I want to speak this morning about a
man who believes that one day in God's
courts is better than a thousand anywhere else.
His name is Stephen, and you will find
him in Acts chapter six, and I'm going
to read verses eight through fifteen, and then
we want to look at what can Stephen
teach us this morning.
Acts six, verse eight says, Now Stephen, a
man full of God's grace and power, did
great wonders and miraculous signs among the people.
Opposition arose, however, from members of the synagogue
of the freedmen, as it was called, Jews
of Cyrene and Alexandria, as well as the
provinces of Cilicia and Asia.
These men began to argue with Stephen, but
they could not stand up against his wisdom
or the spirit by whom he spoke.
Then they secretly persuaded some men to say,
We've heard Stephen speak words of blasphemy against
Moses and against God.
So they stirred up the people and the
elders and the teachers of the law.
They seized Stephen and brought him to the
Sanhedrin.
They produced false witnesses and testified, This fellow
never stops speaking against this holy place and
against the law.
For we have heard him say that this
Jesus of Nazareth will destroy this place and
change the customs of Moses handed down to
us.
All who were sitting in the Sanhedrin looked
intently at Stephen, and they saw that his
face was like the face of an angel.
Father, this is your word.
And God, we have gathered to meet with
you.
Be pleased to take full charge in these
few moments, to take your word, to bless
it to our hearts and lives, to teach
us and touch us, and to bring us
again to the one who has loved us
and given himself for us, even Jesus Christ.
So, Father, bless this time in Jesus' name.
Amen.
You ever watch the sky at night and
see a meteor streak through the sky?
At one moment there's nothing, and then there's
a bright glaze as it goes, and then
it's gone.
That's a little bit like a picture of
the life of what we know of the
life of Stephen, one of the first deacons
of the church from Acts chapter 6.
A man who received grace from God.
In fact, it's recorded he was full of
grace and the Holy Spirit.
In Psalm 84, in some versions it says,
you will give me grace and afterward receive
me into glory.
That was Stephen's experience.
God gave him grace and then received him
into glory.
He is the first martyr of the church,
a lay person chosen to serve the people
of God, involved in spreading the gospel and
the power of God is at work as
we've read there in Acts chapter 6.
And just very briefly this morning, I want
to think about four things that the life
of Stephen teaches us.
And may God grant us the grace to
apply them in our days and times.
First of all, I believe he teaches us
that eternity is more valuable than this life.
Eternity is more valuable than this life.
We tend to put all our value on
the things that we can see and know.
Stephen put all his value on the things
that he didn't see, but he knew by
faith.
He knew that trusting in Christ would give
him that eternal life and carry him on.
He belonged, you see, to the Lord Jesus
Christ.
His life testified to it.
He refused to compromise.
And you know, there's an awful lot of
that that goes on these days.
Just so that we can get along.
Sometimes we give up vital Christian principles.
He would not compromise the truth.
In fact, in holy boldness, he proclaims it
because he knew the truth of Psalm 8410,
that better is one day in God's house
than thousands elsewhere.
He led down his life rather than disgrace
the Lord Jesus Christ.
We live in a day and time when
everybody wants their own way.
But this world in due time will come
to a time which is a millennial kingdom
of Jesus, when it will be only his
way.
And all will be broken on that foundation
stone of Jesus Christ.
Sometimes, you know, we want our own way
to such an extent that we would break
lives and families and hearts and churches and
everything else, just so I can be right.
Stephen wasn't like that.
He knew that Christ was right.
And gave diligence in his life that everything
that he would say and do would honor
the Lord Jesus Christ.
You'll find in your bulletin this morning an
invitation to defend heterosexual marriage.
Why is that?
That's because in our society, everybody wants what
they want.
Give me my own way, and I'll be
happy.
But in the millennia that the earth has
endured, when humanity has had its own way,
far from developing happiness, it has developed all
kinds of misery in every direction.
You see, true happiness only comes when we
come under the authority and the Lordship of
Jesus Christ.
It's so easy to be intimidated these days,
isn't it?
After all, if all the experts say something
is so, is it not so?
Well, if the Bible says it's not so,
it's not so.
I love the character of Stephen because he
wasn't intimidated.
There he stands before the earthly power, the
ecclesiastical power of his day, at the end
of the sixth chapter of Acts of the
Apostles.
All the weight of human intelligence is there,
but there is no spirit that could overcome
the Holy Spirit that lived in this man.
He was what we would call fully surrendered.
In fact, sometimes we sing a hymn about
that, don't we?
Fully surrendered, Lord I would be.
And here's an example of what that looks
like in the life of Stephen.
There have been many other martyrs since then,
men who've displayed, women who've displayed great courage
under all kinds of fire, who would not
let go of eternity in order to build
some foolish compromise upon the face of this
terrestrial ball that we live on called the
earth.
There was an old time preacher called Polycarp,
87 years old, in the days of the
Roman Empire.
And the Roman leader of that area called
him in and said, Deny Jesus and you
can live.
If you don't deny him, I'll feed you
to the lions.
Polycarp, 87.
Now that's the time when most of us
say, hey, I done my bit.
Let some of them young fellas pick this
up.
He didn't say that.
He just smiled at that Roman proconsul and
said, Bring on the beasts.
Oh, you despise the lions, said the Roman.
Then I'll feed you to the fire.
I'll burn you.
Polycarp said, The flames that you can ignite
can last only for a few minutes.
But the flames where you are going, if
you are outside of Christ, last forever.
He had his focus where Stephen had his
focus on the eternal things.
You know why we lose the battle for
the family today?
We've lost the foundations.
We need to come back to what this
book teaches us about principles and about following
Christ and about heaven and hell.
And we need to get a celestial fix
on Christ.
He is our eternal goal.
And worry an awful lot less about what
goes on here.
We learn that eternity is more valuable than
this life.
From Stephen, secondly, we learn that the work
of God is always opposed.
Opposition arose in verse 9.
We don't like opposition.
We don't like confrontation.
This year I pass a sort of a
milestone.
I'll have lived more of my life in
Canada than I did in Northern Ireland.
And so I can say I'm Canadian, I
believe.
And we pride ourselves on being non-confrontational
and working things out.
Dear friends, there are some things that we
must confront.
Evil is meant to be confronted.
Churches in this day and time and Christians
in this day and time need to take
a stand for the truth and for that
which is right.
This is true in Stephen's life.
And we do it gracefully, but we do
it in the power of the Holy Spirit.
It has always been so.
You go back to some of the great
revivals.
For instance, a convert to Methodism in the
1750s, his name was Bell.
He made all kinds of claims for himself
and his followers.
He claimed that they had attained absolute perfection.
Finally, Wesley excluded Bell and his followers.
Bell went on to predict the end of
the world with God's judgment on February 28,
1763.
But the world did not end.
You see, he had done severe damage to
the cause of Christ.
We need to stand in the cause of
Jesus Christ.
It wasn't John that changed any of these
lives this morning.
It was Jesus.
It is Jesus only who changes hearts and
lives and homes.
People want religion.
God demands a relationship.
Truth is always opposed with lies.
There are always lies because we read about
the father of lies.
Go with me to John's Gospel, the eighth
chapter.
John chapter 8, verses 42 through 47.
Jesus said to them, When
he lies, he speaks his native language, for
he is a liar and the father of
lies.
Yet because I tell you the truth, you
do not believe me.
As you look at this passage, here is
Jesus saying the devil's told lies from the
beginning.
One of the greatest things I think that
happens in these days is that too often
we believe them.
Last week, David Mace said his father said
to him, you are useless.
It's the devil's lie.
But he believed it.
Other times, well you can't accomplish anything.
You better not say anything for Jesus because
you'll get toasted.
It's the devil's lie.
Truth is always opposed with lies.
Jesus spoke about that.
Even in John 14, verse 6, he says,
I am the way, the truth, and the
life.
No one comes to the father but by
me.
One way.
Yet we live in a world that says
there are many ways.
We must not be afraid to stand up
and say, Jesus Christ is the way, the
truth, and the life.
So we learn eternity is more valuable than
this life.
The work of God is always opposed, always
has been, always will be.
Thirdly, we learn that service is costly from
the life of Stephen.
Stephen desired to serve God by serving his
people.
And it cost him this life.
You know, there's no nice way to say
this, so I'll just say it.
Part of the trouble with modern day Christianity
is we're not challenged.
We're not challenged at all to serve Christ
all the way.
But pastor, you don't understand.
The church hurt me.
I can't serve Him anymore.
Grow up.
There is much more at stake than your
ego or mine or anything else.
We are in desperate days.
Days when we need to get our act
together and come before God and find Him
again in all His power.
You see that little thing in your bulletin
says that on the 29th of July, the
court will make a decision about whether or
not same-sex marriages are okay.
You didn't hear a thing about it until
you saw it in your bulletin this morning.
Why is that?
That's because the opposition are organized and the
opposition are not fighting amongst themselves and they're
not frittering away things on meaningless issues.
This is a day and a time for
you and I as children of God to
take a lesson from the life of Stephen
and say, it's time to stand.
I sometimes do this when I'm counseling.
I don't think I've ever done it when
I'm preaching, but let me ask this question.
If I could take you to the morgue
today and we could go in and pull
back the blanket on one of those corpses
and I give you a huge big needle.
The kind that we're all scared of but
hate to admit it.
And I said to you, stick that needle
in that corpse and you did it.
What would the reaction be?
Sharon says, no reaction.
Dr. McBride helped me out.
What would be the reaction?
No reaction.
Why is that?
It's dead.
I am crucified with Christ.
Nevertheless I live.
But it is not me.
It is Christ that lives in me.
For he loved me and gave himself for
me.
Service is costly.
I don't think we've ever seen a day
and time like today where there are so
many complaints about things and about church and
about this and about that.
What happened to that old call and challenge?
Lay down your life at the foot of
the cross.
I think there's a modern song that addresses
it.
It says, any road at any cost.
Maybe it was Steve Green that wrote it.
Whatever happened to that?
You see, that is foundational.
And unless we can come to that, then
all of the church in all of its
glory will just be a big internal fight
over nothing.
And eternity will slide on by.
It used to be that our pulpits thundered
with the need to surrender self.
And it's time that they did again.
And I'm not apologizing for pounding the pulpit
and screaming and shouting in my Irish way
up here this morning.
It is time to come back out of
that little cocoon and face the enemy in
the power of the Spirit.
Most of us want to see great churches
and revival and all the rest.
And I'm convinced it'll never happen until we're
willing to pay the price.
And the price is the same as Stephen's.
Lay down your life and let Christ.
What is it costing me to follow Him?
I'm not talking about dollars.
He owns the cattle on a thousand hills
and the wealth in every mine.
He is never short and He is never
late.
I remember doing a crusade in Camrose, Alberta,
training the committee.
And I mentioned to them there'd be a
hotel bill for the evangelist and for a
couple of us with him.
And one guy said, huh, sure seems like
you guys are well looked after.
You know, you've got to come up with
all the money for this thing.
What's it costing you?
And I looked him right eye to eye
and said, well, it depends.
Would you say it's costly to be on
the road 307 days this year?
Would you say it's costly not to be
at home when family is sick or hurting?
And all of a sudden it got quiet.
The dollars are never the issue.
It's who is God and who am I
before Him.
Let me read to you a little thing
I find this week so interesting on this
subject.
Thus, in a week before Martin Burnham's abduction
by Muslim guerrillas on a Philippine island of
Palawan in May 2001, the New Tribes missionary
gave a devotional at the Wednesday night evening
service at Rose Hill Bible Church in his
small hometown outside Wichita, Kansas.
Some of Burnham's last words in the United
States were also the last words of Jesus
recorded in the Gospel of John.
Martin's uncle, during the service at the church
held in honor of Martin, said his very
last words were, follow thou me.
Ralph Burnham said his voice was choking.
Martin not only spoke of following him, but
he took on that responsibility.
And of course at that time neither he
nor any of us expected how far he
was going to be required to go.
But he was willing to go.
Martin Burnham, 42, kept that attitude throughout the
376 days he and his wife Gracia, 43,
were held captive by Abu Sayyaf terrorist group.
Just before the Philippine military rained on the
kidnappers that led to Martin's death and Gracia's
freedom, the two huddled together in a hammock
under a makeshift tent.
Martin and Gracia had really been thinking that
there would be a chance that they would
not make it out alive.
The Bible says, to serve the Lord with
gladness, Martin told Gracia, let's go all the
way.
Costly.
Service is costly.
Fourth thing, last thing.
Don't leave any unfinished business.
We find this so clearly in the life
of Stephen.
Chapter 7 of Acts and verse 16.
Then he fell on his knees and cried
out, Lord do not hold this sin against
them.
And when he had said this, he fell
asleep.
Forgiveness, forgiveness.
Don't leave any unfinished business.
Who was Stephen like when he died?
Well, in Luke 23, 34, we read Jesus
said this as they put the nails in
his hands and feet.
Father, forgive them, for they know not what
they did.
He was just like his master all the
way.
So many wrongs perpetrated, forgive.
So many things that should be sorted out,
forgive.
Stephen entered the presence of Christ, cleansed and
free.
In 1986, there was a bomb in Oma
in Northern Ireland.
Some of you may remember the incident.
Eleven were killed, 69 were injured.
The bomb went off in a street full
of people, market town.
The IRA claimed responsibility.
In the rubble lay Gordon Wilson, his 14
-year-old daughter Maria.
Maria stretched out her hand in the midst
of all that debris and she managed to
touch her dad's hand and hold it.
And she said, Daddy, I really love you.
And she was gone.
Gordon was pulled out of that rubble.
And through good medical help, he was patched
up.
Protestant terrorists promised a response.
Look what they did to us.
We'll go out and nail them.
Now that's Irish.
And maybe that's Israeli.
And maybe that's Arab.
And maybe that's Chechen.
And I could go on, Indian and Pakistani.
But you see, Gordon and Maria and his
family, they knew the Lord Jesus.
And Gordon went to those Protestant terrorists and
said to them, Don't do it.
Don't disgrace the memory of the dead by
heading back like that.
And they didn't.
One man, a grocer, 1995, Gordon
went home to be with the Lord Jesus
all over the United Kingdom.
It was a tribute to him.
You know what the newspaper said?
The man who taught us how to forgive.
And if Gordon was here today, he'd say,
That's not Gordon Wilson.
That's Jesus Christ.
That's Stephen.
That's those who have no agenda, but his.
Ah, there's so much we can learn from
these great characters in Scripture.
Wish I had a lot more time.
We need to close.
And let me close this way.
Are you ready to learn the lesson of
Stephen, sold out to Christ?
No turning back.
No regrets.