Stephen Charged - [Acts 6:8-15]

Let me ask you this. What are you willing to die for? And I thought of all kinds of ways of illustrating this, you know, maybe some

Medal of Honor winner or something like that. You know, I mean, because most people would say, well,

I'm willing to die for my country. I'm willing to die for my family. You know,

I thought, how about a story about somebody going in and saving somebody from fire or something like that.

What about for a stranger? Would you die for a stranger? I know people who say yes.

They're usually firemen or police officers. How about your faith?

And as I thought about that, I looked up the story of Jan Hus, Roman Catholic priest in Bohemia.

This is from God Questions, which Bohemia is the

Czech Republic. So he was kind of, if you think about it, what we typically do is we think, you know, all truth was lost and then

Martin Luther steps onto the stage and truth comes back. Well, the reality is that a number of men throughout the centuries had stepped forward and proclaimed the truth at some point, and they usually wound up like Jan Hus.

The more he studied the Bible, this Catholic priest, the more he noticed a sharp divergence between what the

Bible taught and what Rome taught. And reading the writings of John Wycliffe, and if you don't know the story of Wycliffe, Wycliffe just translated the

Bible into English, and after he died, Rome was so mad with him that they dug up his body and burned it.

I mean, that's the ultimate, right? We'll show you. So Hus was,

I guess you could say, a rebel priest. And he began to preach his sermons at, I like this,

Bethlehem Chapel in the Czech language instead of Latin. What's the problem with that?

Well, the idea was you preach in Latin, nobody knows what you're saying. This is how concerned

Rome was about nobody knowing, you know, all you needed to do was just get baptized, go to church, and be a good

Catholic. But these actions led to a conflict with Hus, the

Roman church in Hus. His followers were on one side, and the Roman Catholic Church and the Holy Roman Empire on the other.

But nothing happened to Hus because the Bohemian king supported him. But eventually, things intensify.

There's an anti -pope, and you go, well, what's an anti -pope? An anti -pope is when there's a pope, and then somebody else claims to be the pope, and so there's an anti -pope, and so they kind of battle it out.

At one point, one of my favorite Catholic stories is the time when there are three vicars of Christ, three popes, and they're all trying to kill each other.

But I digress. So at this point, there's only two.

But one of them declares, you know, this is a time for the church to sell indulgences and to make money. And Hus began preaching against the papacy itself, emphasizing the authority of the

Bible and the fact that Christ alone is the head of the church. And under political pressure from Rome, the king of Bohemia no longer was willing to protect

Hus, and he was excommunicated. And at 1412, he was commanded by the

Holy Roman Emperor to go to Constance, Germany. And they guaranteed his safe passage and safety while he was there.

But when he arrived, he was arrested and imprisoned. There's a sermon here about trusting the government, but I digress again.

A mock trial occurred, and when Hus refused to recant his teaching, he was burned at the stake as a heretic.

It is said that his last words were, Lord Jesus, I endure this cruel death for you.

I ask you to have mercy, not on my soul, but on my enemies.

What are you willing to die for? As I studied this week, the words of Jesus came to mind in John 15.

I read them earlier. A servant is not greater than his master. If they persecuted me, they will persecute you.

He says, all these things they will do to you on account of my name, because they do not know him who sent me.

As we go through the book of Acts, what are we looking at? This is a theological battle. Christ saying,

I will build my church, you men are my ambassadors, my apostles, my messengers, you're to get the message out.

Well, Satan is not sleeping. His people are doing their business as well.

We really see a theological battle. Our text this morning,

Acts 6, verses 8 -15, and we're going to see this battle, as it were, kind of amplify, become more broad in its scope.

Acts 6, verses 8 -15. And Stephen, full of grace and power, was doing great wonders and signs among the people.

Then some of those who belonged to the synagogue of the freedmen, 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.

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

Then they secretly instigated men who said, we have heard him speak blasphemous words against Moses and God.

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

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

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

And gazing at him, all who sat in the council saw that his face was like the face of an angel.

The book of Acts, of course, written by Luke the physician. And it follows the work of the apostles, really the work of the

Holy Spirit. I mean, it's called the Acts of the Apostles, could be called the Acts of the Holy Spirit. Follows the apostles from the end of the 40 -day post -resurrection time period that the

Lord Jesus spent with these men up until the time of Paul's ministry in Rome.

And we see the apostles, again, empowered by the Holy Spirit, carry out the charge of Jesus to be his witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.

Last week, we saw that the apostles really put a stop, put an end to what could have been the very first church split.

The church was growing, which led to a situation where some people felt like they were being neglected, specifically the

Hellenists, that is to say the Greek -speaking Jews, those Jews who'd come from outside of Jerusalem to live inside of Jerusalem.

They felt, and then had come to faith in Christ, they felt like they were getting slighted or their widows, specifically, were being slighted, or not properly cared for.

These Hellenists raised this issue to the apostles who called a meeting. So the

Hebrews, the Jews of Jerusalem, and the Hellenistic Jews who'd all come to faith in Christ had this meeting.

And at the meeting, the apostles said that while caring for widows was important, they called it a ministry, they themselves could not be distracted from their primary duties, which were praying, preaching, and teaching the

Word of God. So the apostles proposed that the congregation select seven men to take care of this ministry, and we also saw the parallels, or I drew the parallels between these seven, what

I called proto -deacons, they're prototypes of deacons, and the actual qualifications for deacons in 1

Timothy chapter 3, and I think they're very similar. And as a result of this resolution, as a result of this meeting, and a result of solving this problem, the church continued to grow.

In fact, we're told that even priests come to the faith. And this morning, in the ongoing opposition to the gospel, we will see one of these seven men, namely

Stephen, challenged and arrested. I have five

Fs to keep us on track as we really follow this miscarriage of justice.

This scene represents, as I said before, an escalation of the persecution of the church. It's no longer only the

Jewish leadership who's involved, the Sanhedrin, but now it's the run -of -the -mill pew fillers, just people that are in the synagogues, who are now going to combat

Christianity. The persecution is ramping up. So our first F is full of the

Spirit. Stephen was full of the Spirit. Look at verse 8. And Stephen, full of grace and power, was doing great wonders and signs among the people.

I mean, if you think back to last week, all the way back to last week, or if you just look back a few verses, back to verse 5, we really get a picture that Stephen is very godly.

I remember the first time I ever read this account, shortly after I got saved, and I was just amazed.

I'm like, wow, I was named after this man. And then I find out I wasn't, but it made me feel good for a little while anyway.

But this is a very godly man. Look back to verse 5. They chose Stephen, a man full of faith and of the

Holy Spirit. That's how the Holy Spirit, working through Luke, describes this man.

The Holy Spirit says, Stephen is full of me. This was no ordinary deacon, no slight against the deacons in the church here this morning.

But this is not an ordinary man. I mean,

I've known some faithful brothers. I've known people that, I've talked about them, men who, when they prayed, it felt like they were maybe grabbing you around the neck and dragging you before the throne of God.

And that's kind of the power, even more than that. In fact,

I don't know that I've ever said of anybody that I felt that they were full of faith, full of the

Holy Spirit, or full of grace and power, like Stephen is described here. Daryl Bach says of him,

Stephen is equipped for the unique things God has called him to do. Now, I read that and I thought, well, that's true, right?

It took a very special man, specially equipped to do what Stephen did. And then I step back a minute and I go, well, okay, true or false?

We're all equipped to do what we're called to do. Anybody who says, well,

I don't feel equipped to be her husband. Well, then what did you marry her for?

Right? The time to figure that out is before you get married, not afterwards. We're all equipped for the ministry that God has called us for.

Back to Stephen. Like the apostles earlier in Acts, Stephen is performing wonders.

Freiberg says, it's something so unusual it arouses close observation. He's doing things that took people's breath away.

They watched him and said, well, this isn't magic, this is the power of God. That's what signs are.

They're given by God to authenticate the message that Stephen's preaching. So here's a

Hellenist, outsider, still a Jew, but now coming to faith in Christ, doing much the same as the apostles themselves, these men from Galilee were doing.

If I were in charge of the church at Jerusalem, here's how I'd size up Stephen, I'd go, that man,

I can almost hear Mike saying this, that man is a future missionary. We're going to be sending him out to the mission field.

And he would be perfect, right? Because he speaks Greek fluently, he's perfect to go out into the

Greek -speaking world. This man had it all. He won't make it, but it's a good thought.

Stephen was full of the Spirit. Our first F, our second F, the futility of fighting against God, the futility of fighting against God.

Two groups confront Stephen, look at verse 9, then some of those who belong to the synagogue of the freedmen, as it was called, and of the

Syrenians, and of the Alexandrians, and those from Cilicia and Asia, rose up and disputed with Stephen.

Now some scholars say this is one group, others say it's five, I think there's basically two groups.

One group, the Hellenist Jews from North Africa and Egypt, so the

Syrenians and the Alexandrians, Syrene being basically from Libya.

And the other group then made up of Hellenistic Jews from Asia, which is

Cilicia, which Tarsus is part of that. And then

Asia, which is part of modern Turkey. And at least some of these men belonged to a synagogue that was notable because it had been founded by some men who had been slaves of the

Roman Empire, and they'd been set free, I think it was like 66 BC. So this is the group of men that confront

Stephen. And as I thought about it, I thought, you know what, we see these memes on the internet.

Why is it that women outlive men, and they show some doofus up on a chair which has a ladder and a bucket of paint, and he's bouncing like that.

Below him there's alligators, or something crazy. Why do women out, because men do stupid stuff like that.

Not that I've ever done anything like that. But these men had heard about what

Stephen's doing, right? Just think about this. You know that this man is doing wonders and miracles and signs and all kinds of miraculous stuff, and you think, you know what, let's go debate that guy.

Let's try our hand at that. We have no reason to think that Stephen heard these words from Jesus, but he lived as though they were impressed on his heart.

If he didn't, I mean, if you said to yourself, well, what was Stephen's mindset? I think this is good.

Luke 21, verses 12 to 15. Luke 21, verses 12 to 15.

Jesus, again, speaking, he says, But before all this, they will lay their hands on you and persecute you, delivering you up to the synagogues and prisons, and you will be brought before kings and governors for my name's sake.

This is what's going to happen to them. But then, listen, this will be your opportunity to bear witness.

Settle it, therefore, in your minds not to meditate beforehand on how to answer, I would argue, or how to escape.

For I will give you a mouth and wisdom which none of your adversaries will be able to withstand or contradict.

As you look at the verbs here, in verse 9, they would tell us that it's a repetitive occurrence, that these zealous Jewish men are constantly rising up and they're constantly disputing.

In other words, they're popping up wherever Stephen goes, they're there to confront him, to argue against him.

If Stephen was ministering the gospel, they wanted to be there to be his opposition.

And they're really just ultimately defeated. These two groups are defeated. Look at verse 10.

But they could not, they were not able to withstand the wisdom and the spirit with which he was speaking.

Repeatedly they tried, repeatedly they failed. Now, obviously, he was preaching what?

The Christian gospel, otherwise they wouldn't have argued with him. The salvation was only available in the person and work of Christ, that you had to believe in him, you had to trust in him.

These men were religious. They were faithful to what they had been taught. They were devoted to a system of works, which is what

Judaism had become. Very mechanistic, very just do this. And we see that all around us, really, if you think about it.

People who just go through the motions of a religion. I listened to somebody the other day, just saying, you know, that he's not a particularly religious person, but when

Lent came up, he felt like he needed to sacrifice something. I thought, why?

Not only do you not understand what Jesus did, but why is it you're not really all that religious, and you just think,

Lent, I'm going to give something up for Lent, because people like to feel what? Like they're doing something.

And that's the reality of every religion. We say it often. There are two religions in the world.

There's the religion of human achievement, that is do, do, do, and divine accomplishment.

Done, done, done. It's all done by Jesus. But Stephen is an ambassador for Christ.

He's telling people that all their sins can be forgiven. Eternal life can be theirs.

They can know that they're going to be in heaven, if they will but trust the resurrected

Jesus. And what he teaches goes against everything they've been taught, and that's why they're motivated to go fight him, to go argue against him.

They hate the message and the messenger. But they were losing every single theological battle.

What about this, Stephen? Refuted. What about that, Stephen? Refuted. Lose, lose, lose.

Kistemacher says, faith, wisdom, grace, power, and above all, the presence of the spirit were the personal qualities that equipped

Stephen for the ultimate witness he soon would bear. Indeed, those qualities, those

God -given qualities, defeated these men and caused them to turn to other means.

This isn't working. We're not winning these arguments. We need something else. So first, we saw the fullness of the spirit, that Stephen was full of the spirit.

Secondly, the futility of fighting against God. Thirdly, false witnesses.

You know the old saying, if you can't win fairly, cheat, right? That's what they do.

How do they cheat? By suborning perjury. That's the idea of verse 11, then they secretly instigated men.

As I was looking at this, I thought, you know, I really do prefer the King James here. Bob Moodle will like this.

It says, then they suborned men. The Greek verb is hupobalo, which is literally to under throw, which doesn't really help us.

I mean, we could think about throw under the bus, you know, something like that. But the idea is,

I mean, it is kind of instigate to kind of suborn perjury, I guess we could say.

But the idea is, they're going about it by sneaky means, by underhanded means. Okay, under throw.

I guess you could see that. What are they doing?

They're either blackmailing or bribing somebody to lie. If you suborn perjury in a trial, what do you do?

You're getting, I mean, only lawyers typically are accused of this, but other people could, the suspect in a case.

What are you doing? You're getting somebody to lie under oath. You're giving them something in order to get them to do that.

So something sneaky, something underhand is going on. It gives us the idea that they're actually going to lie about Stephen.

So they come up, these liars do, with this charge, blasphemy. Again, verse 11.

These men are instigated, who said, We have heard him speak blasphemous words against Moses and God.

One commentator, Paul Hill, said, The order of the blasphemy charge is unusual. I mean, if you think about it, how are you going to start a charge about blasphemy, which is to say something that's untrue about God?

You would say something blasphemy against God, right? But he says, Against Moses and God.

How do you commit blasphemy against Moses? The idea here is that Stephen is denigrating the word of God, denigrating what

Moses taught. And then, what is it that's blasphemous about God?

Well, that he's denigrating the temple of God. Ultimately, that's what we're going to see. Since they couldn't win the debate, they persuaded some men to declare him a blasphemer.

That's the charge they're going to bring against him. So something they haven't been able to establish by the scriptures, they're just going to lie about him.

Then next notice that there's really a mob arrest. In the old west, this would be called what?

A lynching. I mean, I kind of stepped back from that, not because of what you might think, but because lynching legally means taking somebody out of police custody.

But in the vernacular, we would think of lynching is, you know, it's just a mob out of control.

They go in, they get somebody, and they do something untoward. In the old west, they would go and get a horse and a rope and, you know, hang them.

But look at verse 12. And they stirred up the people, these men and these false witnesses, and the elders and scribes, and they came upon him and seized him and brought him before the council.

So you can see this whole plan. What do you do? You know, you gather a crowd, and then you bring these false witnesses in.

You ask them some, you know, some softball questions and let them hit the ball. And what do they say?

They say, oh, we heard Stephen. He was saying blasphemous things about Moses, blasphemous things about the temple, blasphemous things about God.

And what happens over time, the crowd gets angrier and angrier and angrier, and they don't go for a horse and a rope.

They don't go for pitchforks and torches, like in some medieval movie. They just go to where he is, and they go get him.

And they drag him before the Sanhedrin. This, again, the religious authorities.

That's where they're going to take him. Stephen, this blasphemer, needs to be given justice, mob justice.

Maybe he's going to get 39 lashes like the apostles did. They seize him.

They take him illegally, and they take him before the council. So we've seen fool of the spirit, first F, second, futility of fighting against God, third, false witnesses, and fourth, kind of a mixture of the third one, but the fourth one too, false accusations.

And they set up false witnesses. You know the word for witnesses. Jesus said in Acts 1 .8,

that the 12 were going to be his witnesses, or to us. Same word from which we get martyr, but they're going to be his witnesses,

Jesus' witnesses. But these men, when it says that they set up false witnesses, they're witnesses, marturus, and then, sudes, false witnesses.

I remember a few things about high school. I'm old, but I'm not that old.

And one is, the way that we would just kind of latch on to certain things. And I remember for quite a while,

I don't even know how many months, but this whole idea of pseudo, just like, I don't know why, but it thrilled our souls.

So we'd walk around, you know, and so like, well that song has a pseudo melody, which meant it wasn't that great of a song.

Or I understand that you went on a pseudo date with some girl, right? So everything was insulted by putting pseudo in front of it.

And the idea here is, that these are witnesses of a false nature.

They're only going to spew lies. They're going to talk about things that did not happen.

And for Luke to level that charge, shows the seriousness with which he's writing this. When we think about it, you know,

Luke, if we go back to the very beginning of the Gospel of Luke, or the Book of Acts, what's Luke doing?

He's writing an orderly account of things that happened. What did that mean? It didn't mean that he personally witnessed everything, but that he got reliable sources.

So who was the source for this story? Some commentators think, and I thought this was kind of interesting, that maybe

Paul was his witness for this. Possible.

Because Paul might have been involved in this group here, because some of those people would have been from his hometown, as it were.

And if we just take that for a moment, and we think, how would Paul have thought about these men?

He would have thought about them, you know, they were liars, they were false witnesses. And of course, he'd be thinking about his own complicity in the murder of Stephen.

But as he's telling this story to Luke, he would say, these men stirred us up.

They got us going. We seized them. This is a prime example of this whole story, about why one of the

Ten Commandments, Exodus 20, 16, you shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.

Why? Because in some cases, lying can be deadly. What kind of lies are they telling?

Well, as I said before, they're saying that he spoke against the temple. Look at verse 13, who said, this man never ceases to speak words against this holy place in the law.

Now, right away, if you listen to that, I mean, this is just something, you don't have to be a police officer or anything to understand this.

If somebody says, they never stop, what does that mean? It means somebody's exaggerating.

Never is, as I would say to my kids, a very long time. This man, first of all, notice that.

What does that mean? Why would you say this man, instead of using his name? What do you do when you say this man?

You're dehumanizing him. It's an insult of sorts, and one that was used frequently against Jesus.

Even if you just think about while he was on trial, and even after his death, just a few verses. John 18, verse 30, they answered him, if this man was not doing evil, we would not have delivered him over to you.

18, verse 40, they cried out again, not this man, don't release this man, but Barabbas.

Now Barabbas was a robber. John 19, verse 12, from then on, Pilate sought to release him, but the

Jews cried out, if you release this man, you are not Caesar's friend.

Everyone who makes himself a king opposes Caesar. John 19, verse 21, so the chief priests of the

Jews said to Pilate, do not write, this is the inscription over his grave, do not write, the king of the

Jews, but rather, this man said, I am king of the Jews. They don't even include

Jesus. Why? To demean him. In the same way they're demeaning Stephen.

They want to dehumanize him. Second notice, never ceases.

Even when Stephen was preaching, we can be sure that he spoke about a lot of things other than the temple.

How about sin, salvation, the resurrection, third, the vague nature of the charge.

What specifically did he say about the temple? Nothing. Fourth, speaking negatively about the temple could be understood as blasphemy, shows what?

Well, it shows that they had a hyper view of the value of the temple. The temple was a place to go and worship

God. It wasn't a place to be worshipped. Kind of inverted that.

The temple now was a holy place. Not a place, I mean, it was holy, but they'd taken it to a whole other level.

They worshipped the temple, essentially. They also accused him of speaking against the law, verse 13.

Never ceases. And the law, verse 13. I raised similar objections.

What blasphemy is, what lies about God, were uttered by Stephen. What lies about the law were uttered by Stephen.

We know the answer. None. But this is an attempt to have Stephen convicted without any genuine deliberation.

There's no trial by jury. I'm Mr.

Meme here this morning. It's like, look, we all know he's guilty, so if we could just get to that point and go home, that would be great.

Let's kind of dispense with everything. Let's just get it done. They don't care about what's right.

They are literally trying to have a man condemned who is completely innocent of their bogus charges.

And notice also in verse 14 that they cite Jesus. They cite

Jesus, verse 14. For we have heard him say that this Jesus of Nazareth will destroy this place and will change the customs that Moses delivered to us.

Now, if you were his attorney, if you were Stephen's defense attorney, you'd want to say, Your Honor, I object.

And on what grounds? These people, these people that are bringing these charges, don't even believe that Jesus is raised from the dead.

And yet they're trying to raise this idea that Stephen is talking about Jesus as if he's going to destroy the temple.

How does a dead man destroy the temple? And at best, it's some kind of mangled interpretation of John 2 .19

where Jesus said, Destroy this temple and in three days

I will raise it up. What was he talking about? He wasn't challenging them to destroy the temple. He was saying,

If you destroy my body, if you put me to death, in three days I will raise it up.

It's a prediction of his resurrection. It had nothing to do with the destruction of the temple. Now, what power, again, what power would a dead man have to change the traditions that Moses gave them?

If Jesus was dead and they believed that he was, could he change what

Moses said? No. Now, did

Jesus ever change the traditions of Moses? What about in the

Sermon on the Mount where he said, You have heard it said, but I say to you, was he changing things?

No. He was teaching them to look beyond the man -made interpretations of Mosaic law by the

Pharisees and that's what he relentlessly assaulted. If you just think about what he said to the

Pharisees in chapter 23, verse 15 of Matthew. He said, Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you travel across sea and land to make a single proselyte, a convert.

And when he becomes a proselyte, you make him twice as much a child of hell as yourselves.

Why? Because it was law upon law upon law that you're going to please God by obeying.

But there was absolutely no truth in any of these charges. One scholar,

Witherington, draws some parallels between Stephen and Jesus and I thought they were good.

First, they were both put on trial, both subjected to sham legal procedures and both were threatened with stoning at different points.

Secondly, false witnesses were brought. Both had to listen to men come.

I mean, imagine that. You've got to come and listen to men lie about you. And Jesus, when he was lied about, what did he do?

He said, Nothing. Like a sheep before its shearer's assailant.

Thirdly, Accusations regarding the temple's destruction. Both were accused of uttering that the temple would be destroyed.

Fourthly, charged with blasphemy. It's interesting.

John 10 verses 31 to 33. The Jews picked up stones again to stone him.

This isn't the first time they've tried this. Jesus answered them. I have shown you many good works from the father.

For which of them are you going to stone me? The Jews answered him and said, It is not for a good work that we are going to stone you, but for blasphemy.

Because you being a man, make yourself God. Well, at least they got the charge right there.

Right? At least they understood that he was saying that he was God. Fifthly, back to the parallels.

Fifthly, asked by the high priest to speak. Stephen will shortly be asked by the high priest to speak.

Sixthly, they commit their spirits to God. We're going to see that next week as well.

Seventh, they ask for forgiveness for those murdering them. And eighth, this isn't a parallel, and this isn't something

Witherington wrote. I just thought about this, and yes, there are many parallels, but there's a big difference.

I mean, it would be easy to say, you know what? If I could just say one thing to you guys this morning, be like Stephen.

If Stephen were here, he would say what? Don't be like me.

He would say, I need a savior. Jesus didn't.

He was and is the savior. So we've seen four F's, full of the spirit, futility of fighting against God.

Third, false witnesses. Fourth, false accusations. Fifth, face of an angel. Verse 15, and gazing at him, all who sat in the council saw his face was like that of an angel.

Again, we have this picture of Stephen standing in the well, as it were, because everybody's above him.

71 members of the Sanhedrin, Pharisees, Sadducees, the high priest, all sitting there in judgment of Stephen.

And as they look down on him, what do they see? This face of an angel.

A couple things struck me from looking at that this week. Several commentators said this is much like what

Luke's trying to do is bring up the picture of Moses as, because we've just talked about Moses.

Moses says he descends from Mount Sinai. What's his face doing? Shining. Maybe. But another said this, that this face of an angel becomes kind of the way martyr after martyr in church history is described right before they're put to death.

They have this face of an angel. And I think that tradition starts right here. They look at him.

And what does it mean to have a face of an angel? You get to look at your little babies and think, Oh, a little angel face. Love up on that Viper.

What does it mean? It just means he's got this innocent looking face. Why? Because there's no guile.

There's no, and there's no fear here. He knows that he's innocent and he's trusting in the

Lord. Whatever happens, it's like, I'm okay. I've done what

I'm supposed to do. And whatever happens here, it's entirely in the Lord's hands. And I trust him.

And we're going to see that next week. Now, again, I ask, what are you willing to die for?

And I think it's clear. Most of us will never have the opportunity and we'll never have to worry about making that decision.

But there's something else that's very clear. Every one of us is going to die.

Every single one of us. It's appointed to men, what? Once to die and then to judgment.

What will we say at judgment day? When God looks at us, is he going to say,

Oh, look at the face of an angel. He knows our hearts.

He knows what we've done. He knows our sins. And if Stephen were here, he would say, God knows my heart.

He knows what I've done. He knows that I'm guilty. I violated all the commandments.

I deserve hell. My confidence is not in what

I have done. My confidence is what Jesus did. Truly God, truly man.

And the idea that the eternal God would come to earth and take on human flesh and live a life bound by his own creation.

That's a wonder. That should make us all just take a step back and think, why would

God do that for me? That would be one thing. But then to go and to be silent and to submit himself to all that he was put through in these fake trials that he went through and ultimately put on the cross, mocked and scorned while he's on the cross.

If you're the son of God, save yourself. He hung on that cross for three hours, taking the complete wrath of God for every sin that every believer would ever commit.

Why? Because he loved us and because he determined before the foundation of the world that he would redeem a people.

And he did that. He stayed until every last ounce of the wrath of God for those sins that we would commit was paid for.

He satisfied the wrath of God on our behalf. Whoever you are today, if you've not believed on the

Lord Jesus Christ, may I just implore you to trust him because that's what it means to believe who he is and to trust him entirely with your soul, with your life.

Let's pray. Father, even though we know

Stephen was a sinner, it's so amazing to look at what he underwent and just to think your spirit working through a sinful man is amazing.

Stephen was a formidable weapon in your hands and we praise you for his life.

Father, we know that dare to be a Stephen preaching is wrong, but Lord, would you enable us to do the things that you have called us to do?

Would you grant us the fullness of your spirit as we seek after you that we might see wonderful things around us and just marvel that you would use us as instruments of your grace, as instruments of your gospel, as instruments of your spirit.

Father, let us determine for ourselves to preach

Christ and him crucified, to not be ashamed of the gospel, no matter what the circumstances are, to be bold, fearless, knowing that ultimately you control our destiny.

You control when our life ends. We can't by worrying, by avoiding certain situations, we can't add one moment to it.