Translates roughly to the called out ones, or kind of a group that's very visible, very distinct. It's a distinct group. And so it's not just called out, like, I'm calling you out, I'm singling you out, but rather you could tell the Christians by certain qualities and characteristics of them. And they became known as the Ecclesia of Christ, the called out ones of Christ. Early on, they weren't called Christians actually.

They were called followers of the Way. And for those of you that are like fans of the Star wars universe, which I just dabbled in, I'm not really a fan, but like the Mandalorian stuff, like, they would say, like, this is the way. And that was their response. This is the way. I don't know if they actually did that in the early church where we're part of the Way, and they're like, this is the way.

I don't think they did that. But anyway, I couldn't help. When I was watching that show, though, I was like, wait a minute, they stole this. I've heard this somewhere. The church was this distinct group.

And remember, they all started out as Jewish people. They were Jewish people who had become believers that the hope of the Jewish faith, the coming Messiah, had come and that he was Jesus Christ. And so Jesus Christ is the Jewish Messiah who has come and shown that he is the one that they had hoped for. And so they didn't feel like they had been. That they had left the way, or I mean, left the way of Judaism to join the way.

They felt like it was the fulfillment of their hope. So the first Christians were Jews. And then it wasn't until later, and we'll look at this within the next few weeks, how some, you know, what had happened was some people had gone and started preaching to people that weren't Jewish. And they said, like, this faith is for everyone. It's not just for the Jews.

This is the faith for everyone. This is the fulfillment of God's promise to Abraham that through his offspring, all nations on earth would be blessed, his offspring being Jesus Christ, and that all nations, all peoples would be blessed through Jesus Christ. And so the first believers, or the first followers of the Way, the first Christians as we call them, were Jewish people. And they kind of had this like dual, you know, thing that they were faithful to. They were faithful to the Jewish services.

They would go to the temple. We see, like there's a time where Peter and John in Acts chapter three, they're going to the temple at the time of prayer. That was a Jewish time of prayer, when they historically would go there, and they said, hey, we're going to go and pray at the temple. And then we're, you know, we're going to go on about our day. But their prayers took on a new meaning in light of the salvation they had found through Jesus Christ.

And so they show up there. We'll talk about that in a minute. But what I really wanted to talk about was just a few things that happened in this time in the chapters, because we were last week in Acts chapter two, and today we'll be in Acts chapter six and a little bit of chapter seven, and there's a whole lot that happened in between. But the biggest thing that summarizes all of it is power. Now, there's a Greek word, dunamis, which means power.

It's the same word we get dynamite from. So when you think of the Holy Spirit in the church, the think of explosive power, like dynamite. Guys, maybe some of you gals, like, who would love the opportunity to be on a field playing with Dynamite. Does anybody's YouTube algorithm have the guys with the big cannon on it that shoot like propane tanks, have big iron manhole covers? Has anybody seen these guys?

Yeah, I think it's called like, one pound every day. I think he started using a pound of dynamite a day in his videos, but I think he's gone way above a pound. He. It's amazing. Like, I don't know where he gets ahold of this stuff, but I want to know, like, his supplier, because that sounds like so much fun, you know, like, oh, I would love to blow stuff up with that anyway.

There's too many people around here, though. You got to go out in the middle of, like, big nowhere, like way out in nowhere. So cool times. Well, think of that when you think of the power of the Holy Spirit. And that was the trademark, that was the sign of the local church, of the Christian church.

Where was the power of the Holy Spirit? There were characteristics for sure of the local church. Like it said at the end of Acts chapter 2. I believe it said that the local believers did four things. They centered around the apostles, teaching and fellowship.

Breaking of bread, which is kind of like sharing a meal. But it was also referencing the communion ritual that they would do, and then prayers, all four of those things. At the end of Acts chapter two, we see that those were behaviors or characteristics of the local church. But the thing that really was the character behind it that you could tell was what made them the church was the power of the Holy Spirit at work so that power is displayed. When Peter and John go in Acts, chapter three, they're going to the temple.

They think they're just going to pray, but they're ready for whatever God has in store for them that day. Do you wake up with that expectancy every day saying, lord, whatever happens today, I'm here for you to use me. I want you to use me for whatever happens. Like. Like.

Like be looking for that to happen. I once heard of a preacher that was in kind of in training, and he was preaching sermons and. And he was saying, my sermons feel kind of dull and lifeless. And the guy that was his mentor said, well, do you honestly expect that every time you preach somebody is going to get saved? And he says, well, no, of course I don't.

He said, well, that's the problem with your preaching. You don't have any power behind what you're saying. You don't think that the message you're preaching actually has the power to change lives. So Peter and John, every day, yes, they're going to the temple. It's the kind of standard hour of prayer.

They're following a schedule and a routine. But yet they were like, something can happen today. And so as they're going, there's this guy, and it tells a story. He says, the guy is just getting dropped off. He's 40 years old and he's never walked before, and he's getting laid down there.

And he starts his daily routine immediately, asking for a handout. Now, sometimes people need a handout. Sometimes that's what they need in that moment. But what they really need is something that'll change their lives, where they never have to be in that place again. And so Peter and John, what they did was.

Peter looks at him now. I don't know if anything like this has happened yet so far in Peter's life. This isn't too many days since Jesus Christ has ascended into heaven and they've received the baptism of the Holy Spirit. And so this might be the first time that he's like, kind of flexing his muscles and saying, like, the last time I really put myself out there, I saw Jesus walking on water. And I was like, lord, if that's you, call me out there.

I want to be like you. I want to do what you do. And so he's like, if that's you, call me to step out of the boat onto the water. And most of us are like, even in a windstorm, it's pretty safe in the boat. I know what happens when I stand on water.

I go down, you know, and so that's not going to help. And he's like, no, if you call me to do it, I can do it. And Peter says, steps on the water and he walks for a bit towards Jesus. And then it says, he saw the wind and the waves. He saw the conditions of the world.

And he thinks, I'm a man, I can't do this. Men don't walk on water. Jesus can. He's the Son of God. Like, that's obvious, but I'm just a man.

And he starts to sink. Jesus reach out and pulls him up. He says, you have little faith. Why did you doubt? Not why did you doubt in me or my ability.

Obviously I have the ability to do it. Why did you doubt that you could be the person with that kind of faith? And so Peter here now, this is the first time, I think, with John, they're going to the temple to pray. And this might be the first time that he's like, okay, let's just see. Like, I know when Jesus sent out the 72 two by two to different towns and villages, I know we healed people and drove out demons, but we had a specific mandate from Jesus in that moment.

But do I have the power at any moment through the Holy Spirit to say, sir, 40 years old, older than Peter was like to him, an old man. He's like, old man, stand up and walk. But that's what Peter said. He says, I don't have silver and gold. Like, I'm in the service of Jesus.

All my money gets given away all the time. Like, I can't hold on to any money. So, like, don't ask me for money, sir. I don't have money. I think he pulled his pockets out of his tunic, you know, and he's like, see nothing.

It's like the old cartoons where they just show their bare pockets. He's like, I got nothing. You know, you can't shake me upside down and see what comes out. I got nothing. I have something better than money for you, though.

In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, stand up and walk. And so he reaches out, he pulls the man up, and the man, it says, he starts walking and leaping and praising God. We sang that song as kids. Like, kids, church. Just, you know, you repeat that over and over.

And the beautiful thing about it is this guy, like, he doesn't just like, okay, you know, if you were on a boat, you know, you got your sea legs and you stand on the ground, you're like, whoa, this isn't moving enough. You Know, you're just kind of trying to get. Get your legs back used to the land. He doesn't have that moment where he's, like, trying to figure it out. He just starts, like, not just walking, but, like, uber walking.

Like, extra walking. He's like, yeah, he can run, he can leap. Like, he is going crazy with his legs that he's never been able to do this before. And he's been laid outside of the temple. Now that's a little on the nose, right?

Like, let's lay him out by the church. They'll give him some money, right? You know, like, it's just kind of like this. Like, they have to give me money. They follow Jesus.

We should. But it's just kind of funny that he was put there. But anyway, he's. He's like. He hasn't been allowed in the temple, though.

He's never been allowed in the temple because at that point there, you weren't allowed in the temple if you were crippled or lame. And he's in the temple and he's. He's outside of the temple, but he's never been allowed to go in the temple now. He's not crippled. He's allowed in the temple now.

According to the law of Moses, he can get into the temple. He can go in the temple now. So he gets so excited, he leaps up and he goes to the temple. And he's in the temple courts, walking and leaping and praising God, hanging onto Peter and John because he's like, I'm scared to be in here. There's a lot of people.

I've never really seen them from this viewpoint before. I'm usually laying down, looking up at him, asking for money. And now they're looking at me weird because, A, I'm kind of, like, doing crazy stuff in here, acrobatic stuff. And B, they start recognizing me. They're like, that was the guy that was laying out asking us for money all the time.

Was he, like, lying to us the whole time? Is he a fraud? You know, all that money I gave him, was that for nothing? And Peter and John, they're like, hey, you guys are wondering who. You know, like, how this man was healed, how we were able to do this, Know this.

It was not by our own ability. I don't have the ability to do this. It's through the power of the Holy Spirit. And, like, this whole big thing happens. You know, he gets kind of dragged in front of the people, and they're like, okay, you guys, you apostles, like, what's going on?

What are you doing? I thought we told you not to speak in the name of Jesus. Now you're doing it. They arrest him, an angel breaks him out in the middle of the night. That's pretty cool, you know, like, I guess if you're in jail, don't try to break out, but if an angel breaks you out, that's fine.

And so they come out of there and they come out of the jail, they go to. The angel tells them to go to the temple courts, it's very early in the morning, and start proclaiming Jesus again. So that's what they do, the same thing they've been arrested for. And now the people that had them arrested were called the Sadducees. And you need to understand a couple things about the Sadducees.

They're what's called a sect of the Jewish faith. You usually hear a lot about the Pharisees, the chief priests, the teachers of the law, and then the Sadducees. And they were kind of their name, as their name implies. They were kind of sad, you see, they were sad because they tried so hard to do all the right stuff and be good on their own terms. They were usually aristocratic and wealthy.

But more than that, they put all their faith, all their stock in the written word of God, specifically the written word of God, the first five books of the Bible, what we call Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, the Torah. They put all their belief in the Torah. That was their supreme guide for life. And the Torah was what guided them. And the oral teachings, the traditions of the elders, they followed all those teachings, or they didn't follow all those teachings because they didn't put any stock or faith in those teachings.

They end up. They end up being flogged, beaten, turned loose. That was their warning. They rejoiced. They took it like, with joy that they had been counted worthy of suffering for Christ.

Now, Jesus had told us this would happen at the end of the Beatitudes. We love the Beatitudes. The blessed are these people, Blessed are the poor in spirit, the meek, those who are mourning, hungry and thirsting for righteousness, the peacemakers. All these things. We look at the Beatitudes and we're like, this is great.

Then we get down at the bottom thing that Jesus says there, and he's like, also, you're going to be persecuted the same way they killed the prophets and persecuted them. They'll do the same thing to you, thinking that they're doing it to help the purposes of God. Wow, that's what the Sanhedrin were doing. The disciples remembered those words of Jesus and they were like, lord, we've served you with enough fervency, enough seriousness, enough just joy that they saw us as opposition to their little way of life and they wanted to shut it down. So they were grateful that they had served Christ well enough that they would be counted worthy of suffering.

As they show back up the meeting place where all the rest of the disciples are, they go into that place and they begin to pray. They prayed that God would give them strength to continue doing this way of living, this way of evangelizing. They prayed that they would have the continued power of the Holy Spirit in their life and in their ministering. And they prayed that they would have the strength to continue standing firm in the face of opposition. And Luke, the guy that wrote this book of Acts, Luke tells us that the meeting room they were in shook and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit.

Two things. One, God gave him that, like, visible, like, I hear you and I got you and I'm with you. You can't deny that. If you're praying, you're like, lord, fill us with power. Fill us with that dunamis, that tnt, that dynamite power.

And then the whole thing starts shaking. You're like, heard, thank you. Second thing, didn't we just look last week they were all baptized with the Holy Spirit and all this cool stuff happened. Why would they be. Why would Luke tell us they were filled with the Holy Spirit?

You can be baptized with the Holy Spirit, filled with the Holy Spirit, and yet still be in need of a top off, of being refilled with the Holy Spirit for the specific task and moment for which God has called you to. And they've called for a specific thing in this moment. They're like, lord, we know what we're up against. We know the opposition we're up against, and we need the filling of the Holy Spirit specifically for this. And so he gave that to them.

Now, in America, as Christians, we have, especially over a few years, I'm not going to put a number on it. It might be more than some of you think and less than some of you think, but over a period of years, we have had quite an opposition to being a Christian and living out a true Christian faith. We've had opposition against that, but we haven't really faced persecution over it. We understand opposition like, hey, don't preach in that name. Hey, you want to display this power of the Holy Spirit, fine, but just kind of keep it in your little church circle.

In your ecclesia. Your called out ones, your body, your. Your group, just keep it there, but don't really let it out in the public life. That's not what this is for people. I know there's people that have talked about, oh, well, they took prayer out of schools.

Well, they took official prayer out of schools. You can't take prayer out of schools. As long as there's children that believe in Jesus Christ, they're going to pray. Amen. As long as there's teachers that are following their faith in Christ and they're going to go.

And they're going to go into their classroom every day and they're going to pray that God would use them as a witness to these kids that are going through so much in so many ways that we can't even understand in our world today what these kids are going through. As long as there's teachers that believe in Christ, there's going to be prayer. As long as there's people working throughout that school system, there's going to be prayer in schools. All right, but maybe it doesn't go over the radio, the intercom every day. Maybe it doesn't do that, but at least there's still prayer in school.

As long as Christians refuse to be silent, as long as we continue praying out, crying out to God for his power, there will be prayer in schools. But we look at that and we think, well, we've had opposition, and maybe that's partially true. You know, sure, they took official prayer out of schools, but I think that should drive us to our knees even more and say, no, I'm going to pray. Amen. They might oppose us in certain ways, but they haven't yet begun to persecute us in this country.

We hear reports of it around the world and we say, oh, we want to pray for those people so many times. I think our prayers in those times is, lord, we pray that you would save them from that persecution. I don't think those people are praying that prayer. They're praying like Peter and the apostles did here in the Scripture, and they're saying, lord, fill us with your Holy Spirit, so that when we are counted worthy of suffering, that we can stand up to that, that we won't waffle or waver in our faith, but that we will continue to stand firm in our faith in the face of opposition and persecution. Amen.

So the church is strengthened from there. They go on from there, they grow from there. The believers end up being quite unified in these times. They look out for one another. When one Person has a need, they help to take care of it.

If they have means to reach out and take care of them, they do that. If they see a way that they can bless one another, they do it. There was people that said they had extra property. I don't know what that's like. I don't own any property right now.

I want to, but I don't. But they had more property than they could deal with. I still don't know what that number is, because I think a good starter piece of land is 1000 acres. 10,000 seems reasonable to me. I say, if you don't want to have any neighbors nearby you, you gotta buy all the land.

And so someday that would be cool, but land keeps getting more and more expensive, and I haven't started yet, so, you know, I don't think I'll be able to buy all the land. But they would sell their extra land and they would bring the money to the apostles, put it at their feet and say, okay, do whatever needs to be done with this. You've got this wealthy couple named Ananias and Sapphira. Like, that just sounds wealthy. Sapphira, like sapphire, right?

Like, she's even named after jewelry. So they bring. They hatch this plan together. Like, well, we don't have to give all the money, though. Like, it was our property.

We can do what we want with it. But let's just make them think that we're wealthy or that we're generous in our wealth and that we're going to give it all to the church, to the needs of the people. So they bring. The husband brings the money and gives it. Peter's there and he's like, here, do you want this?

And he's like, yeah. Why are you lying? He's like, what? No. And he drops dead and they bury him.

I think I talked about this last week, so I'll get over it. But a couple of you didn't hear it, so I'll tell the rest of the story. The wife comes in. Peter's like, hey, is this the amount? And she's like, yeah, that's the amount.

And he's like, nope. And then she drops dead and they bury her and Peter. Fear seizes the church. Well, we've had joy. We've had strengthening and power, but now we have awe and we have reverence because we can't play around with God.

We've lost some of that in the world today. In the church today. We've lost some of our fear of God because we think, I can just show up to church on Sunday, hey, maybe I watch some religious television. I get on Right Now Media. I've told you guys about that.

The church gives you a free login to Right Now Media. And you're like, I can watch some Christian programs on there for a couple hours a week. And then after that, I'm just kind of on my time and I'm going to do what I want all day and all week. And we think, oh, it's church on Sunday. I got to get up and go to church and put on my game face, I mean, my Christian face.

And I got to make sure that the words that come out of my mouth are the right ones and I don't say the wrong words or the bad words in church and all this stuff. And I should probably read my Bible. It's been six days. I should probably read some Bibles so that I'm primed. I tell you, if your church, your spiritual preparation starts on like Sunday morning after the alarm rings, you started too late.

Start sometime on Saturday, Friday. I don't know. I mean, yeah, there's some everyday stuff, but I'm saying, like, there needs to be a specific thing where you say, I want to meet with God. I want to be filled with his Holy Spirit when I'm in the gathering of believers, in the fellowship of believers, the ecclesia. I want to be filled with the power of the Holy Spirit on Sunday when I'm at church.

And so I'm going to start preparing for that. I'm going to kind of fast from the things of the world. I'm going to put all that stuff aside. I'm not going to focus on all those things. They might not be bad things, they're just things of the world.

And I want to focus on the things of God. And so sometime on Saturday, I'm going to say, okay, you know what? It's time to put all that away. It's time to turn my focus 100% towards the things of God. And as I go to bed, I'm ready to say, lord, in the morning when I wake up, I just want that day to be a day of filling, of refreshing filling of your Holy Spirit.

Because I gotta tell you, if we as the ecclesia, as the church, as the called out ones, if we don't have the filling and power of the Holy Spirit in our lives, we're just simply a social club. A social club who might have that metaphorical ticket to heaven stamped, but not much else. But if we're a church that's Seeking the filling and power of the Holy Spirit in our lives and in our midst as a body. Then we become the called out ones of Christ. So you had these self serving liars, Ananias and Sapphira, they're kind of gone and out of the way.

There's awe and reverence that falls not only on the people in the local church, but also on those outside of the church as they see all these powerful things happening in the church. Because people on the outside are actually scared to join them. Not because they don't think that they might belong, but because they know that their heart isn't ready for that. And so they're looking from the outside in and saying, maybe one of these days I'll be ready to accept that. But right now there's so much going on in my life I want to tell you.

You're going to come across people that are like that. They think that they don't belong in church. They think that, they say, well, if you knew the stuff that I had done or ah, I got to kind of clean myself up a little bit first or some of those things. They think they've got to work on themselves first. That's a lie that Satan tells them to keep them away from the power of Christ.

And so it's your job to say, listen, I can tell you first of all, whatever you think you've done, there's been a whole lot worse people sitting in those rows, maybe in the same local church they might visit. Who knows, they're not the worst person that ever lived. And beyond that, even if they were, Jesus Christ died for them, for their place to be there in his family. So definitely, by all means, your job in that place is to welcome them in and say, no, you come with me, you're my guest on Sunday, alright? Now even if I gotta go knock on your door at 8 o' clock and say, are you up?

You're not answering the phone, get up, you're going to church. I heard a preacher in Nashville, he talked about, he talked about going, he'd actually, he'd actually, I think he killed a guy. That wasn't cool. He wasn't a Christian or pastor yet. He, it was like a drug deal thing that went bad.

He was young, he kills a guy, he goes to county jail and he said there were 40 guys in county jail and he got saved when he was there. Almost convenient, right? Like you get arrested for murder and then you get saved. It's like, oh, you know, that'll look good for the judge. But it did, actually, but that was his point.

Like, it was real, you know, I'm sure there were some skeptics, but he got saved. And he's like, well, I guess if I'm a Christian, we have to have church on Sunday. And they didn't have a church service there. So he says, we're gonna have one. I'm gonna lead it.

I guess, like, it's on me. And so he says there were 40 guys in his cell block or whatever, the county jail. And he starts going around and telling him, like, get up. We're going to church. And.

And you're like, okay. And there was one guy that wouldn't. He's like, no, I'm not going to no church service. He probably said it a different way. And he said the only thing that was laying around was a stainless steel toilet brush.

And he grabbed that and whacked him upside the head with it, which sounds disgusting and painful.

And so he says, if you're not going to be in church, you're going to be in the infirmary. And he was. And so he says, I had 39 out of 40, you know, my first week showed up. He said after that, when he actually was sentenced and did a few years in prison, there was a whole lot more people he didn't have quite as good of a percentage, you know, that showed up. But he started having church in prison, too.

Yeah. So anyway, that was. I love that story. I mean, I heard him tell it. I think he would tell it about once a year at his church.

And I happened to visit that one time. I had a roommate at the time that was going there before I was married, and he was a punk rocker and wore a hat everywhere he went and went to this church where they had, like, vacuum lines on the platform and everybody wore these suits. And I'm like. You're like. Punk rock is like, you know, fight the man.

Fight the power. What are you doing here? You know, like, he's hanging out, sitting there one time, and a Nashka rips his hat off his head, says, you can't have that on in church. And I'm like, how did you stay there? You know, like, that's totally.

Again. Anyway, I don't know. It was just weird. But I went with him that time. It happened to be the week that their pastor was sharing his testimony.

And I was like, man, this is great. And so he had this moment, though, where as bad as everything he had done, he recognized that Christ had still died for him and that his salvation applied to him even if he was going to spend what he thought at the time was the rest of his life in jail, it ended up obviously not being that long. Well, anyway, the awe that people had in the early church with the disciples, with everything they saw going on stage, some of them thought that they couldn't be part of it. But they still had respect for what was going on in the church. There's been a time in our history where the local church, the Christian church, hasn't had that kind of respect because of scandals and things that have gone on inside.

But I believe it's more to do with the fact that we haven't been living in that dunamis power of the Holy Spirit in our midst. And we need to be seeking the power and filling of the Holy Spirit among us. Amen. So this awe was such a way. And people were being healed at the hands of the apostles and believers to such an extent, evil spirits were driven out of them.

All this was going on. Even when Peter would walk outside, the people knew him. He was getting kind of famous, his shadow. They would see his shadow and they would hope that even his shadow might fall on them. I don't know there's anything scripturally there that there was power in his shadow.

It's just that people believed in it. They had that much reverence and awe to that degree that they believed his shadow would do something. So all of this is going on and I look at where we're at today and I look at the faithfulness of the apostles and they gauged their faithfulness to the mission that Christ had given them based on how much they were persecuted. I said all that to catch you up, to get to our Scripture today. And I promise the last.

This part goes through a little more quickly. But I want to read to you or with you. In Acts, chapter 6, verses 7 through 15, the word of God continued to spread. The number of disciples in Jerusalem increased greatly. And even a large group of priests became obedient to the faith.

Now, Stephen, full of grace and power, was performing great wonders and miraculous signs among the people. But some men from the synagogue of the Freedmen, as it was called, both Cyrenians and Alexandrians, as well as some from Cilicia and the province of Asia. These would have been like very well educated people, essentially is what we can understand here. And they're not slaves. There's a lot of slavery or servanthood and indentured servanthood kind of stuff.

They're obviously not that. They're like they're free men and they're free thinkers, and they're knowledgeable. And so they stood up and argued with Stephen. They wanted to debate him, by the way. You don't have to debate like the biggest thinkers that are out there.

That's not your job. You don't have to win those debates. You have to know of he who has saved you and the power that has filled you. And you say, I know Christ and him crucified. All right, so they stood up and argued with Stephen, yet they were not able to resist the wisdom and the spirit with which he spoke.

Then they secretly instigated some men to say, by the way, this sounds a whole lot like when they. What they did with Christ. We have heard this man speaking blasphemous words against Moses and God. They're telling lies, and they're making up things about Stephen that aren't true, just like they did with Jesus.

They incited the people, the elders, and the experts in the law. And then they approached Stephen and seized him, brought him before the council. They brought forward false witnesses who said, this man does not stop saying things against this holy place and the law. For we have heard him saying that Jesus the Nazarene will destroy this place and change the customs that Moses handed down to us. All who were sitting in the council looked directly at Stephen and saw that his face was like the face of the angel.

We're going to skip down in chapter seven down to verse 54. And what happens during all those 54 or 53 previous verses is the priest looks at him, is like, is this true? Wouldn't it be great if court was like that? Like, is that right what they just said you did? And you're like, no.

Okay, cool. No. He gives us a long, long answer, like, tells them their whole history. And for a lot of it, they would have been like, yeah, that's right. Yeah.

Moses was cool. Yeah. God did all these great things. This all happened. And then he says.

He says, yeah, and you guys killed all the prophets of God.

Okay? Killed all the prophets. You know, which of the prophets did your ancestors not persecute? And then they killed the Lord, is what he says. So in verse 54, that's where we're reading now, when they heard these things, they became furious and ground their teeth at him.

But Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit, looked intently toward heaven and saw the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. Look, he said, I see the heavens open and the Son of man standing at the right hand of God. But they covered their ears like this is like toddlers shouting like, I don't hear you. I don't hear you anymore. They covered their ears, shouting out with a loud voice, rushed at him with one intent.

I got to tell you, when. When Satan wants to attack the people of God, he can inspire a lot of people to. To make it sound like they are making sense, to make it sound like, you know, the mob rules or the majority of people must be the right opinion, and they can be totally wrong. And with one intent, with one evil, like demonically inspired opinion, they rushed at Stephen with one accord. Verse 58.

When they had driven him out of the city, they began to stone him, by the way. What they would do is they would actually, typically in stoning somebody, which was a religious judgment, if they had severely trespass the law of God in certain ways or pronounced some kind of blasphemy, they would actually. They believe they were leaving the judgment up to God. What they would do is they would toss somebody down a short cliff, like 10, 15ft on the edge of a city. Most cities, you know, had a hill of some kind, and they would shove him over this down below.

And then, you know, you might be slightly injured from that fall, but basically they can't see you now, and they just start throwing rocks over. Now, sometimes it was direct, like chucking it at somebody's face. That's kind of cruel. You know, you can see them when you're doing that, and that takes a lot of gumption, a lot of nerve. But what they would do with this is they would throw these rocks over the cliff, targeting where they think the person fell.

And if a bunch of people do that, and if the person was guilty, they're kind of leaving the judgment up to God to direct the rocks to hit them and kill them. And that's what they're saying is, like, if this person's guilty, God's going to take care of them. This happens to the apostle Paul. At one time, he gets stoned at the hands of the Jewish people that say that he is speaking blasphemies against God when he's really proclaiming their Jewish Messiah has come. And so they go to stone him, but the believers come down, they gather around him, and it turns out he's fine.

In other words, God's judgment was that Paul was in the right and that he hadn't deserved any death and he didn't die. Well, Stephen, though, interestingly enough here, God allows this to happen to him. Even though Stephen was right, and even though God has shown him the heavens Opened up. He can see a portal to heaven. He can see Christ at the right hand of God.

So Stephen is assured of his faith, and he knows that his hope is secure. They cover their ears, they rush at him. They stone him at the edge of the city. And it says they laid their cloaks at the feet of a young man named Saul. They continued to stone Stephen while he prayed.

Lord Jesus, receive my spirit. He fell to his knees and cried out with a loud voice, lord, do not hold this sin against them. When he had said this, he died. I don't like that. Most translations, Karen and I talked about this earlier, said when he said this, he fell asleep.

See, folks, we've got to understand as Christians, as believers, that one day Christ will return. That one day, the Bible tells the dead will be raised to life forever, eternal life. And when that happens, our bodies, they're awakened from the grave. And that happens. Whether you've been slaughtered and beheaded, like some martyrs are, whether you've been burned to death, whether you've been buried in a casket or cremated, it doesn't matter.

If God can scoop the dust to the ground and make the first man out of that, and take a rib out of his flesh and make the first woman out of that, then I promise you, whatever way in which you are buried, God can put you back together when he returns. Amen. And so Jesus directed it right to the microphone. I'm sorry. There.

I'll just cough that way. So, Stephen, I don't know where I was going with that. That's my own train of thought up.

Oh, him falling asleep. I wanted to point out that our bodies fall asleep. When Lazarus died, Jesus said, lazarus has fallen asleep. I'm going to go wake him up. And the disciples are like, well, if he's asleep, won't he get better?

It'll be good for him. He's like, no, let me explain it in a way you understand, he's dead. Like, we think of death almost with a finality. Jesus and Stephen reflects it. We see this throughout the teaching in the Scriptures that our body will one day fall asleep, but our spirit continues on.

Jesus on the cross, Stephen, here in this moment, he says, lord, receive my spirit. Like our spirit will continue on and it lasts. It's eternal. And one day we will have a body, a resurrected body. It won't be the same body.

It'll be a new body we saw. A couple weeks ago, I talked when Jesus rose from the grave, that his body, although it bore the marks of his crucifixion, where he had had damage to his flesh and his body and holes pierced through it. That there was evidence that those things had existed. But it wasn't like he was just recovering from them. Still, he was healed.

His body was made whole. And yet he still bore the marks of his pain. On this earth. We'll have a memory of life on earth, and yet it won't hurt anymore. Because the joy that we experience in heaven is so great and beyond anything we could have ever imagined that it won't hurt anymore.

We'll be thankful to God for all of eternity that he has blessed us with this eternal bliss in which we exist. So I want to kind of wrap up in just a few minutes with this. I want to look at a couple things here. One, where Stephen came from was this group that was kind of specifically designed. There had been an issue that kind of popped up in the life of the local church.

In the church, of course, I explained how they had experienced all of these different things that were going on, and Ananias and Sapphira and all that, and the fear that gripped the church, but also the unity and the fellowship and the power of the Spirit that was there. But there was also these problems that occur when you have growth. Any church that experiences, I would say large percentage growth goes through issues like, you might say, like, well, you know, you might think, what's a good number of percentage to grow by? It's usually actually only about 10 to 15% growth per year in a church. So when you start seeing a church is growing 30, 40, 50% or in them, you know, almost 1,000%, you know, over 1,000% the first day, you know, like, it's hard to manage that.

It's hard to make sure that nothing slips through the cracks. It's hard to make sure that everybody has a place to serve in the way in which God has called them. Some of these reasons are why we're doing things like the third Sunday of the month. Starting next month in May, we're going to be having a shape course. It's on your little handout sheet that's kind of got the next steps and that that helps you find your place to serve both in the local church and broader in the community and how you can share Christ and serve others.

And so it's hard to kind of manage, like, where do we put everybody to serve? How do we handle, like, when do we have service times? Where do we meet? Where do we have. How do we teach people to grow in Christ?

Like, you can't get enough just Coming and listening to the pastor preach for 40 minutes or so every week. That's not going to be quite enough. Like, you've got to have something that helps you learn to grow in Christ. And so if a church grows kind of beyond that kind of percentage, it gets difficult. For sure.

This early church body was going through some growing pains. One of the things that they found was that the faith had begun to spread the. To people who weren't 100% in on the Jewish heritage. Like, they had moved. They were Jews by bloodline and culture, but they had really moved out of the area.

Remember in Acts, when the Holy Spirit came, in Acts 2, there was people that had traveled in from at least a dozen different areas in multiple different languages. And some of them, we believe, decided to stay, especially a group of widows. They were called the Grecian widows or the Hellenistic widows. In other words, they had kind of. They were Jews that had adopted a Greek culture and way of life.

And so they were a little different. They had a different history and background and talked a little differently. And they showed up and they kind of had their own little clique, their own little, like, quadrant or circle together. But they've moved. They've stayed behind in Jerusalem instead of going back to their homes, maybe.

And they're hungry. At some point, everybody gets hungry. They. They don't have any kind of a social net to fall back on. They don't have any kind of provision.

And so they start saying, like, young man, can you help me? And they get some guys together, like, could you go talk to those leaders and tell them we're hungry? I'm, you know, like, kind of painting with broad strokes here. It's kind of funny to me to think of it this way. Can you tell them we're hungry?

Like, yeah, I guess. Why? Well, they're helping all these other people out, and we're getting overlooked. Oh, now, can you imagine Peter and James and John and these other apostles? They have no idea this is going on.

There's thousands of people now. They went from 120 to 3,000 to 5,000 to who knows what the number's at now. And they're still trying to maintain their routine. They're trying to maintain fellowship and breaking of bread and prayers. They're trying to teach the people.

And they understand. The apostles understand that their primary calling from Jesus Christ is to share witness of. Of his resurrection, because that is where the power of his salvation comes from. And that if they don't do that and focus on the social concerns of the Group of people that they are working in vain. They're working in the wrong areas because Christ has called them to one important thing.

However, they did not also say that these social needs were invalid. They didn't say, well, they'll figure it out, or, yeah, you know, somebody will take care of them. They said, that's important. We didn't know. Thanks for bringing the concern to us.

And so they conferred amongst themselves and they said it would be wrong for us to neglect the ministry of the word. But the waiting of tables, they called it, the ministering of tables is important. So they said, all right, here's what our verdict is. You guys the ones that brought the complaint, they said, we're going to empower you to come up with the solution we only have. And not only will we empower you to come up with a solution, but we will bind ourselves to whatever decision you make.

In other words, whatever you say needs to be done. We're going to make sure it gets done. We're going to give you the power to follow through on it. However, there's just one thing. We want you to pick seven men who are known to be full of the spirit of God and of wisdom.

And those are the men that are on your council that make it happen. By the way, that group, the word that it becomes, we're going to give you two different Greek words today, but diaconos or deacons is where we get deacons from. And those of you, especially, like Baptists, you know, like, grew up in the Baptist church. You had the deacons a little bit different. Those, I think, from my understanding, usually kind of like, this is what we're doing next.

They kind of make the decisions. I don't know, are they all old grouchy guys or. Not really. Yeah. Okay.

All right. Amen. Got some amens. Okay. 100%.

You know, like, if you were my roommate that had the hat on, they'd be like, take that hat off, son. You know, okay. That wasn't the purpose of the original deacons. They were more like not waiters so much, but they called it waiting on of tables. They were making sure that people had their food.

They were servants. They were the ones that made sure that those who needed something were taken care of. And the apostles recognized that this is an important function of the local church. It's a necessary function, a non negotiable function of the local church. We recognize that years ago here, and sometimes we've been better at it than others, but we've got something that we developed based on this scripture called Action 6.

Like, get it? It's Acts 6. The Action 6 group is People that are looking to see who is overlooked. Like, who Maybe somebody's gone through a life situation, maybe they were sick, maybe there's something going on and we need to organize meals for them. Maybe somebody's been laid up and bedridden for a while or homebound for a while.

We want to make sure that they're called on and visited. And so we've got a group of people that does that. I'll tell you, there's some of you that I believe are fit for service in that area, because we can always add more people to that as they're gifted and called to it. Amen. So that's why you've got to go through shape course, because we might just say, hey, you know what?

I think your calling is this area. So again, you got to go through the shape one day class, and we'll talk more about it from there. So all of this goes well. And it goes so well that with this group of deacons, that there's no more complaints. And also, two people.

One goes off and preaches and does some really great stuff. Philip. And we'll talk about him in the next few weeks. Philip goes off and does some really great stuff. And then Stephen, he's not just waiting tables.

Like, he's also, as he's filled with the Holy Spirit. Remember, that was a criteria. He's performing miraculous works and power among the people, so much so that he becomes a target of persecution. And so my thought is, like, if you're really preaching. If I'm really preaching and nobody gets upset, am I really doing it right?

You know, like, if I haven't like, at least offended a couple people, not by my words, but with the words of the truth of the gospel. If somebody doesn't say, like, I don't like what you said, it's like, okay, what did I say? You know, like, I might not remember what I said. Tell me what I said. And it's like, oh, you know, I've got notes that I follow, but I say a lot of stuff that's in the moment where I believe the spirit of God is like, here, say this.

And I had no plans to say that, but in that moment, I share it. And so that I believe is a lot of times sometimes it's that weird process in my brain, you know, where it's like, there's some filters that should be in place that aren't, but God's been rebuilding those over time. And I'm a whole lot better than I used to be. Praise God for that. Amen.

Yeah, it was necessary, but so many times it's the Holy Spirit guiding me to say these things because there's somebody that needed to hear it, and I had no idea what was going on in their lives, but he knew it and he needed them to hear that.

So.

The last thing I want to mention before I close is this. We see this guy that gets introduced. His name is Saul.

He's been trained at the feet of a Pharisee named Gamaliel, who is well respected and he is 100% on board. How he believes the truth of the scriptures is he thinks that he is following God literally better than anyone else could. He says this later. He's like, I thought I was doing that. But what I used to think was a gain, I, I now consider a loss unless it draws me closer to Christ.

But until he had met Christ, and we'll talk about his face to face encounter, I believe next week. Until he had met Christ, he believed that if I follow, if I keep the law of Moses, that's the best thing that anybody could ever do. And I'm going to be the best at it, and I'm going to make sure everybody else does it. And if anybody gets in my way, I'm just going to mow over them. And that's what he was on a mission to do.

Starting from this moment. If you were reading comic books and you want to see somebody's like, villain arc, you know, like the story of how they became the villain, that Paul's ark starts this day, like, he's got his devotion, but he's like, all right, I see the threat. The threat that I see is this guy named Jesus and all of his little followers of his that are going around with all this power, but they're denying the prophets and Moses, and I've got to put a stop to it. And so as they're stoning Stephen, it's this catalyzing moment in his life where he's like, yes, yes. And every stone that hits, every rock that hits, he's just emboldened by it.

And the next thing he does is he goes after to attack the Christian church. So three closing thoughts on this. One, Jesus had told us to rejoice and be glad when we as his followers suffer or are persecuted. The second thought is this. So you need to be willing and ready to endure persecution.

The third thing is, is don't resist the Holy Spirit. Don't resist not just his leading. But don't resist being filled with the Holy Spirit. Because if the church isn't filled with the Spirit, if the believers, the Christians, aren't filled with the Holy Spirit. You've just joined a club.

And I don't want to be the leader of a club. I want to help you grow as the called out followers of Jesus Christ.