“Application Resented” – FBC Morning Light (5/15/2023)

Well, good Monday morning to you. Hope you had a good day yesterday, a gathering with God's people, and a good

Mother's Day as well. Hope moms were duly honored on your special day yesterday, and hope you're getting off to a good start this week.

Well today in our Bible reading, we're reading the last chapter of 1 Samuel, Acts chapter 7, and Psalm 96.

I want to focus on Acts 7 this morning, and it brings out an interesting—I want to make an interesting observation.

I've seen this several times through the course of my years of ministry, how people can be perfectly content to hear the good stories of God's goodness and His kindness and the great things that He's done.

People like this will buy their children the children's story

Bible that tells all the fascinating, exciting stories of the Bible, and they don't mind that at all.

These will be people who will go to church on Christmas, on an Easter, because they like hearing the

Christmas story, they like hearing the Easter story, and other than that, they don't really show up too much at church.

And they're fine. They're fine with those exciting stories and those feel -good stories that express

God's love. But when it comes to a convicting application of God's Word, where God's Word is pointed directly at some way they're living that is contrary to the

Bible, well then you can see the fangs come out.

And this is illustrated in Acts chapter seven, because Stephen is dragged before the court, and he begins to tell the history of Israel's relationship with God, and all that God has done for them through the course of their long history.

And everything's going fine. They're listening attentively, you can kind of see them sitting in their seats, nodding, smiling, yeah, yeah, you know,

God, look what God's done for us, we're a great people, we're such a great nation, and da -da -da -da -da. Until he comes to verse 51, where he then points, it's like he points his finger at the crowd before him, and he says,

You stiff -necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, you always resist the

Holy Spirit, as your fathers did, so do you. Which of the prophets did your fathers not persecute?

And they killed those who foretold the coming of the Just One, whom you have now become the betrayers and murderers.

How do you think that went over? How does such pointed application, convicting application of God's Word, how does it go over with you?

How well do you handle it? How do you take it? Well, verse 54 says,

Because when they heard these things, they were cut to the heart, and they gnashed at him with their teeth. I've seen people, not a whole lot of people, thankfully, in my years of ministry, but I have seen some people who just got totally miffed, and threw their hands up in despair, shook their fist, and said,

I'm out of here. Because of the clear, direct application of God's Word.

You see this in Acts chapter 7, the very early part of the Church, and it has continued down through the years.

And so, what we want to be careful about is we don't develop that kind of an attitude, where, you know, we like the positive things in the

Bible, we like the exciting stories, we like the good things God does for His people, but we don't want to hear any convicting things.

We don't want to have our sin challenged, and we don't want to be confronted with anything that makes us uncomfortable.

Now look, when God's Word points a finger at us, makes us feel uncomfortable,

Holy Spirit's convicting us, then that's when we need to bow our head and repent.

Not get bent out of shape, not gnash with the teeth, but hang our heads down and confess, yes

Lord, I'm guilty. Forgive me. Forgive me. I trust that'll be the response of your heart as God's Word speaks to you in maybe very pointed and direct ways, and that it'll be a response of humble contrition rather than angry rejection.

And so, our Father and our God, I pray that we would respond in just such a way, humble contrition, when your

Word convicts us, when your Spirit takes the Word and applies it to our hearts and convicts us. So Lord, bless us with that kind of a response, we pray in Jesus' name, amen.