask our elders to come forward.

    31:04-31:09

    And I want to ask our ministry team to come forward.

    31:11-31:20

    What better way - come on up here - to close our time than by doing exactly what's happening in this passage.

    31:20-31:29

    You see, there are so many people in this church that work so hard to make sure that needs are met; to make sure that ministry happens.

    31:33-31:42

    We have Mike Gates who heads up our facilities ministry to make sure that all of the stuff gets here and gets set up.

    31:43-31:46

    We have Mandy Maul who heads up our Harvest Kids children's ministry.

    31:49-31:51

    We have Darren Miller who heads up our worship ministry.

    31:54-32:01

    Dan Thompson heads up our student ministry, Arrow, that meets Sunday nights at the church building next door.

    32:04-32:05

    Tricia Thompson heads up our prayer ministry.

    32:08-32:11

    Ben Murphy heads up organization communication.

    32:11-32:15

    He's done so much to help us with website and some of our online things.

    32:16-32:18

    He couldn't be with us here today.

    32:19-32:22

    Sherry Kishuba heads up administration.

    32:24-32:27

    We'd also like to introduce our newest members.

    32:29-32:34

    That is small groups, Ryan and Sarah Stroop has recently stepped up to coordinate our small group ministry.

    32:36-32:42

    And Corinne Miller has stepped up to coordinate our hospitality ministry.

    32:42-32:47

    Can we get our ministry leaders front and center here?

    32:48-32:50

    Just as these early apostles did.

    32:50-32:51

    Everybody come up here. Don't be shy.

    32:54-32:58

    We want to close our time here today by praying for these people.

    33:00-33:01

    There are so many others.

    33:01-33:02

    I think of our small group leaders.

    33:03-33:07

    And we're going to let Ryan and Sarah's group represent all of our small group leaders as well.

    33:07-33:20

    We have so many people in this church that have stepped up and really taking ownership of making sure that ministry is happening, making sure that needs are being met and people are being cared for.

    33:21-33:22

    We're going to ask our elders here.

    33:22-33:23

    We'll start with Jay.

    33:25-33:27

    We want to ask you to join with this congregation.

    33:28-33:31

    and pray for these people, they do the work of the ministry.

    33:34-33:42

    Father, we thank You so much for raising these up - people that certainly are of good repute.

    33:44-33:50

    These are people of integrity, and these are people who walk with You, and these are people who have much wisdom.

    33:51-33:55

    We thank You so much for the leaders that You have blessed us with over the years.

    33:57-34:06

    and some have served for a season, and some have been with us from the very beginning, and continue to serve strong, and some are just now stepping into this position.

    34:06-34:10

    But Father, I thank You for the people that You have raised up.

    34:10-34:13

    We lift these up to You and those who couldn't be with us today.

    34:14-34:17

    Because Father, we love people.

    34:18-34:19

    We want to care for people.

    34:19-34:24

    We want to make sure that needs are met - spiritual needs and physical needs.

    34:24-34:27

    We want to make sure that people know who are loved and cared for.

    34:27-34:32

    I thank You for these folks that You have assembled to make sure that that has happened.

    34:33-34:41

    Father, again, we just lift these up to You and ask that You would continue to grow this church.

    34:43-34:47

    And You would use these people to glorify Your name.

    34:48-34:50

    We pray in Jesus' name, Amen.

Small Group Questions (Whole Group):
Read Acts 6:1-6

  1. What reasons were given the leaders couldn’t serve the widows (Acts 6:2 & Acts 6:4)? What are the apostles / elders to focus on?

  2. Why were there spiritual requirements for those selected to serve the widows (Acts 6:3)? What does this say about serving in the church?

  3. What areas of neglect do you observe at HBC? How can we meet that need? (And someone please notify the elders with your answer!)

Breakout Questions:
In what area do YOU serve at HBC? If “nowhere yet”, in what area would you like to get involved? What steps do you need to take to step up? (And someone please notify the elders with your answer!)

Unstoppable Power

When Christ is proclained...

  1. Some people will Hate... (Acts 5:33)

    2. Review Matthew 10:24 | John 13:16 | John 15:20

    Why do people hate the gospel?

    • It shows them that they are wrong.
    • It tells them that they can't save themselves.

  2. Some people will Avoid... (Acts 5:34-39)


  3. But God's people will Rejoice and Endure! (Acts 5:40-42)

    4. Three signs of authentic faith

    1. Persecution
    2. Praise
    3. Preseverance

Sermon Notes (PDF): BLANK
Hint: Highlight blanks above for answers!

  • 00:00-00:01

    Open up your Bibles with me, please.

    00:02-00:11

    If you're visiting with us, at Harvest Bible Chapel, we believe in proclaiming the authority of God's Word without apology.

    00:12-00:15

    And right now we are walking through the book of Acts.

    00:16-00:31

    And our theme this year is from Acts 1:8, when Jesus promised the disciples, "You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you." Why would the Holy Spirit come upon God's people?

    00:31-00:47

    Well, Jesus said, "You will be My witnesses in Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria and even to the ends of the earth." So the purpose of God's Holy Spirit coming upon us is so that we might be witnesses for Jesus Christ in this lost and dying world.

    00:49-00:51

    So turn to Acts 5.

    00:51-00:56

    And while you're turning there, I think it was J. Adams said one time that preaching is like mass counseling.

    00:57-01:05

    I believe that that's true, but if we could just sort of change gears, I know this might be a little awkward on Mother's Day, I'd like you to do something for me.

    01:06-01:10

    I'd like you to counsel me today, because this is a safe place, right?

    01:10-01:11

    I can be honest.

    01:12-01:12

    Can I be honest here?

    01:13-01:15

    One of you said yes, I'm just going to go with that.

    01:16-01:18

    I'm just going to be completely honest.

    01:18-01:24

    And again, please withhold your judgment, but I hate my mailman.

    01:25-01:28

    I absolutely hate my mailman.

    01:28-01:29

    I hate him.

    01:29-01:31

    I hate his little white truck.

    01:31-01:32

    I hate his little shorts.

    01:33-01:35

    I hate his little dress socks that he wears with his shorts.

    01:35-01:45

    I hate my mailman because - now hang on - because when my mailman comes, he brings me all kinds of stuff.

    01:45-01:48

    He brings me - like this was just some mail that he just brought.

    01:49-01:51

    He brings bills to my house.

    01:52-02:01

    And he sticks them in the box I'm like, I didn't want to pay this last month, and I don't want to pay it this month either, jerk.

    02:01-02:06

    But he just keeps bringing them, and he just keeps filling my box with all this stuff.

    02:07-02:10

    And well, okay, this is my Israel magazine.

    02:10-02:12

    I do like when he brings this, so I'm going to keep that.

    02:13-02:19

    But not only does he bring the stupid bills, but the jerk also brings all these stupid flyers.

    02:19-02:20

    Coals. I'm not going to shop at Coals.

    02:21-02:23

    Why do I want that? You throw it away.

    02:23-02:24

    I don't want this garbage at my house.

    02:25-02:26

    And this is Macy's.

    02:26-02:28

    Is there even a Macy's around here?

    02:29-02:33

    Is there? Is there a Macy's around here?

    02:33-02:34

    Oh, there is.

    02:34-02:35

    Well, I'm not shopping there.

    02:36-02:40

    And the Walgreens, I didn't even know that was still in business.

    02:40-02:42

    CVS Pharmacy, I was spirit of competition.

    02:43-02:45

    And then we get this thing with Target.

    02:46-02:48

    What's been happening with Target lately?

    02:49-02:49

    Anything?

    02:52-02:54

    Not sure which bathroom this lady would use.

    02:56-02:59

    This has nothing to do with the actual message today, but can I make a comment on that?

    03:01-03:03

    You have to come to your own conviction about that.

    03:05-03:08

    I would never let my children go into the bathroom by themselves.

    03:08-03:09

    I just wouldn't.

    03:11-03:22

    And if you're concerned, even going into the bathroom with your children, you know they have those family bathrooms that are single occupancy, that you can deadbolt, use those.

    03:24-03:28

    Or if you decide, hey, this is a deal breaker for me, I'm not going to Target at all, that's your choice.

    03:31-03:35

    But something I think we can't do is be surprised.

    03:36-03:37

    Target isn't the church.

    03:39-03:45

    And somehow, in the church, we hear these things happening, we get all flustered like, how could they do that?

    03:47-03:49

    The world is going to act like the world.

    03:50-03:52

    And listen, it's going to get worse.

    03:52-04:22

    not going to get better and do we really think that signing petitions and protesting and do we really think that targets going to be like oh well we offended the Christians like where is that written it's going to get worse so come to your own convictions about that protect your children above all things seriously let's not be so shocked that a worldly organization is embracing this this wave of decadence that's washing over our nation.

    04:22-04:25

    Why is that surprising to anyone?

    04:25-04:26

    Target isn't the church.

    04:28-04:30

    They're in the business to sell stuff.

    04:31-04:33

    So, what was I saying?

    04:34-04:35

    Oh yeah, my mailman.

    04:36-04:36

    The jerk.

    04:38-04:39

    Captain Jerk.

    04:41-05:15

    And I think I've made it abundantly clear to him that I only want letters and cards from Grandma $5 in it, but he keeps filling my mailbox with this stuff and I Don't understand Why he has to be such a pain in my neck Obviously such talk is foolishness You know that my mailman doesn't sit at the end of my driveway and pull up and go How am I going to make Jeff Miller mad this time and he's rooting through his truck?

    05:15-05:19

    "Let me see if I can find some more bills." You realize, he doesn't do that.

    05:21-05:25

    My mailman doesn't sit and decide what to put in the box.

    05:25-05:26

    He doesn't determine what I get.

    05:27-05:32

    He only delivers the mail.

    05:33-05:35

    He doesn't decide the mail.

    05:36-05:38

    Look at v. 33.

    05:40-05:48

    It says, "When they - religious leaders - They were enraged and wanted to kill them.

    05:50-05:52

    They wanted to kill the disciples.

    05:52-05:53

    They wanted to kill the apostles.

    05:54-05:54

    Why?

    05:55-05:57

    Well, your Bible says when they heard this, when they heard what?

    05:57-06:01

    Well, remember a couple of weeks ago when we were going through Acts, when they heard Peter's sermon.

    06:02-06:03

    Remember Peter's sermon?

    06:03-06:04

    Back up.

    06:04-06:05

    Let's get a quick review of Peter's sermon.

    06:06-06:16

    Verse 29, Peter says to these religious leaders after they were arrested, after the angel got them out of jail, after they went right back to the temple to preach, where they were brought before the council again, very gently this time.

    06:16-06:22

    It says, "Peter stood before them and he said, 'We must obey God rather than men.

    06:22-06:26

    The God of our fathers raised Jesus, whom you killed by hanging him on a tree.

    06:28-06:35

    God exalted him in his right hand as leader and savior to give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins.

    06:35-06:37

    And we are witnesses to these things.

    06:37-06:48

    And so is the Holy Spirit, whom God has given to those who obey Him." Understand in this passage, Peter was the mailman.

    06:50-06:55

    Peter did not make up the message.

    06:56-07:02

    You understand that Peter was only delivering the message that he was given to deliver.

    07:06-07:07

    Doesn't it seem crazy to you?

    07:09-07:19

    Just as crazy as it was that I would be so mad at my mailman, doesn't it seem crazy that there are people that want to kill Christians just because of the message?

    07:21-07:26

    And just as the apostles didn't make up the message, they just delivered the mail, just as Peter was the mailman.

    07:27-07:29

    Church, you need to see yourself that way.

    07:31-07:33

    Our job is not to make up the message.

    07:33-07:37

    That's why at Harvest Bible Chapel, to proclaim the authority of God's Word without apology.

    07:38-07:52

    And if you've come here once or twice or a hundred times, you know that when we get up here, whether it's me - Mark Ward spoke last week, Jane Eyre has spoken, we've had others - anytime somebody gets up here, it is to proclaim what the Word of God says.

    07:55-08:00

    But simply for that, people are going to want to kill God's people.

    08:01-08:10

    And though it seems so irrational, We need to be prepared for fallout when we stand for Christ.

    08:10-08:12

    That's what we're going to see in this passage.

    08:12-08:13

    Again, Peter preaches.

    08:14-08:18

    In these few verses we're going to look at this morning, this is the fallout.

    08:18-08:22

    When Christ is proclaimed, when God's power is at work, this is the fallout.

    08:22-08:29

    Number one, we just read the verse, "Some people will hate." "Some people will hate," looking again at verse 33.

    08:29-08:38

    It says, "When they heard this, Peter's servant, they were enraged." The word "enraged" literally in the Greek means they were cut in two.

    08:38-08:39

    That's what that means.

    08:39-08:40

    They were cut in two.

    08:41-08:45

    They were so furious, the Bible says that they wanted to kill them.

    08:45-08:49

    Show of hands, how many people here have ever been so mad at someone that they wanted to kill them?

    08:49-08:50

    Don't raise your hand on that.

    08:52-08:56

    I honestly can't remember ever being that angry with somebody.

    08:57-09:00

    That I've literally physically wanted to murder them.

    09:01-09:02

    I've been angry at people.

    09:03-09:05

    I can't remember ever being this angry.

    09:06-09:10

    This is a whole other level of angry.

    09:13-09:15

    Some people are going to hate.

    09:15-09:25

    And I want to remind you, this seems so hard, but I want to remind you of something that Jesus said.

    09:25-09:28

    When Jesus says something, we should listen, right?

    09:28-09:30

    If Jesus says something one time, Do you think we should listen?

    09:31-09:35

    If Jesus says something twice, do you think maybe we should listen a little closer?

    09:36-09:38

    What if Jesus says something three times?

    09:38-09:40

    I was studying that this week.

    09:40-09:43

    You know, Jesus had this little saying that He used.

    09:43-09:45

    I found it three times.

    09:46-09:48

    It's in Matthew 10:24.

    09:49-09:51

    It's in John 13:16.

    09:52-09:55

    And it's in John 15:20.

    09:55-09:58

    The recurring theme, Jesus used this phrase.

    09:58-10:06

    He said, "A servant is not greater than his master." I want to read John 15:20.

    10:06-10:08

    Jesus said, "Remember the word that I said to you?

    10:08-10:17

    'A servant is not greater than his master?' If they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you.

    10:18-10:35

    If they kept My word, they will also keep yours." So just like we shouldn't be so shocked target in this bathroom issue, we shouldn't be shocked when people hate us simply because we love Jesus Christ.

    10:36-10:37

    Why shouldn't we be shocked?

    10:37-11:01

    Because Jesus said over and over and over, "A servant is not greater than his Master." Why do you think if Jesus would stand and proclaim the words of eternal life and pour out grace and love people, and they took Him and beat Him within an inch of His life and then publicly crucified Him, if they would do that to Him, what makes you think we're exempt from the world hating us?

    11:02-11:06

    What makes you think that we deserve better treatment than Jesus?

    11:06-11:12

    Jesus said it doesn't work that way because we're the servants, He's the Master, and a servant is not greater than his Master.

    11:12-11:16

    If they did it to Him, they're going to do it to us.

    11:18-11:19

    Look, this is reality.

    11:24-11:28

    It's not my job to give you a pep talk and have you leaving here feeling warm and fuzzy.

    11:29-11:34

    When we proclaim the authority of God's Word, you have to see that this is reality.

    11:36-11:39

    And we can't just pretend this stuff isn't happening.

    11:40-11:41

    Because it is.

    11:43-11:51

    There are parts of the world right now where people are being executed publicly on the streets because they love Jesus Christ.

    11:53-12:06

    We're seeing this more and more and more coming to this country that lauds tolerance for everyone except us.

    12:07-12:13

    I have to remind you that this persecution, this hatred, is because of Jesus' name.

    12:13-12:15

    It's called being persecuted for righteousness' sake.

    12:17-12:24

    It's not persecution if they hate you for jerkiness.

    12:25-12:30

    Meaning, you're obnoxious, you're self-righteous, you're constantly looking down on everyone.

    12:30-12:39

    And because that's your attitude and that's the way you carry yourself, and people are turned off by your personality and they dislike you, that's not persecution.

    12:39-12:40

    That's just you being a jerk.

    12:41-12:45

    It's not persecution if they hate you for hypocrisy.

    12:48-13:07

    You know, you get on social media, you get on Facebook, and you post dirty jokes and sexual pictures, and then you post Scripture verses, and people see your Scripture verses and they're like, "hypocrite." "Oh, church boy, I saw what you posted earlier." And people hate you for that?

    13:08-13:10

    They don't hate you for righteousness' sake, they hate you because you're being a hypocrite.

    13:12-13:14

    It's not persecution if they hate you for preachiness.

    13:15-13:18

    You know, you're constantly trying to correct people.

    13:18-13:20

    You're constantly rebuking people.

    13:20-13:24

    You're unable to have a regular conversation with people.

    13:24-13:29

    You're trying to hold the world to a biblical standard which never works.

    13:31-13:34

    It's not persecution if they hate you for those reasons.

    13:37-13:39

    Persecution for Jesus' name.

    13:40-13:41

    for righteousness' sake.

    13:43-13:44

    People hated the apostles.

    13:44-13:45

    People are going to hate you.

    13:45-13:48

    People are going to hate everyone who stands with Jesus.

    13:48-13:48

    Why?

    13:50-13:50

    Why is that?

    13:51-13:59

    You know, when I first got saved and was called into ministry, I thought this is going to be easy because I had this elementary understanding of the Gospel.

    13:59-14:01

    And I'm like, this is it.

    14:01-14:03

    You just tell people Jesus loves them and He died for them.

    14:03-14:04

    Who doesn't want to hear that message?

    14:05-14:07

    That's awesome, right?

    14:07-14:08

    And everybody's going to want to hear that.

    14:09-14:21

    "I found that that's not true." Why do people hate the Gospel message so much?

    14:22-14:22

    Here it is.

    14:24-14:32

    They hate the Gospel message so much because the Gospel gets to the heart and hits the world with realities that the world doesn't want to face.

    14:33-14:36

    It hits people with realities that we don't want to face about ourselves.

    14:37-14:39

    This is why people hate the Gospel.

    14:39-14:39

    It's because it's not true.

    14:40-14:41

    I've got this down.

    14:41-14:42

    Why do people hate the gospel?

    14:43-14:44

    There's lots of reasons.

    14:44-14:45

    Here's the two big ones.

    14:45-14:48

    Number one, the gospel shows me I'm in the wrong.

    14:49-15:04

    People hate the gospel because the gospel message is, "Look, you're wrong." Your self-centered attitude, your selfish lifestyle, your total disregard for the things of God, your lack of compassion for people.

    15:06-15:11

    The Gospel calls you, first of all, to say the three hardest words in the English language.

    15:12-15:23

    And the three hardest words are not, "I love you." The three hardest words in the English language to say is, "I was wrong. I was wrong.

    15:24-15:29

    I was completely wrong." The Gospel calls you to start there.

    15:30-15:31

    That's the beginning of repentance.

    15:34-15:36

    The Gospel shows me I'm in the wrong.

    15:36-15:37

    That's offensive.

    15:37-15:40

    And secondly, the Gospel tells me I can't save myself.

    15:41-15:42

    That's a hit on my pride.

    15:44-15:46

    I'm not good enough to save myself.

    15:46-15:48

    I can't become good enough to save myself.

    15:48-15:49

    I can't save myself.

    15:50-15:52

    I don't just need help.

    15:52-15:54

    I need somebody to do it all for me.

    15:55-15:56

    And there's no plan B.

    15:56-16:02

    It has to be Jesus, because Jesus is the only one who died to pay the penalty for my sin.

    16:02-16:07

    Jesus is the only one that can restore life to this dead person.

    16:10-16:16

    And that's a hit on my pride to say I can't do anything about that except trust what somebody else has done for me.

    16:18-16:21

    This is a message about forgiveness we saw back in verse 31.

    16:21-16:24

    This is a message about eternal life we saw back in verse 20.

    16:25-16:28

    And you have to be ready to accept these things from God.

    16:28-16:46

    If you're not ready to come to the end of yourself and say I need forgiven; Some people, obviously in the context of this passage we're looking at today, they see the gospel as an attack on them and some people are going to hate.

    16:47-16:56

    They're going to say, "Let's just kill them." Or, or, or, maybe we can just ignore them instead.

    16:57-16:59

    That's the second point. Drop this down. Some people will avoid.

    17:00-17:01

    Some people will hate.

    17:02-17:02

    Some people will hate.

    17:02-17:04

    Some people will avoid.

    17:05-17:06

    Let's look through the text here.

    17:06-17:16

    It says, verse 34, you have this scene, here's the apostles standing before the council and Peter just gives this message and they're like beside themselves.

    17:16-17:19

    They're foaming at the mouth and they wanted to kill them.

    17:19-17:33

    Verse 34 says, "But a Pharisee in the council named Gamaliel, a teacher of the law, held in honor by all the people, stood up and gave orders to put the men outside for a little while.

    17:34-17:36

    He's like, "Look, we've got to talk offline.

    17:36-17:37

    Take the apostles outside.

    17:38-17:43

    We've got to have a little private conversation here about this." Now, who was this Gamaliel?

    17:45-17:50

    History tells us he was, and the Bible tells us both, he was one of the most prominent rabbis of his day.

    17:52-17:55

    And he had an extremely famous student, and that was the apostle Paul.

    17:56-18:46

    chapter 22 verse 3 says that this guy was the Apostle Paul's mentor this was the guy that taught the Apostle Paul the law so he was highly esteemed put these guys outside we're gonna have a chat look at verse 35 he said to them men of Israel. Take care what you're about to do with these men. Hey, well let's not be so hasty here guys. Hey, simmer down. Deep breath. Verse 36, "For before these days Judas rose up claiming to be someone or somebody excuse me and a number of men and about 400 joined him.

    18:48-18:52

    He was killed and all who followed him were dispersed and came to nothing.

    18:55-19:04

    After him, Judas the Galilean rose up in the days of the census and drew away some of the people after him.

    19:04-19:14

    He too perished, and all who followed him were scattered." So Gamaliel's like, Let's time out here guys.

    19:14-19:15

    Let's think about this.

    19:15-19:16

    You remember this guy Theodos?

    19:18-19:20

    400 men killed.

    19:20-19:23

    This guy was killed and his followers were dispersed.

    19:23-19:25

    Probably because his name was hard to pronounce.

    19:25-19:27

    And then there was Judas.

    19:29-19:31

    Remember him? He's kind of a famous guy in history.

    19:31-19:33

    Actually, you know the Zealots?

    19:33-19:35

    Jesus had a disciple named Simon the Zealot?

    19:36-19:40

    Well, this Judas was the guy that founded this Zealot movement.

    19:40-19:42

    like revolutionaries.

    19:43-19:45

    And he was the guy that started that.

    19:46-19:58

    So Gamaliel was like, "Remember these guys? You remember what happened?" Verse 38, "So in the present case, I tell you..." He's like, "Look, same thing, guys.

    20:00-20:36

    You had this leader, had this following, leaders killed, the followers scattered." "In the present case, I tell you..." his advice, "Keep away from these men. Let them alone. For if this plan, or this undertaking, is of man, it will fail." Gamaliel's like, "Look guys, you get these movements that pop up from time to time. You get this charismatic leader, and then when the leader dies, the followers Let's just first look, guys, here's my advice to you.

    20:36-20:39

    Notice he says the same thing two different ways.

    20:39-20:41

    He goes, "Just keep away from them.

    20:42-20:42

    Let them alone.

    20:43-20:45

    We already took out their leader, Jesus.

    20:47-20:50

    So let's see what happens to them.

    20:50-21:02

    Because if this is just like a man-made thing, like these other two guys, it's going to fail." He says, "Really, it's just like a fad.

    21:04-21:04

    It's a fad.

    21:05-21:10

    People get excited about it for a while, and then fad dies out.

    21:10-21:12

    You know, it's a fad, like pet rocks.

    21:12-21:13

    How many people had a pet rock?

    21:14-21:15

    Anybody have a pet rock?

    21:17-21:17

    Just my wife?

    21:18-21:18

    Anybody else?

    21:19-21:19

    Really?

    21:21-21:22

    Nobody else had a pet rock?

    21:23-21:26

    All right, who here is embarrassed to admit that they had a pet rock?

    21:28-21:30

    Mm, my baloney detector's going off.

    21:31-21:32

    OK, what about jelly bracelets?

    21:32-21:33

    Who had jelly bracelets?

    21:35-21:36

    Oh, come on.

    21:36-21:37

    OK, thank you.

    21:37-21:37

    Thank you.

    21:37-21:38

    Some of you had jelly bracelets.

    21:39-21:39

    All right.

    21:41-21:41

    Kids of the '80s?

    21:43-21:44

    Rat tails.

    21:45-21:45

    Who had a rat tail?

    21:47-21:49

    How bad did we want a rat tail in the '80s?

    21:51-21:53

    Darren and I wanted rat tails so bad.

    21:54-21:55

    And we were not allowed to have rat tails.

    21:55-21:56

    Do you know what rat tails are?

    21:57-22:00

    That's when you just let this one little piece of hair in the back grow.

    22:00-22:03

    You cut everything else, but that gross.

    22:04-22:07

    We had kids we went to school with that were rocking the rat tails.

    22:08-22:15

    We're like, man, their mom loves them more than our mom loves us because we couldn't have a rat tail.

    22:15-22:16

    It was just a fad.

    22:17-22:21

    You know, one of my favorite fads was, you remember pegging your pants?

    22:21-22:22

    How many people pegged their pants?

    22:24-22:24

    A few people.

    22:27-22:28

    You expect some people to be honest in church.

    22:30-22:31

    And look at this.

    22:32-22:33

    I still got it.

    22:34-22:35

    See, I still got it.

    22:37-22:39

    That's a perfect peg right there.

    22:41-22:50

    For you younger people-- I know some of you guys are looking at me like I have three heads-- in the '80s, you just didn't go to school unless you pegged your pants.

    22:50-22:51

    Because this was cool.

    22:52-22:55

    This meant you're just nerd extraordinaire.

    22:56-23:00

    This meant you're in the in crowd, pegging your pants.

    23:02-23:03

    Get to the other one later.

    23:03-23:05

    But you see, Gamaliel's point was just simply that.

    23:05-23:07

    He goes, this is a fad, guys.

    23:08-23:14

    Charismatic leader, the charismatic leader dies, and then eventually everybody else just kind of loses interest.

    23:16-23:17

    He's like, so here's what I think, guys.

    23:18-23:18

    Just let them alone.

    23:19-23:20

    Just ignore them.

    23:20-23:22

    You guys are so bent.

    23:22-23:23

    Just ignore them.

    23:25-23:28

    He says if it's just a man-made thing, it's going to fail.

    23:28-23:29

    Look at verse 39.

    23:29-23:30

    This is an interesting statement.

    23:31-23:36

    He says, "But if it is of God, you will not be able to overthrow them.

    23:37-23:43

    You might even be found opposing God." They took his advice.

    23:45-23:49

    He says, "If this is a God thing, you're not going to stop it.

    23:50-23:58

    In fact, if this is something God's doing and you're working against it, That means by default, you're going to be fighting God.

    23:58-24:03

    So, okay, so it's either, Gamaliel's like, it's either a man thing or it's a God thing.

    24:04-24:07

    Now, which do you think the council thought it was?

    24:08-24:11

    You think the council thought that this was a man thing or a God thing?

    24:13-24:13

    A man thing?

    24:13-24:14

    That's what I think.

    24:14-24:20

    I think they were kind of like, they obviously weren't really sold on Jesus even though there was a lot of stuff about Jesus they couldn't explain.

    24:22-24:23

    What do you think Gamaliel thought it was?

    24:25-24:29

    Do you think that he thought it was a man thing or that he thought it was a God thing?

    24:30-24:30

    What do you think?

    24:32-24:34

    He's an interesting character because of anyone.

    24:34-24:37

    He would have had all the tools to come to believe.

    24:38-24:42

    He not only had the Scriptures, but he had a deep knowledge of the Scriptures.

    24:42-24:43

    Do you think Gamaliel knew about Psalm 22?

    24:45-24:46

    The suffering of the Messiah?

    24:46-24:48

    Do you think Gamaliel knew about Isaiah 53?

    24:48-24:50

    The suffering of the Messiah?

    24:50-24:55

    He knew about these Old Testament passages that say the Messiah is going to come and the Messiah is going to suffer.

    24:55-24:57

    He would have had these passages memorized.

    24:59-25:03

    He had all the tools except simple faith.

    25:05-25:07

    Why was he on the fence when everyone else wanted to kill Jesus?

    25:08-25:10

    These are the things I think about as I'm studying this.

    25:11-25:13

    Did Gamaliel hear Jesus speak?

    25:14-25:20

    Some scholars and commentators say that he would have been one of the people had input in crucifying Jesus.

    25:21-25:23

    He had been behind that whole movement.

    25:25-25:27

    Was he there when Jesus was crucified?

    25:28-25:36

    Did he see the darkness and earthquakes and dead people coming out of their tombs and the curtain being torn in the temple?

    25:36-25:40

    I mean, even if he wasn't right there, surely he heard about that stuff.

    25:41-25:43

    Why was he on the fence?

    25:44-25:47

    This advice, is this just wisdom from experience?

    25:47-25:54

    I think maybe these other guys might have been like the young hotheads, and he was just like, "Look guys, I get a few miles on the car.

    25:55-25:57

    I've seen things in my day like these other guys.

    25:57-26:01

    I mentioned this Thutis and Judas.

    26:02-26:03

    I've seen this kind of thing before.

    26:03-26:14

    Is it just experience speaking?" One thing's for certain, and that is this, Gamaliel was uncertain.

    26:16-26:17

    You see it in his own words.

    26:18-26:23

    "If..." "If..." "Might..." He keeps using all these "maybe" words.

    26:23-26:25

    If this is this, and if this is this, and you might be opposing God.

    26:26-26:28

    It's just all uncertainty.

    26:28-26:29

    And church, that's not faith.

    26:31-26:41

    Faith is according to Hebrews 11, the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.

    26:43-26:45

    Faith is absolute certainty in the Word of God.

    26:47-26:49

    So what this guy had was not faith.

    26:51-27:02

    Regardless of his reasoning for the advice, the point from the passage is pretty clear that when you stand for Jesus, some people are going to hate you, and some people are just going to avoid you.

    27:04-27:08

    Church, this is reality check because we think that persecution means that something's wrong.

    27:09-27:10

    That's not true.

    27:11-27:12

    Persecution means that something's right.

    27:14-27:17

    Persecution means that you're standing on the conviction of God's Word.

    27:18-27:28

    And when you do that, a servant is not above his mask.

    27:29-27:30

    Persecution is going to come.

    27:31-27:33

    I just read yesterday - did you guys see this?

    27:33-27:52

    The mayor of New York City is telling citizens to not eat at Chick-fil-A because they believe in the Bible.

    27:54-27:57

    Do you think we're going to see more of that kind of stuff, or less of that kind of stuff as time goes on?

    27:58-27:59

    We're going to see more.

    28:01-28:02

    It's going to happen.

    28:03-28:04

    Some people are going to hate you.

    28:05-28:07

    Some people are just going to avoid you.

    28:07-28:10

    Number three, write this down as we come down the homestretch.

    28:10-28:15

    The God's people, the people of God, but God's people will rejoice and endure.

    28:16-28:17

    Look at verse 40.

    28:19-28:24

    They took his advice, like you're right, you know what Gamaliel, you're right, we'll just let them alone.

    28:24-28:25

    Good advice, we'll let them alone.

    28:26-28:26

    Look at the next verse.

    28:27-28:35

    It says that when they called in the apostles, remember they sent them outside, so they called them back in, and it says when they called in the apostles, they beat them.

    28:36-28:37

    You know what that beating was?

    28:38-28:40

    That was 39 lashes.

    28:40-28:44

    Deuteronomy 25.3 says that 40 was the limit.

    28:44-28:53

    So their custom was to only do 39 because they were afraid if they got in the heat of the moment there beating them, they might lose count.

    28:53-28:55

    So they tried to aim for 39.

    28:56-28:59

    That way if we accidentally gave one too many, we didn't violate the law.

    29:00-29:03

    They take Emilio's advice and they beat them half to death.

    29:05-29:10

    Emilio didn't seem to protest that that I can see from God's Word.

    29:11-29:12

    They beat them and charged them.

    29:14-29:15

    I think this is kind of funny.

    29:16-29:18

    And charged them not to speak in the name of Jesus.

    29:18-29:21

    If you've been going through the series with us, how well has that worked to this point?

    29:22-29:23

    How well has that worked?

    29:24-29:24

    Stop preaching!

    29:26-29:27

    Jesus is the Messiah!

    29:29-29:30

    Stop preaching!

    29:31-29:32

    Jesus is the Messiah!

    29:33-29:35

    And they're like, okay, we're just going to take another run at this.

    29:35-29:37

    Guys, we're serious.

    29:38-29:38

    Stop preaching!

    29:41-29:43

    And spoiler alert, I don't think it's going to work this time either.

    29:45-29:50

    And then it says they charged him not to speak in the name of Jesus and let them go.

    29:53-29:53

    Let them go.

    29:54-29:55

    So what's next?

    29:56-30:03

    So the disciples went back to their homes, and they gave each other hugs and cried on each other's shoulders and said, "It's getting too hard.

    30:04-30:05

    Let's close up shop.

    30:06-30:07

    It's not worth it.

    30:08-30:10

    Let's file a lawsuit against the council.

    30:11-30:12

    Let's demand our rights.

    30:13-30:14

    Let's start a campaign.

    30:14-30:15

    Let's start a petition.

    30:15-30:16

    Let's start a revolution!

    30:19-30:20

    None of the above, actually.

    30:22-30:25

    The opposite of what we would expect to happen is what happens.

    30:26-30:27

    Look at v. 41.

    30:27-30:37

    It says, "Then they left the presence of the council rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer dishonor for the name." Did the Bible say that?

    30:39-30:40

    Isn't that astounding?

    30:43-30:45

    These guys just got beat within an inch of their lives.

    30:45-30:48

    They just got flogged 39 times.

    30:48-30:53

    And they break into a worship service on the way home.

    30:55-30:56

    They weren't embittered.

    30:57-30:57

    They were rejoicing.

    30:58-30:59

    They weren't disillusioned.

    31:00-31:01

    They were rejoicing.

    31:01-31:02

    They weren't angry.

    31:02-31:04

    They were rejoicing.

    31:06-31:17

    And they said, "Isn't it awesome that God would count us worthy to suffer dishonor for the name?" They're like, "We're just like Jesus!

    31:18-31:20

    We stood for God and we took a beating!

    31:20-31:24

    High five!" And like, "What?!" Rejoicing.

    31:26-31:29

    That they were counted worthy to suffer dishonor for the name.

    31:30-31:30

    Incredible.

    31:32-31:32

    Incredible.

    31:35-31:37

    Notice, nothing changed the mission.

    31:37-31:38

    Look at the last verse for today.

    31:39-31:40

    Nothing changed the mission.

    31:40-31:50

    And every day, in the temple and from house to house, they did not cease teaching and preaching Jesus as the Christ.

    31:52-31:54

    This just fired them up even more.

    31:55-31:56

    They went to the temple.

    31:56-31:58

    That's our equivalent of going to church.

    31:58-32:01

    They assembled as a congregation for worship and teaching.

    32:02-32:05

    They did it corporately in the temple.

    32:05-32:07

    And it's just from house to house.

    32:07-32:08

    That's why we do small groups.

    32:09-32:13

    So they had the corporate thing, and then they had the small group thing happening house to house.

    32:15-32:22

    And even though Gamaliel seemed sort of indifferent and uncertain about everything, Gamaliel was right about one thing.

    32:23-32:24

    And that's this.

    32:26-32:27

    God's people can't be stopped.

    32:28-32:32

    I want you to jot this down You see this in the passage so clearly.

    32:33-32:38

    You might not need this today, but you're going to need it five minutes from now, a week from now, a year from now.

    32:39-32:43

    What we see in this passage very clearly are three marks of authenticity.

    32:44-32:46

    For the times that you might struggle, is my faith real?

    32:47-32:50

    Here are three signs of authentic faith from this passage.

    32:51-32:52

    And I even alliterated them for you.

    32:54-32:56

    Persecution, praise, and perseverance.

    32:57-32:58

    Three marks of authenticity.

    32:59-33:01

    Persecution, praise, and perseverance.

    33:03-33:06

    These are signs that you're legit.

    33:08-33:09

    You're faithfully serving Christ.

    33:09-33:10

    First of all, persecution.

    33:10-33:11

    Are you above your Master?

    33:13-33:20

    If standing for Jesus Christ means you're being hated or being avoided, it means you must be doing something right.

    33:21-33:22

    Praise.

    33:23-33:24

    This is a mark of God's people.

    33:25-33:26

    Can you worship while you're suffering?

    33:27-33:28

    Can you do that?

    33:29-33:30

    The world can't do that.

    33:31-33:34

    People that don't have God's Holy Spirit are completely unable to do that.

    33:35-33:39

    They just go into despair mode when suffering comes.

    33:39-33:41

    Only God's people by the power of God's Spirit.

    33:41-33:43

    The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy.

    33:44-33:45

    Joy. Right?

    33:46-33:48

    Peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.

    33:49-33:51

    But joy - that's from God's Spirit.

    33:51-33:53

    That's a sign that God's Spirit is indwelling you.

    33:54-33:59

    That you can go through these kinds of sufferings to Jesus Christ and be rejoicing over it.

    34:01-34:02

    It's praise.

    34:02-34:04

    Persecution and praise.

    34:04-34:05

    And then finally, perseverance.

    34:07-34:07

    Perseverance.

    34:08-34:18

    What is going to happen in your life that's going to stop you from loving, from serving, from worshiping Jesus Christ?

    34:18-34:19

    What's it going to take?

    34:20-34:25

    If you take a beating because you go to church, will that stop you from worshiping?

    34:26-34:33

    If you get fired from your job because they find out that you're a Christian, is that going to make you walk away from Christ?

    34:34-34:43

    If your family disowns you because the fruit of the Holy Spirit is coming through you, is that going to make you stop?

    34:44-34:46

    The answer is absolutely not.

    34:47-34:51

    If you're a true Christian, perseverance is from God.

    34:52-34:57

    Nothing - nothing is going to stop you.

    34:58-34:59

    Perseverance.

    34:59-35:04

    God's power is in you and that makes you unstoppable.

    35:05-35:13

    The more the world stands against God's people, the more God's people are going to manifest this unstoppable power.

    35:15-35:21

    Rejoice as God is blessing you this evidence that your faith is real.

    35:22-35:29

    And remember, when it gets hard, you and I, we're just the mailman.

    35:30-35:30

    Let's pray.

    35:32-35:36

    Father in Heaven, You never advertised that it would be easy.

    35:38-35:44

    And sometimes we have this fiery trial come upon us and we're surprised by it.

    35:44-35:45

    We can't believe it.

    35:45-35:51

    And we're so shocked the things that the world is doing, but Your Word makes it so clear.

    35:51-35:57

    And we come to a passage like this, and we see that there's nothing new under the sun.

    35:58-36:00

    The world hates You.

    36:01-36:02

    Because the world loves darkness.

    36:04-36:23

    Father, for those of us who have received this gift of grace, this gift of eternal life in Jesus Christ, who have been transformed, who have been regenerated, who have been born again, Father, we embrace this call that You've placed in our lives.

    36:24-36:28

    Because the truth is, we might only be here for a couple more minutes or a couple more years.

    36:28-36:29

    We don't know.

    36:29-36:30

    This is a short time.

    36:32-36:38

    Father, we want to endure persecution in a godly way.

    36:40-36:42

    Father, we want to praise You while we suffer.

    36:44-36:48

    Father, we want to persevere only because You put that in us.

    36:50-36:51

    We know it's going to get harder.

    36:54-36:57

    That's why we cry out in total dependence.

    36:59-36:59

    We need You.

    37:01-37:06

    We thank You, Father, that You've promised to never leave us or forsake us.

    37:07-37:23

    We thank You that You've given us these evidences that remind us that as Christians, We're not called anything less than soldiers.

    37:25-37:34

    Nobody enlists in the military expecting it to be cushy in the same way we are soldiers of Jesus Christ.

    37:36-37:41

    Father again, let Your light shine through us.

    37:43-37:50

    Let us see ourselves simply as vessels that Your light shines through.

    37:50-37:53

    Let us see ourselves as the mailman.

    37:54-37:55

    We don't make up the message.

    37:55-37:56

    We don't compromise the message.

    37:57-38:03

    It's just simply our job to take the message that You've given us and to deliver it.

    38:04-38:07

    We pray in Jesus' name, Amen.

Small Group Questions (Whole Group):
Read Acts 5:33-42

  1. What exactly caused the huge backlash in verse Acts 5:33? Can you share a time someone hated you (or hates you now) because you’re a Christian? How did/do you handle it?

  2. What do you think Gamaliel (Acts 5:34-39) really believed? Why do you think that? What do you think about his advice to the council?

  3. In Acts 5:41, why were the disciples rejoicing? Why is that a cause for celebration? Be honest - do you celebrate hardship? How can you begin to rejoice over suffering if you haven’t already?

Breakout Questions:

  1. Confess your sins to one another and pray for one another.

, ,

Essential Elements of Worship

, ,
  1. We Sing and we Witness. (Ps 96:1-3)

    2. Because He is Magnificent and He is Creator. (Ps 96:4-6)


  2. We Acknowledge, we Give and we Tremble. (Ps 96:7-9)

    3. Because He is Sovereign and He is Judge. (Ps 96:10)


  3. We Rejoice and we Celebrate. (Ps 96:11-12)

    4. Because He is Righteous and He is Faithful. (Ps 96:13)

Mark Ort - Elder HBCPN

Sermon Notes (PDF): BLANK
Hint: Highlight blanks above for answers!

  • 00:00-00:02

    Open up your Bibles to the book of Psalms.

    00:02-00:04

    We're going to study Psalm 96 today.

    00:06-00:30

    And while you're turning there, I want to tell you a story about a guy whose nickname was "The Great Blasphemer." Back in 1736, this kid named John Newton, he decided he was going to get a job for a shipping company, this sea merchant guy hired him.

    00:32-00:36

    So he worked on this shipping dock and shipping stuff.

    00:36-00:38

    He was out on the seas.

    00:38-00:43

    And he was not a very responsible young man.

    00:44-00:50

    He took six or seven sea journeys and he got fired because of his lack of restraint.

    00:51-00:56

    His boss told him that he had unsettled behavior and impatient of restraint.

    00:57-01:01

    This is a pattern that would persist in this young boy's life for a long time.

    01:03-01:04

    He joined the Royal Navy.

    01:05-01:11

    This was in, he was an English sailor, so this was around London, Liverpool, where he worked.

    01:11-01:16

    And he joined the Royal Navy and the pattern continued.

    01:17-01:22

    He got discharged from the Navy and because of rebellion, he deserted.

    01:23-01:24

    He ended up working on a slave ship.

    01:25-01:27

    Again, the pattern continued.

    01:27-01:33

    He was arrogant, insubordinate, and recklessly immoral.

    01:34-01:38

    He said in his journals later, "I sinned with a high hand.

    01:38-01:51

    I made it my study to tempt and seduce others." In 1747, at the lowest point of his life, he was in rags, had no money, he was hungry, and he worked on these slave ships.

    01:54-02:04

    He was reading a book, a Christian book, and this storm came upon the ship, battered the ship severely, and he thought he was going to die.

    02:05-02:10

    And so at that point, he gave his life to Jesus Christ.

    02:10-02:11

    He got saved.

    02:13-02:21

    Later on in his life, he became a minister and had a Thursday night Bible study.

    02:22-02:32

    Maybe it was like a small group type thing It was a Thursday night thing, and he would write songs for this Bible study for them to sing.

    02:32-02:38

    And one of those songs is one of the most beloved hymns that we sing now, Amazing Grace.

    02:39-02:40

    You guys know that song, right?

    02:41-02:44

    Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me.

    02:45-02:47

    I once was lost, but now am found.

    02:47-02:49

    Was blind, but now I see.

    02:50-02:52

    Some people might look at that and say, "A wretch?

    02:53-02:55

    That's kind of hyperbole.

    02:56-02:57

    Isn't that kind of extreme?

    02:57-03:00

    You know, a wretch is kind of like a despicable person.

    03:02-03:14

    Why do we have to be so harsh on the guy?" Well, John Newton knew what kind of a guy he was, and he knew what Jesus Christ had saved him from.

    03:15-03:18

    So he was able to write those words and mean it from his heart.

    03:19-03:23

    Songs like that come from somebody's experience.

    03:24-03:37

    A lot of times, and you can talk to music people, Darren or Matt or guys that are into music, a lot of times the songs that are written come from their experience, what's happened in their lives.

    03:38-03:43

    And the same is true with David in this psalm, Psalm 96.

    03:44-03:49

    Something happened here make him write this song.

    03:49-03:57

    I don't know if he was, you know, was he sitting around in a, you know, under a tree and watching the sheep and he decides, he's, hey, I got a good song I wanna write.

    03:58-03:59

    And then he starts scribbling it down.

    03:59-04:06

    That might've happened, but in this song, this Psalm, something happened that made him write this.

    04:07-04:08

    And so we're gonna look at that today.

    04:09-04:14

    Before we get into the Psalm itself, I'd like to read the Psalm actually in its entirety.

    04:14-04:25

    And then for us to really get what's happening here, I think we got to backtrack in history a little bit and see what was happening to make David write this psalm.

    04:27-04:29

    Sing to the Lord a new song, he says.

    04:29-04:31

    Sing to the Lord, all the earth.

    04:32-04:33

    Sing to the Lord, bless his name.

    04:34-04:37

    Proclaim good tidings of the salvation from day to day.

    04:38-04:41

    Tell of his glory among the nations, his wonderful deeds among all the peoples.

    04:42-04:44

    For great is the Lord and greatly to be praised.

    04:45-04:46

    He is to be feared above all gods.

    04:47-04:51

    For all the gods of the people are idols, but the Lord made the heavens.

    04:52-04:54

    Splendor and majesty are before him.

    04:55-04:57

    Strength and beauty are in his sanctuary.

    04:58-05:00

    Ascribe to the Lord, O families of all peoples.

    05:01-05:03

    Ascribe to the Lord glory and strength.

    05:04-05:07

    Ascribe to the Lord the glory of his name.

    05:08-05:10

    Bring an offering and come into his courts.

    05:11-05:15

    Worship the Lord in holy attire, or in the beauty of His holiness.

    05:16-05:18

    Tremble before Him, all the earth.

    05:18-05:20

    Say to the nations, "The Lord reigns.

    05:21-05:23

    Indeed, the world is firmly established.

    05:23-05:27

    It will not be moved." He will judge the peoples with equity.

    05:28-05:31

    Let the heavens be glad and let the earth rejoice.

    05:31-05:34

    Let the sea roar in all that it contains.

    05:35-05:38

    Let the field exult in all that is in it.

    05:39-05:44

    Then all the trees of the forest will sing for joy before the Lord, for he is coming.

    05:45-05:47

    He is coming to judge the earth.

    05:48-05:53

    He will judge the world in righteousness and the peoples in his faithfulness.

    05:55-05:55

    Let's pray.

    05:57-06:01

    Heavenly Father, we come to your word now and it's not something that we take lightly.

    06:03-06:04

    God, you're serious in your word.

    06:04-06:06

    You're serious about things that you say in your word.

    06:06-06:10

    So we come to Your Word looking to see what You have to say.

    06:12-06:18

    Lord, I pray for this sermon that it would be honoring to You.

    06:19-06:23

    I pray that I would get out of the way and that Your Holy Spirit would have His way today, Lord.

    06:24-06:31

    I pray that You'd help me through this passage and that it would be beneficial and meaningful to those who hear.

    06:32-06:36

    Lord, might You be exalted above all things You are worthy.

    06:37-06:39

    In Jesus' name we pray, Amen.

    06:40-06:44

    Like I said, we've got to back up a little bit and see what's happening here.

    06:45-06:51

    And whenever David wrote this psalm, they were bringing the Ark of the Covenant into Jerusalem.

    06:52-06:59

    The Ark of the Covenant - well, let's back up a little bit more than just a few chapters before this happened.

    06:59-07:03

    We're going to go the whole way back to Exodus 25.

    07:04-07:15

    Well, that's like right after the Red Sea thing, the Israelites going through the Red Sea, and Moses gets the Ten Commandments.

    07:15-07:26

    And in Exodus chapter 25, God tells Moses what has to happen next with them traveling through the wilderness.

    07:27-07:30

    Remember, they had to go through the wilderness for what, 40 years?

    07:31-07:33

    So they're staggering through the desert.

    07:34-07:36

    probably going in circles, not knowing where they're going.

    07:38-07:44

    And God says, "Hey, we need to build a tabernacle." You know, a tabernacle is just like a tent.

    07:44-07:45

    It's portable.

    07:45-07:48

    They can pick it up and move, go to the next location.

    07:49-07:53

    Well, part of that tabernacle included this thing called the Ark of the Covenant.

    07:54-07:55

    I have a picture of that.

    07:56-08:00

    It's kind of a, I think this is a little model that somebody took a picture of.

    08:01-08:05

    And it was the best thing that I could find on the internet just to show you what it sort of looked like.

    08:06-08:13

    It was about 27 inches wide, 27 inches high, 3 feet long.

    08:14-08:16

    And it was made out of acacia wood.

    08:17-08:19

    And they got everybody's gold together.

    08:20-08:21

    People donated gold.

    08:21-08:23

    You can read that in Exodus chapter 35.

    08:23-08:27

    There was a campaign to get people to participate in this.

    08:28-08:40

    And so people were donating their necklaces, and their bracelets, and their rings, and they're silver and they're fine linens and they're costly perfumes and stuff all for the making of this tabernacle.

    08:40-08:55

    And the Ark of the Covenant had gold inlaid on the inside and out, and it had these rings on the legs and gold poles for people to carry it.

    08:55-08:56

    Weren't allowed to touch the Ark.

    08:57-09:06

    On the top, you can see this covering with these angels with outstretched wings, cherubim on the top.

    09:07-09:08

    They call this the mercy seat.

    09:10-09:23

    Now, I probably should have known this before now, but as I was studying this, that word mercy seat is the same word as the New Testament word propitiation, which is Jesus taking God's wrath away.

    09:23-09:25

    It's satisfying God's wrath.

    09:25-09:34

    And what would happen here is they would sprinkle the blood of sacrificed animals on the mercy seat or the covering, the lid.

    09:36-09:38

    I just love Old Testament pictures like that.

    09:39-09:41

    There's this covering for the ark.

    09:42-09:45

    In the New Testament, Jesus, what did he do?

    09:46-09:48

    He was our propitiation, he covered our sin.

    09:48-09:50

    Not only did he cover our sin, he took it away.

    09:52-09:54

    That's a picture of the Ark of the Covenant.

    09:55-10:00

    There was a guy who was commissioned to build this thing.

    10:00-10:01

    His name was Bezalel.

    10:02-10:09

    And people that were doing this building of the tabernacle, they weren't just some guy off the street.

    10:09-10:12

    They were like the most skilled craftsmen in the land.

    10:13-10:16

    And so this guy, Bezalel, put this thing together.

    10:17-10:19

    And you can read about that in Exodus.

    10:19-10:20

    I didn't make this stuff up.

    10:20-10:22

    It's all in the Bible.

    10:23-10:25

    In fact, we're gonna learn a little bit of history.

    10:26-10:28

    Did you wanna learn some history and some geography?

    10:28-10:32

    We'll follow this thing through, because to me, this stuff is really exciting.

    10:34-10:39

    In the ark, inside this thing, they put a couple of things.

    10:39-10:40

    They put a jar of manna.

    10:41-10:43

    Manna, when they were in the wilderness, they ate manna.

    10:43-10:45

    That was God's way of providing for them.

    10:46-10:53

    And so they put a jar of manna in there, and that was supposed to, the theologians say, that kind of represents God's provision in their lives.

    10:54-11:00

    One of the other things that they put in there was Aaron's staff, his rod, and I was thinking about that.

    11:01-11:05

    It must have been a shorter staff that was gonna fit in there 'cause that thing was about three feet wide.

    11:06-11:08

    So maybe they put it in diagonally or something.

    11:08-11:12

    I'm not sure how it fit in there, but Aaron's staff was in the Ark of the Covenant.

    11:12-11:19

    And the theologians say that, you know, well, that probably represents God's guidance through the wilderness and getting them to the promised land.

    11:20-11:25

    And then of course, the other big thing that was in there was the tablets of the 10 commandments.

    11:26-11:29

    Moses had the tablets and they put that in there.

    11:30-11:32

    It talks about what's in the ark in Hebrews 9.

    11:35-11:36

    So that's a picture of the ark.

    11:37-11:37

    We know what's in it.

    11:38-11:39

    Why was the ark important?

    11:40-11:54

    Well, in Numbers 7:89, it talks about how God spoke to Moses from the top of that.

    11:54-11:56

    Now, I don't know how he appeared there.

    11:56-12:04

    I don't know how this all happened, but the mercy seat was where God would often talk to Moses.

    12:06-12:09

    And so the Ark of the Covenant was pretty important.

    12:09-12:15

    The people viewed this little box as God's physical presence with them.

    12:15-12:16

    This was very important to them.

    12:16-12:17

    They revered it.

    12:18-12:23

    And while they were in the wilderness, they would pick this thing up, and it would go ahead of everybody.

    12:23-12:27

    It was always the first thing that would go when they were traveling from place to place.

    12:29-12:30

    I think I have some maps.

    12:30-12:34

    If you have the first map, here's your geography lesson.

    12:34-12:39

    Way down here is Egypt, where they were held captive, right?

    12:40-12:41

    They run across the Red Sea.

    12:42-12:43

    That's kind of down here.

    12:43-12:45

    They get over down here, and they're in the wilderness.

    12:45-12:53

    They're wandering around, they don't know where they're going, they know they're supposed to get to the promised land eventually, and they come around here and start heading up this way.

    12:54-13:05

    Here's the Dead Sea, they're to the east of the Dead Sea, and they come up and that green arrow, they're just about to go across the Jordan River, and you can read about this in the book of Joshua.

    13:07-13:11

    When they go across the Jordan River, the most interesting thing happens.

    13:12-13:13

    The guys are carrying the ark.

    13:15-13:15

    They get to the water.

    13:16-13:19

    Now this is flood season, so it's not like a trickle.

    13:19-13:20

    It's not like a creek.

    13:21-13:22

    The water stops.

    13:24-13:25

    There's dry land.

    13:25-13:26

    That's kind of familiar.

    13:26-13:27

    That's what happened in the Red Sea, right?

    13:28-13:29

    The water stops.

    13:30-13:34

    It stands up in a heap, and they go across the river.

    13:35-13:37

    The Israelites are probably like, "This is really cool.

    13:37-13:38

    This is great.

    13:39-13:46

    God's like really with us." So the next thing that happens is So they go up to this place called Jericho.

    13:46-13:48

    You probably know the story about Jericho.

    13:48-13:50

    They go marching around this city.

    13:50-13:51

    They're taking the land of Canaan.

    13:51-13:53

    They're supposed to defeat their enemies.

    13:54-13:55

    So they get to Jericho.

    13:57-13:57

    What happens at Jericho?

    13:58-13:59

    They got these big walls.

    13:59-14:01

    And they're going to go around six days in a row.

    14:02-14:03

    And they're carrying that ark.

    14:04-14:04

    They're carrying the ark around.

    14:05-14:07

    The seventh day, they blow their trumpets.

    14:07-14:08

    They yell real loud.

    14:08-14:09

    Boom, the walls go down.

    14:09-14:12

    They fall flat, just like it said it was going to happen.

    14:13-14:17

    The walls fall flat, and they are like, victory.

    14:18-14:19

    God's presence.

    14:19-14:20

    This ark was very important to them.

    14:21-14:25

    We'll fast forward a little bit further here, and they go up to this place called Shiloh eventually.

    14:26-14:28

    Now, Shiloh was where they set up this tabernacle.

    14:28-14:33

    It was there for a while, and it was kind of like this epicenter of religious activity.

    14:33-14:37

    And so they're feeling pretty good about now.

    14:37-14:38

    They're very confident.

    14:38-14:40

    They still got to drive out some enemies.

    14:41-14:48

    So they're going to go over to this place called Ebenezer now, and it's almost like, "Hey, we got our lucky charm.

    14:48-14:55

    We got the ark, so we're good." And they get to Ebenezer, and something really devastating happens there.

    14:56-14:59

    They go to battle against the Philistines.

    15:00-15:10

    The Philistines had this area over here, and this lower southwestern area over here was is where the Philistines were.

    15:11-15:15

    And Philistines is where we get the name Palestine now, that came from that word.

    15:16-15:21

    So the Philistines, they take the Ark.

    15:21-15:26

    They get into a battle in Ebenezer, and you can see the red part, that's when the Philistines have the Ark.

    15:27-15:29

    So they take the Ark, it's captured.

    15:29-15:31

    You can read about that in 1 Samuel 4.

    15:33-15:41

    And they cruise on down to Ashdod, And Ashdod has this temple with this statue in it called Dagon.

    15:42-15:43

    Now, Dagon was the fish god.

    15:44-15:50

    They had these statues everywhere of this Dagon guy, false god, who was half man, half fish.

    15:50-15:58

    And so, now I don't know if this particular statue looked like that or not, but they had-- Dagon was supposed to be the fish god.

    15:58-16:01

    In fact, a little bonus here for you.

    16:01-16:01

    Nineveh?

    16:02-16:03

    Heard of Nineveh, right?

    16:03-16:04

    Who went to Nineveh?

    16:05-16:12

    Jonah. Jonah went to Nineveh, and Nineveh, I think, is modern-day Mosul in Iraq.

    16:13-16:16

    I could be wrong about that, but the city is still there.

    16:16-16:23

    And, but Nineveh, they have unearthed many, many statues of this fish god.

    16:24-16:34

    I find stuff like that really ironic, that Jonah was in the belly of a fish for three days, and he goes to a place where they're unearthing fish gods.

    16:34-16:36

    It's just weird stuff.

    16:37-16:39

    But anyway, they're in Ashdod in this temple with Dagon.

    16:39-16:41

    They take this ark in and they go to bed.

    16:42-16:43

    They get up in the morning.

    16:44-16:49

    The statue is falling or fallen before the ark, facing the ark of the covenant.

    16:50-16:55

    They look at it and they, you know, they dust it off and they pick it up and they set it back up.

    16:56-17:00

    And the next day they go out and Dagon has fallen toward the ark again.

    17:00-17:03

    And this time his head's cut off and his arms are cut off.

    17:04-17:09

    So the people of Ashdod are like, get this thing out of here.

    17:09-17:11

    Like God's hand is surely against us.

    17:12-17:13

    Get this ark out of here.

    17:14-17:17

    And so they go down, send it to this place called Gath.

    17:18-17:22

    Okay, Bible students, do you know anybody, anybody famous from the Bible who's from Gath?

    17:24-17:25

    Goliath.

    17:26-17:27

    Goliath is from Gath.

    17:28-17:34

    So I'm wondering, okay, we read about Goliath and David and that whole incident.

    17:34-17:38

    And I'm wondering when the Ark was there, I wonder where Goliath was.

    17:38-17:40

    It's just stuff that I think about.

    17:40-17:47

    They take this thing to Gath, and the people of Gath, they start breaking out in all these tumors and sickness.

    17:48-17:50

    So now they're thinking, "We gotta get this thing out of here.

    17:51-17:56

    The hand of God is against us." You can read about that in, I don't think I have the reference on there.

    17:56-17:58

    I think that's 1 Samuel 6.

    18:00-18:03

    So they get this, they want it out of here.

    18:03-18:04

    So they send it to Ekron.

    18:05-18:09

    You can read about Ekron and it goes to Beth Shemesh.

    18:10-18:13

    And that's where the Israelites got the ark back.

    18:13-18:16

    And it goes to this place called Kiriath-Jerim.

    18:17-18:20

    Now from that Ebenezer down to Beth Shemesh was about seven months.

    18:21-18:23

    So it was gone for a while.

    18:23-18:27

    In fact, up in Ebenezer, Eli's daughter-in-law gave birth to a baby.

    18:28-18:31

    And this baby's name, she named it Ichabod.

    18:31-18:32

    You know what Ichabod means?

    18:33-18:35

    The glory of the Lord has departed.

    18:36-18:42

    She knew the significance of the ark being captured, and so she named her son Ichabod, the glory of the Lord has departed.

    18:42-18:44

    It was gone for seven months.

    18:45-18:48

    And then in Kiriath-Jerim, it stayed there for about 20 years.

    18:48-18:50

    I think it was about 20 years that it was there.

    18:51-18:52

    There's some debate.

    18:52-18:57

    It does mention 20 years in the Bible, but there's other things that lead people to believe that it could have been there longer.

    18:58-19:01

    just timelines of when people were born and David's life and things like that.

    19:01-19:04

    So we know it was there no less than 20 years.

    19:05-19:11

    And David decides, I wanna get this ark back home to Jerusalem where it belongs.

    19:11-19:13

    You see where we're going, we're getting to Psalm 96.

    19:15-19:22

    You can read about that, this guy named Uzzah in 2 Samuel 6.

    19:24-19:32

    Uzzah is an interesting story where they have the ark on some ox carts, and the ark was about to tip over.

    19:33-19:34

    I don't know if they were on some rocks.

    19:35-19:42

    And I don't know what his thinking was or what was going on in his mind, but he reached out to steady the ark, and God struck him dead.

    19:43-19:51

    And it just displayed the seriousness of this box that had these items in it, the presence of God.

    19:52-19:53

    You weren't supposed to touch that.

    19:54-20:01

    Now, it seems severe to strike this guy dead, but maybe God was gonna perform a miracle there that Uzzah prevented.

    20:02-20:06

    He just reached out and indiscriminately grabs the ark and he gets struck dead.

    20:07-20:09

    So people were afraid there.

    20:10-20:14

    They're thinking, "Oh my goodness." So it stayed at a couple houses for a while.

    20:14-20:24

    And then it's coming into Jerusalem And David starts to celebrate 1 Chronicles 16.

    20:25-20:34

    David writes this unbelievable hymn of praise and worship and celebration that is Psalm 96.

    20:35-20:37

    And so that's where we're at.

    20:39-20:40

    We're in Psalm 96 today.

    20:41-20:45

    That's the story of how the Psalm came about.

    20:46-20:52

    just wasn't some kind of willy -nilly thought pattern that happened in David's mind.

    20:52-20:55

    There was something going on behind the scenes and this is what happened.

    20:56-21:03

    So if we go into Psalm 96, let's just go through a couple of things here and see how this will impact our worship.

    21:04-21:13

    First thing on your outline, we sing and we witness because he is magnificent and he is creator.

    21:15-21:17

    Now here at Harvest Bible Chapel, we have some pillars.

    21:17-21:22

    And our second pillar is lifting high the name of Jesus Christ through worship.

    21:23-21:24

    And we did that this morning.

    21:25-21:27

    We were singing, right?

    21:27-21:30

    I mean, it was, I look forward to that every week.

    21:30-21:31

    I look forward to coming here to sing.

    21:32-21:33

    We place a high premium on that.

    21:35-21:38

    He says here, sing a, I'm sorry, sing to the Lord a new song.

    21:39-21:40

    Sing to the Lord all the earth.

    21:40-21:42

    Sing to the Lord and bless his name.

    21:43-21:49

    You know, we sing a lot of new songs here, and there's nobody that likes old hymns better than me.

    21:49-21:50

    They're rich in doctrine.

    21:50-21:54

    They have a lot of truth in them, and we do sing some of those sometimes.

    21:55-21:57

    But there's something about these new songs, too, that are just amazing.

    21:58-22:09

    And I remember when we first started coming to church here, Pastor Jeff preached a sermon on the DNA of the church, and the second sermon was about the second pillar, lifting high the name of Jesus in worship.

    22:09-22:13

    And he said, you know, and he referenced this verse, sing to the Lord a new song?

    22:14-22:15

    Why do we sing new songs?

    22:16-22:18

    Because God loves new things.

    22:19-22:21

    God loves new things, and I can prove that to you.

    22:21-22:25

    In 2 Corinthians 5:17, what does it say?

    22:25-22:27

    If anyone is in Christ, he is a what?

    22:29-22:30

    A new creation.

    22:30-22:32

    If anyone is in Christ, he's a new creation.

    22:33-22:37

    You can look in Revelation, and what's God gonna create there?

    22:37-22:39

    A new heavens and a new earth, right?

    22:39-22:40

    He loves new things.

    22:41-22:42

    He loves new songs.

    22:42-22:44

    It's okay to sing new songs.

    22:45-22:46

    Fresh expressions of praise.

    22:47-22:48

    Those are okay.

    22:48-22:49

    We like those.

    22:49-22:50

    God likes those.

    22:52-22:52

    So we sing.

    22:53-22:54

    The second thing is we witness.

    22:57-23:07

    Here he says, "Proclaim good tidings of salvation from day to day." I love this phrase here 'cause it's much bigger than just proclaim.

    23:08-23:15

    This phrase here means exposing beauty through announcement.

    23:17-23:17

    Think of a wedding.

    23:18-23:19

    Has anybody been to a wedding?

    23:20-23:21

    Yeah, a lot of us have been to a wedding.

    23:21-23:23

    Most of us have been in a wedding, at a wedding.

    23:24-23:26

    Some of us have been in weddings.

    23:26-23:34

    If you think about the groom, he's up on the front with his guys, and there's some bridesmaids and everything.

    23:34-23:36

    And where's the bride?

    23:37-23:39

    Well, she's out back, usually.

    23:39-23:43

    She's waiting for the doors to open, and then the processional starts.

    23:44-23:50

    Here comes the bride or whatever anthem she might choose, and all of a sudden, the doors open up.

    23:51-23:59

    That processional is proclaiming-- it's getting ready to expose the beauty of this bride coming down the aisle.

    24:00-24:07

    I remember at our wedding when the door opened up and I looked out, and my bride was the most beautiful woman that I had ever seen.

    24:08-24:12

    There's something about a wedding, brides are beautiful, and this is what this is talking about here.

    24:14-24:19

    When we proclaim God's salvation, we're exposing his beauty.

    24:20-24:24

    We're letting people know about the beauty of salvation.

    24:25-24:27

    Well, this word salvation here is deliverance.

    24:28-24:30

    Has God delivered you from anything?

    24:32-24:38

    If you've been delivered from, say, alcoholism, you need to tell people about that.

    24:39-24:42

    You need to tell people that God did that, God delivered you from that.

    24:43-24:50

    Have you been delivered from drugs or any situation like that?

    24:50-24:53

    We need to tell people about that, that God did this to us.

    24:54-24:59

    What about fear or anxiety or impatience?

    25:00-25:01

    And we could go down the list.

    25:01-25:03

    Has God delivered you from those things as a Christian?

    25:04-25:06

    Is He delivering you from them?

    25:06-25:08

    Maybe we still struggle with some of that stuff.

    25:09-25:25

    We need to tell people, if we've been delivered, especially that we've been transferred from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of God's glorious light, that's the biggest deliverance of them all, right?

    25:25-25:28

    We were lost and headed to hell, but God saved us.

    25:28-25:29

    He delivered us.

    25:30-25:32

    He delivered us from the consequences of our sin.

    25:33-25:36

    That is an eternal conscious punishment in hell.

    25:38-25:40

    We need to tell people about that.

    25:40-25:41

    And that's what this is saying here.

    25:42-25:43

    We need to proclaim that.

    25:43-25:48

    We need to expose His beauty by letting people see what He's done for us.

    25:49-25:55

    Here's how you would maybe throw water on the flames of evangelism.

    25:56-26:04

    So you use those situations enter into a discussion about the gospel, that, oh, I was a sinner.

    26:05-26:08

    I was headed to hell, and the wages of sin is death.

    26:09-26:12

    But the free gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

    26:13-26:20

    If anyone confesses Jesus as Lord and believes in their heart that God raised them from the dead, they'll be saved, they'll be delivered.

    26:21-26:23

    We can enter into conversations like that.

    26:25-26:26

    But you know how to throw water on that?

    26:26-26:27

    I'll give you a couple things.

    26:29-26:35

    If you don't have any enthusiasm, no enthusiasm, Jesus, he's just not exciting to me.

    26:37-26:40

    It's kind of boring actually, the Bible is kind of boring.

    26:41-26:47

    If you don't want people to listen to your message, just have no enthusiasm and they'll tune you out.

    26:47-26:48

    How about this one?

    26:49-26:51

    You're being confusing or indirect.

    26:52-26:53

    We need to speak with conviction and clarity.

    26:55-26:56

    We're not beating around the bush here.

    26:56-26:58

    This is a life and death message.

    26:58-26:59

    We don't need to beat around the bush.

    27:01-27:05

    Is anybody impressed with your Jesus if you're timid about him?

    27:07-27:10

    Who wants that Jesus that we're ashamed of?

    27:10-27:11

    Who would want that?

    27:12-27:14

    So we need to be direct.

    27:14-27:15

    We don't need to be confusing.

    27:16-27:17

    And how about this one?

    27:18-27:18

    Pride.

    27:19-27:20

    I'll say this gently.

    27:21-27:22

    Nobody cares how much you know.

    27:23-27:24

    They really don't.

    27:24-27:30

    You could quote them 100 scriptures and show them how much you know about the Bible.

    27:31-27:33

    People really don't care about that, seriously.

    27:34-27:35

    They want to know that you care.

    27:36-27:38

    We need to show them that we're committed to the truth.

    27:39-27:40

    We need to be knowledgeable.

    27:41-27:48

    But we need to be careful about blasting them with truth bombs because we want to win an argument.

    27:50-27:55

    So no enthusiasm, being confusing or indirect, pride.

    27:56-27:58

    And here's another one, and there could be some more.

    27:59-28:03

    But this will throw the water on the flames of your evangelism, hypocrisy.

    28:05-28:12

    If you're a hypocrite, believe me, people know when you're being a hypocrite, it's like written all over your face most of the time.

    28:12-28:14

    Nobody wants to hear what you have to say.

    28:15-28:17

    If you're a hypocrite, they don't want that, Jesus.

    28:18-28:21

    If Jesus didn't fix you of that, nobody wants that.

    28:23-28:23

    So how do we share?

    28:24-28:25

    We just tell our story.

    28:26-28:27

    We can tell.

    28:27-28:33

    It even says here, I will tell of his glory among the nations and his wonderful deeds.

    28:34-28:36

    This is an interesting word here.

    28:37-28:41

    It means to enumerate or keep score, keep track of.

    28:42-28:44

    I pictured like these little hash marks.

    28:44-28:45

    You know, you're keeping score.

    28:47-28:49

    It's telling people what God did in your life.

    28:50-28:52

    I don't know, you could come up with a hundred examples.

    28:52-28:56

    "Oh wow, did you see the rainbow?

    28:56-28:58

    That was an amazing rainbow, I love rainbows.

    28:58-29:02

    You know, God put that there." Or, "Man, I was really sick.

    29:02-29:13

    I had the flu and I prayed and it just seemed like God was..." We tell people, we're enumerating, we're recounting to people what God did for us.

    29:14-29:16

    That's what he's telling here, tell of his glory.

    29:17-29:20

    Tell of these things that God has done.

    29:20-29:23

    Bring them into conversation when you're talking to people.

    29:24-29:27

    You could do things like, let somebody ask you how you're doing.

    29:27-29:28

    God's been so good to us.

    29:29-29:29

    He's really blessed us.

    29:29-29:31

    He's given us a great family.

    29:31-29:32

    He's provided for us.

    29:33-29:38

    If the topic comes up at work, you won't believe what I just learned today in the Scriptures.

    29:39-29:40

    Telling people what you're thankful for.

    29:42-29:43

    I'm so thankful for my home.

    29:44-29:46

    God provided a home for us.

    29:46-29:48

    You can bring those into conversations.

    29:48-29:54

    That's what he's talking about here when he says, "Tell of His glory among the nations." His wonderful deeds among all the people.

    29:55-29:56

    And why is that?

    29:57-29:58

    Because He's magnificent.

    29:59-30:01

    He's Creator. He's magnificent.

    30:01-30:02

    He launches into this thing here.

    30:02-30:05

    He says, "Great is the Lord and greatly to be praised.

    30:05-30:07

    He is to be feared above all gods.

    30:09-30:14

    For all the gods of the peoples are idols." Back then they had a few gods, false gods.

    30:14-30:16

    They had Baals. They called them Baal.

    30:17-30:42

    the supposed sun god. They had Ashtoreth, it was the female counterpart of Veil, the moon goddess. They had this god named Molech and they would sacrifice children, live children, to this false god Molech. And they had Dagon, we saw Dagon, the fish god. They had numerous gods. We have some of that.

    30:42-30:46

    We have gods in our own lives, false gods.

    30:47-30:50

    I love the play on words in verse 5.

    30:50-30:51

    This is pretty cool.

    30:52-31:00

    He says, "All the gods of the peoples are idols." There are no less than 18 words for the word "idol" in the Old Testament.

    31:01-31:03

    I couldn't believe how many words there were.

    31:03-31:06

    And for the English language, we only had one word for it.

    31:06-31:20

    There's words like shame, dung, refuse, a shadow, a statue, a shape, a device, a molten image.

    31:21-31:25

    This idol that was spoken of here wasn't any of those words.

    31:25-31:34

    It's the word "nothingness" or "non -existent." What he's saying there is those gods of the people, They're nothing.

    31:36-31:36

    They're nothing.

    31:38-31:39

    But here's the play on words.

    31:40-31:41

    What's he say next?

    31:42-31:46

    "But God made the heavens." What did God make the heavens out of?

    31:48-31:48

    Nothing.

    31:49-31:51

    He created everything that you see out of nothing.

    31:52-31:54

    He's calling these idols nothing.

    31:55-31:56

    Just an interesting choice of words.

    31:57-32:10

    He goes, "Your idols are nothing." "Oh yeah, I made the heavens out of nothing." "Splendor and majesty are before Him, strength and beauty are in His sanctuary." This is speaking of His magnificence.

    32:11-32:11

    Look at these words.

    32:12-32:15

    We sang about this stuff just minutes ago.

    32:16-32:20

    Splendor, majesty, strength, beauty.

    32:22-32:28

    When I think of His power here, His strength, just even that rain out there today.

    32:29-32:31

    When's the last time you guys made rain like that?

    32:33-32:38

    When's the last time we made thunder and lightning?

    32:39-32:41

    And when's the last time you made a rainbow?

    32:43-32:46

    I've seen a lot of rainbows, and I never made one like that.

    32:47-32:53

    I mean, well, our family, we took a vacation in 2013 where we took a tour around the country.

    32:54-32:54

    Like, we looked.

    32:55-33:05

    We saw the Redwood Forest and the Pacific Coast Highway, and we went horseback riding in Wyoming.

    33:05-33:10

    And we were coming through the South, and we were on our way home from California.

    33:11-33:14

    When we went through Las Vegas, Nevada, it was 118 degrees.

    33:16-33:17

    And I'm thinking, wow.

    33:18-33:19

    First of all, that's really hot.

    33:19-33:23

    And secondly, like, wow, God did this heat.

    33:23-33:24

    He made the heat.

    33:25-33:31

    But the most interesting thing happened to us when we were riding through New Mexico.

    33:32-33:33

    And you can look this up on the internet.

    33:33-33:34

    This is amazing.

    33:34-33:45

    On July 4 of 2013, if you get on your devices and look up Santa Rosa hailstorm, you'll see some pictures come up on there.

    33:46-33:47

    We were there when that happened.

    33:48-33:49

    We were on the highway.

    33:51-33:52

    And all of a sudden, it was 9 o'clock at night.

    33:53-33:56

    We're tired, we have to go to the bathroom, we just want to get to the hotel.

    33:57-33:58

    We're trying to get to Amarillo, Texas.

    33:59-34:01

    We didn't have a hotel yet, we were just kind of winging it.

    34:02-34:05

    So we pull up, we can see the city lights of Santa Rosa.

    34:06-34:08

    You know, we had just come from 118 degrees.

    34:09-34:11

    It's probably 90 degrees at 9 o'clock at night.

    34:12-34:13

    And the traffic stops.

    34:14-34:15

    It's a dead stop.

    34:17-34:18

    It's 9 o'clock at night.

    34:18-34:20

    We didn't move one inch until midnight.

    34:21-34:31

    nobody knew what was going on. We were there for three hours. We start creeping along and we get to Santa Rosa and there were six inches of hail on the ground.

    34:33-34:40

    Leftover from two feet of hail, golf ball-sized. And it was just in Santa Rosa.

    34:40-35:18

    Santa Rosa is like maybe the size of Butler. It's not real big. Just in the city and right on the outskirts of the city where the highway went past, two feet golf ball size hail. Now aside from the damage and maybe some injuries that might have happened from that, God is awesome. I never made two-inch hail before. Golf ball size hail. I never made that before. I couldn't believe it. It was like we get there and we're driving like we're driving in Pittsburgh. People were just like, they're afraid, they don't get snow down there. I'm like, I see that stuff all the time.

    35:19-35:23

    But I'm looking at that, I'm like, that's the strength and power and beauty of God.

    35:24-35:26

    It was an amazing thing.

    35:28-35:31

    We need to tell people about this amazing God.

    35:32-35:33

    It's part of how we worship him.

    35:35-35:38

    Okay, next one, and I gotta hurry along here.

    35:39-35:44

    We acknowledge, we give, and we tremble because he is sovereign and he is judge.

    35:45-35:47

    We're gonna talk about the judge thing at the end.

    35:48-35:50

    But acknowledge, he says ascribe.

    35:52-35:53

    He says ascribe here.

    35:55-36:03

    The definition of ascribe is to humbly give credit and acknowledgement to God for the attributes and characteristics that already belong to him.

    36:04-36:05

    I'll say that again.

    36:06-36:14

    Humbly give credit and acknowledgement to God for the attributes and characteristics that already belong to him.

    36:15-36:18

    He says here, "Ascribe to the Lord, O families of the peoples.

    36:18-36:20

    Ascribe to the Lord glory and strength.

    36:21-36:28

    Ascribe to the Lord the glory of His name." We're not giving Him strength.

    36:28-36:29

    He already has that, right?

    36:30-36:32

    We're just acknowledging that He is that God.

    36:33-36:34

    That's what it means to ascribe.

    36:35-36:36

    It's an acknowledgment.

    36:38-36:39

    And then how about this word "give"?

    36:39-36:46

    He says, "Bring an offering and come into His courts." Now is he talking about passing that offering thing around?

    36:47-36:48

    Yeah, that's part of it.

    36:49-36:50

    But it's just a part of it.

    36:51-36:52

    He wants all of you.

    36:52-36:54

    He wants you to give of yourself.

    36:55-36:59

    Your time, your talents, your offering, your money.

    36:59-37:00

    He wants you to give.

    37:01-37:03

    What he's saying here, it's a command really.

    37:03-37:07

    He says, "Bring an offering and come into his courts.

    37:08-37:13

    Worship the Lord in holy attire." and it says holy attire.

    37:15-37:23

    The translation of this really should be something like, what this means is, maybe a better rendering is, worship the Lord in the beauty of his holiness.

    37:23-37:30

    This doesn't mean like, OK, I'm going to go worship the Lord, so I got to go get my holy-- my suit and my tie and everything.

    37:30-37:31

    I got to look nice.

    37:31-37:33

    If you want to do that, that's OK.

    37:33-37:34

    But that's not what that's saying here.

    37:34-37:36

    It's saying, worship the Lord in his beauty.

    37:37-37:39

    He's the one that's got the holy attire on.

    37:39-37:41

    He's the one that's beautiful.

    37:41-37:42

    we're worshiping him.

    37:43-37:49

    He says, "Tremble before him all the earth." You know what trembling is?

    37:51-37:54

    Trembling is like a palpitation of the heart.

    37:56-37:57

    You just, you get this feeling in your heart.

    37:58-38:02

    Like, I was talking to Sherry a little bit before this.

    38:02-38:05

    When you get up here and speak, it's no small thing, anytime.

    38:06-38:09

    You know what, going into jail or whatever, it's not a small thing.

    38:09-38:12

    And so, you know, you get a little bit of butterflies in there.

    38:13-38:15

    Your heart's palpitating, it's beating hard.

    38:16-38:17

    That's what he's saying here.

    38:18-38:22

    You know, our hearts are supposed to palpitate when we worship Him.

    38:22-38:23

    It's supposed to beat hard.

    38:26-38:32

    When you open up your Bible, think about, this is God's Word to you.

    38:33-38:36

    Like, every time we open up the Bible, we should be trembling.

    38:37-38:39

    This is a great gift that God has given you.

    38:41-38:46

    Yes, it was written by 40 men or something, over 1,500 years.

    38:48-38:49

    You know, people say, "Oh, that was a thing.

    38:49-38:54

    It was written by men." Well, yeah, they wrote it down, but God told them what to say.

    38:54-38:56

    They wrote in their own personalities.

    38:56-39:01

    They wrote from different moods, sadness, happiness.

    39:02-39:05

    There were different people that wrote the Bible.

    39:05-39:06

    There were kings. There were prophets.

    39:06-39:16

    there were statesmen, there were shepherds, there were doctors and tax collectors, and it came from the pen of different men.

    39:17-39:21

    But it's God's word, this is God speaking to us.

    39:23-39:28

    He's telling us who he is, what he expects of us, what kind of worship he wants.

    39:30-39:30

    We tremble.

    39:32-39:33

    Our heart starts to beat.

    39:35-39:51

    These guys that built that tabernacle and the Ark of the Covenant, they were bringing this stuff into the collection place as a willing thing.

    39:52-39:55

    This was something that they wanted to do out of their own hearts.

    39:55-39:57

    I imagine the gravity of that.

    39:58-40:05

    "Hey, God told us to build this thing." And they bring all this stuff back to this passage about bringing an offering.

    40:07-40:08

    God is sovereign.

    40:09-40:10

    That's the next part of this.

    40:10-40:11

    He's sovereign.

    40:11-40:12

    He reigns over all.

    40:13-40:22

    He says here, "Say to the nations," in verse 10, "The Lord reigns." That's it, he reigns, he's in charge.

    40:23-40:24

    He is in charge.

    40:24-40:28

    Sometimes it doesn't look like, things are, you know, the wheels are coming off, it seems.

    40:30-40:31

    But God is still on the throne, he reigns.

    40:32-40:33

    He's still sovereign.

    40:34-40:35

    And he is judge.

    40:35-40:37

    And we're going to hit judge here in a couple seconds.

    40:39-40:45

    Last point here, we rejoice and we celebrate, because he is righteous and he is faithful.

    40:48-40:50

    Look at these verses here at the end.

    40:51-40:53

    "Let the peoples be glad.

    40:54-40:55

    Let the earth rejoice.

    40:56-40:59

    Let the sea roar in all it contains.

    41:01-41:03

    Let the field exult and all that is in it.

    41:04-41:08

    And the trees of the forest will sing for joy, for the Lord is coming.

    41:08-41:13

    And He is coming to judge the earth, and He will judge the world in righteousness and the peoples in faithfulness.

    41:15-41:19

    This exult, this word exult, it's like jumping for joy or leaping for joy.

    41:20-41:22

    In fact, go back to the beginning when I was talking about David.

    41:23-41:32

    Remember when he came into Jerusalem and he was dancing and he was jumping and leaping, and he was so happy that the ark was finally home.

    41:33-41:43

    And his wife, Mikkel, Saul's daughter, she looks at him out from the window and it says in the Bible that she despised him for that.

    41:44-41:56

    And when they saw each other a little bit later, she says, "Wow, look how the king of Israel has distinguished himself.

    41:57-41:58

    Look at what you were doing out there.

    41:58-42:00

    Look how you distinguished yourself.

    42:02-42:09

    And I love what David said in I think it's 2 Samuel 6:21.

    42:10-42:13

    From the window of his house, his wife saw him leaping.

    42:14-42:16

    She was pretty upset about that.

    42:16-42:37

    Says, "Oh, how the king has distinguished himself as one of the foolish ones." And David said this, before the Lord who chose me above your father's house, therefore I will celebrate." When I read that verse, I thought, here's a guy, he didn't care what people thought about his worship.

    42:38-42:43

    Even his own wife, his own family, she's looking at him, despising him.

    42:44-42:45

    And he says, you know what?

    42:45-42:47

    This was, it was for the Lord.

    42:48-42:50

    We brought this ark into Jerusalem for the Lord.

    42:51-42:52

    I was happy.

    42:53-42:54

    And I'm going to dance before the Lord.

    42:57-43:02

    And so, is that how our worship is?

    43:02-43:05

    Do we care what other people think around us?

    43:05-43:08

    As long as we're worshipping God in a biblical way.

    43:09-43:20

    If we're doing some crazy things that maybe aren't reverent, or maybe out of line as far as Scripture goes, then okay, that's probably wrong.

    43:22-43:45

    But if we look at this passage here in Psalm 96 and see how we're supposed to worship God by singing and proclaiming and ascribing about His splendor and beauty and majesty and trembling before Him and celebrating, if we're all in the biblical bounds here, we don't need to care what other people are thinking, right?

    43:46-43:48

    We have a fairly diverse church.

    43:49-43:50

    Some people like to raise their hands.

    43:51-43:52

    That's okay.

    43:52-43:55

    You know, I have traditionally not been a hand raiser, but maybe I should be.

    43:56-43:59

    Maybe I should do that, 'cause sometimes I wanna do that.

    43:59-44:04

    I came from a really, really conservative background, and sometimes I feel awkward doing that.

    44:04-44:04

    But you know what?

    44:06-44:10

    Not to be mean to you guys, but after studying this, I don't care what you think about that anymore.

    44:11-44:16

    People can make fun of me, but I'm gonna praise the Lord the way I want to, and we should do that.

    44:17-44:19

    If you're going to clap during a song, that's okay.

    44:20-44:23

    Tap your foot however you want to worship.

    44:24-44:25

    We can't make you not do that.

    44:27-44:37

    If we're not passionate in our worship, I'm thinking we might be in a little bit of trouble because guess what we're going to be doing for millions of years in heaven?

    44:39-44:44

    If singing and worship is not your thing, I don't think you're gonna like heaven.

    44:45-44:46

    'Cause that's what we're doing there.

    44:48-45:00

    I loved the one song we were singing, and I scribbled this down real quick, where it says, I think it was the last song there, our eyes will look upon his glorious face.

    45:03-45:11

    When we're in heaven, for all those millions of years, we're gonna be looking at his glorious face.

    45:13-45:14

    That's worthy of worship.

    45:15-45:17

    He says he's going to judge the world in righteousness.

    45:18-45:21

    Now, many of you guys know that I do the prison stuff.

    45:22-45:26

    A couple of you guys have gone in, Jeff and I, Darren, I know Ben has been in.

    45:27-45:28

    It's a great ministry, we love doing that.

    45:29-45:32

    But I encounter guys who are in trouble with the law, obviously.

    45:33-45:40

    And I want you to imagine that you are in trouble with the law and you have to go before the judge.

    45:42-45:45

    You are at the judge's mercy.

    45:46-45:50

    Whatever sentence he hands down, that's your sentence.

    45:51-45:56

    So I tell the guys all the time, God is a judge.

    45:57-46:01

    They have rap sheets as long as their arm in some cases.

    46:02-46:04

    And the judge looks at that, and he's like, you know what?

    46:05-46:06

    Off to the pokey.

    46:06-46:07

    You're going to jail.

    46:07-46:12

    I was just talking to a guy Friday, and I said, "Where's so-and-so and where's so-and-so?

    46:13-46:22

    Where are these guys at now?" "Oh yeah, they went to state 25 to 50 years." This guy, 12 to 24 years.

    46:23-46:25

    They've been before the judge and they got sentenced.

    46:26-46:31

    We too have a rap sheet because we're sinners.

    46:32-46:49

    In Colossians 2, it talks about the decrees, their certificate of death, or death and decrees that are against us, but they were nailed to the cross, Jesus took them out of the way.

    46:52-46:56

    So when we appear before the judge, he's gonna set all things right, right?

    46:56-47:00

    It says here that he's righteous and he's faithful.

    47:01-47:02

    He's all about keeping his promises.

    47:03-47:04

    He's faithful.

    47:04-47:05

    He's going to keep his promise.

    47:06-47:15

    And when he says that, "Depart from me," he's sentenced people to an eternal conscious punishment in a real place called hell.

    47:16-47:18

    And we don't want people to go there.

    47:19-47:20

    We don't want people to go there.

    47:21-47:26

    And so, we talked about this earlier, we evangelize, we tell people, it's part of our worship.

    47:28-47:37

    But he has taken the decrees that were against you What's not to celebrate?

    47:38-47:40

    That's the ultimate thing to celebrate.

    47:41-47:46

    That our sins have been taken from the East to the West and removed from us.

    47:47-47:48

    They're gone.

    47:50-47:53

    But it says that God will remember them no more.

    47:54-47:55

    He'll remember your sins no more.

    47:56-47:57

    It's not that he has a bad memory.

    47:58-47:59

    He's not going to bring them up to you again.

    47:59-48:01

    Jesus took them out of the way.

    48:01-48:03

    Jesus took our place.

    48:03-48:04

    He was our substitute.

    48:06-48:10

    I tell the guys in the jail, somebody had to pay for your crime.

    48:11-48:11

    And it was you.

    48:13-48:15

    And the same with our sin.

    48:15-48:16

    Somebody has to pay for that.

    48:17-48:22

    And it will be you if you don't let Jesus do it.

    48:22-48:28

    Jesus came, bled, suffered, died on the cross as your substitute.

    48:29-48:35

    He looks at us as righteousness We put our faith and trust and our hope in His Son, Jesus Christ.

    48:35-48:41

    And so why I say that is that's why we worship God.

    48:41-48:43

    That's why we're not ashamed to worship God.

    48:45-48:51

    When we've been there 10 ,000 years, you know this verse in the song, right?

    48:52-48:59

    I was looking at this song this week, and this verse never clicked with me until this week.

    49:01-49:01

    Think about this.

    49:02-49:03

    It boggles your mind.

    49:04-49:13

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

    49:15-49:19

    You can be there 10,000 years and you haven't lost one day of worship.

    49:20-49:26

    You're just going to keep doing it for another 10,000, for another 10,000, for a million.

    49:27-49:29

    And there's no days being knocked off.

    49:29-49:31

    It's like, I still have forever.

    49:31-49:32

    We still have forever.

    49:32-49:40

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

    49:42-49:42

    Let's pray.

    49:43-49:47

    Heavenly Father, we have so much to praise You for.

    49:48-49:53

    We have so much to give You honor and worship You for.

    49:54-49:57

    Lord, You took our sins and cast them into the sea.

    49:58-49:59

    The depths of the sea.

    49:59-50:02

    took them as far from the east as to the west.

    50:03-50:14

    That alone, if you never did one more thing for us, God, you did more than enough by offering your Son, giving Him to those who would receive Him by faith.

    50:18-50:27

    Lord, that's just amazing that you would do that for me and for my friends here, Lord, that you would do that.

    50:28-50:42

    Lord, I pray that we would sing our lungs out because of our great love for you.

    50:43-50:50

    Lord, forgive us of our half-hearted, lukewarm singing, praising you, our worship Lord.

    50:51-50:56

    Forgive us of not loving you with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength.

    50:56-51:09

    Lord, I pray we would have a reasonable rekindled, fresh look at who you are, and just give you all the praise, because Lord, You are so worthy.

    51:10-51:14

    Thank You, Lord, for the opportunity to look at Your Word this morning.

    51:14-51:15

    You are awesome.

    51:17-51:18

    And we acknowledge that today.

    51:19-51:20

    In Jesus' name, Amen.

Small Group Questions (Whole Group):
Read Psalm 96

  1. Why does Harvest Bible Chapel place such an emphasis on high impact worship services?

  2. What is meant by 'ascribe to the Lord'? Why would God want people to recite His attributes?

  3. How are worship and evangelism related? And what steps can you take to share the gospel with more confidence and with more frequency?

  4. What obstacles are holding you back from passionately worshiping the Lord? How can you overcome these obstacles?

Breakout Questions:
Pray for one another.