Lessons from Stephen's Courage.

For the past couple of years, we've been partnering with Neighborhood House, and two years ago, we were invited to join them in co-hosting the Madison Good Neighbor Gathering. It was originally started by neighborhood associations, and Neighborhood House kind of took it over and invited us to partner with them. Last year was our first time getting to do it, and you can see all the lovely volunteers there in the picture. This is a huge undertaking for us as a church, especially a church of our size, but it has been incredible to see how God has been moving in the neighborhoods.

Coming up September 8th, from 12 to 4 at Brittingham Park, just down the street, we are going to have an entire tent of neighborhood community resources for people to check out. There's going to be bounce houses for kids, rock walls, and live local performers the entire afternoon. It is a beautiful time to really celebrate the neighborhood and what is happening, and also a great chance for us to just love families and our community.

Even last night, I was out with my family and we went to a Madison festival. Madison is filled with festivals, right? It's like every single weekend in the summer. But all you usually find is music, which is amazing, food trucks, and a whole lot of beer because we live in Wisconsin. But there's not always a lot of festivals that are geared towards families. The Madison Good Neighbor Gathering is an alcohol-free festival that is specifically designed for families to come together. So this is really special, and I want to invite you guys. You can use the code to sign up to serve. We'll put it in our Slack and have it on our website. I just got word this past week that the mayor is coming to give a speech in the middle of the afternoon. So that's going to be fun.

We're really excited about and honored to be able to partner with our community in loving our neighbors.

Stephen's courage in witness

All right, we are going to be continuing our series in Acts chapter 7, and this is going to be a big passage of scripture today. Whenever we preach through books of the Bible, sometimes you get to passages and it's like, that's a lot of scripture. I'm going to be honest, sometimes I try but I like, I can't cut any of it out, guys. We just have to read it all. It's all so important.

I would invite you, if you have your Bibles, to pull it open to Acts chapter 7. We'll have the text on the screen. If at any point you need a Bible, we have some in the back. We'd love to get it in your hands. We're going to be talking about the story of Stephen today.

Last week, my cousins texted me and asked, "Hey, what are you doing?" They don't live around here. They live in Illinois. They're like, "We're going to be at the Dells. Do you want to come?" I've only been to the Dells a few times. I'm not from Wisconsin, so I'm still learning the Wisconsin ways, and like that's a thing you do. But I went with them, and I'm going to be honest, sometimes water parks bring out like the worst in me. Can we have a moment of confession this morning?

There's something about standing on top of a slide after you have been holding this giant tube, and your arms are like going numb because you've dragged the tube all the way to the top, and then you're standing there and kids behind you are pushing their tubes against you and kids in front of you are bopping you with their tubes. My gut, my impulse in me is like I just want to push them back, and I know that's not something I should even admit today. I love children. I've never actually intentionally pushed a child in my life, but there's something about when you're standing there in the heat and you just keep getting bumped with these tubes. You're like, I just want to bump you right back.

There's something that just happens to me, and I'm like, where is this coming from? But after last weekend, I'm like, I don't think you've fully experienced a water park until you have been bumped by a stranger with their tube or just with their body or unless you have accidentally stepped on a band-aid. I think those are the two things at water parks. It's like, why are there so many band-aids? Did we all decide to just like cut our body up, put on band-aids, and go to the water park? Or is someone secretly walking around just leaving band-aids to gross us out all day? Either way, water parks are quite the experience.

But there's something about that pressure of being like, oh my gosh, my impulse is to just bump you right back. Today we're reading about the story of Stephen. What happens in the passage leading up to chapter seven in chapter six is it says that Stephen is full of the grace of God and all these miraculous things are happening. He's performing these miracles and it's good and it's beautiful. All of a sudden, the religious people are trying to stop him. They literally get together and they're like, we're going to accuse him and we're going to start planting these lies about Stephen, this apostle, this man of God who's doing the work of God. We're going to accuse him of doing these blasphemous things, of speaking against Moses, of speaking against God. We're going to bring him before the people now to defend himself.

What I love about Stephen and what we're going to see is that his impulse is not to just push them back and to just go and meet them with the same thing that they met him with. Instead, he uses what he assumes could be potentially his last words, and are his last words, to preach the gospel of Jesus and to point people closer to the ways and the word of God.

Stephen was a man after God. He was a man that knew the word of God and he followed the ways of Jesus in such a way that eventually he was martyred and he was stoned and he gave his life for the gospel. In this moment, when people are coming up against him, when they're giving him all that they can to persecute him, he uses this moment to preach the good news of Jesus.

We're going to go through this chunk of scripture and talk about what we can learn from the life of Stephen. Every single week we have a "so what," like what is this all about? And then we have a "now what," what do we do with this?

Our so what today is that the more that we read the word of God, the more we will remember who God is and the life that we were created for. The more that we are people that read the word of God and we spend time learning his ways. What did God say? How did he move throughout scriptures? How did Jesus live his life? The more that we're going to know God and we're going to be able to trust God in the way that Stephen trusted God in these moments. So that we know what we were created for and we can live that out.

What do we do with that? Well, the simple application today is read the word of God. Spend time reading the word of God so we can make way for Jesus. Every week we talk about spiritual practices we're committed to. We have these cards that we always hand out, and one of them that we want to be as a church continuing to grow in is starting our day and spending time each and every day in scripture. We're going to see the importance of that in Stephen and how he responded to this.

Stephen knew this could be his last words, and he chooses to preach the gospel. This shows us here that something inside of him knew that he was not here to just please man or to just give them what they wanted in this moment. He was here to please God. It shows that there was something in him that knew that he was created for more than just this moment, and he surrendered that moment, trusting that God was going to do what he was going to do with it.

Reading the word to remember where we came from

So starting today, when people are coming up against you, when you feel like you are in a place where you being accused, where you being misrepresented, mistreated, what is your response? How do you respond in those moments?

We're going to start reading in Acts chapter 7. This is Stephen's response.

Are these things true, the high priest asked. Brothers and fathers, he replied, listen. The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia before he settled in Haran and said to him, Leave your country and relatives and come to the land that I will show you. Then he left the land of the Chaldeans and settled in Haran. From there, after his father died, God had him move to the land in which you are now living. He didn't give him an inheritance in it, not even a foot of ground, but he promised to give it to him as a possession and to his descendants after him, even though he was childless. God spoke in this way. His descendants would be strangers in a foreign country, and they would enslave and oppress them for 400 years. I will judge the nation that they will serve as slaves, God said. After this, they will come out and worship me in this place. And so he gave Abraham the covenant of circumcision. After this, he fathered Isaac and circumcised him on the eighth day. Isaac became the father of Jacob, and Jacob became the father of the 12 patriarchs.

Acts 7:1-8

Stephen is being accused of four accounts of blasphemy. So now he's kind of addressing these different areas. He's being accused of blaspheming against God. And so he's going in and saying God is the person that he's naming here. This is interesting. He is only the second person. There's another time in Psalms 29, but Stephen is only the second person here where he uses this phrase, "the God of glory." Even that is kind of pointing back to the fact that Stephen knew the word of God. He knew the Psalms. He knew this was a part of his language. He's only the second person in scripture to say that.

But then he's going on and he's talking about the God of the patriarchs. He's going to talk about them and Moses and the tabernacle. This is showing us here that Stephen knew the word of God. He used this moment to remind the rest of the people around him, the religious leaders that were coming up against him, that this is the story that we are born into. This is who God has been for generations. He's reminding them of their history. He's reminding them where they came from.

This is important to understand. In first century Judaism, which is when a lot of the New Testament would have been taking place, they would have memorized the Torah, the first five books of the Bible. And so sometimes we think about that when we're like, man, I maybe got a couple verses I know. But like they memorized books of the Bible. Not like the easy ones. Like the law. Like the names that I can't even pronounce right. They memorized that. So this was common. Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, they would have known this. They would have passed down these stories through oral tradition.

Stephen's looking at these people and he's kind of reminding them of things that they would have known. So that's why he's mentioning snippets of the story, because he's like, you guys know all of this. This is great, great, great, great grandpa Moses we're talking about here. You would have known these things.

The first thing I want to talk about here is that reading the word helps us remember where we came from. As we read the word, we can remember where we came from. This is the story that we have been born into, about how God has been moving among his people and is right here moving in our midst.

God's presence is not confined to one place

So then it goes on to talk about the patriarchs in Egypt.

In the sight of Pharaoh, king of Egypt, who appointed him ruler over Egypt and over his whole household. Now a famine and a great suffering came over all of Egypt and Canaan, and our ancestors could find no food. When Jacob heard that there was grain in Egypt, he sent our ancestors there the first time. The second time, Joseph revealed himself to his brothers, and Joseph's family became known to Pharaoh. Joseph invited his father Jacob and all his relatives, 75 people in all, and Jacob went down to Egypt. He and our ancestors died there and were carried back to Shechem and were placed in the tomb that Abraham had bought for a sum of silver from the sons of Hamor and Shechem.

Acts 7:10-16

So the next thing that we see here is that we're starting to see this pattern. Not only as we read scripture do we remember where we came from, but he's addressing this idea that the presence of God is not confined to just one person or one place. See, they were used to this idea that it was the tabernacle and they had this one place and only certain people that God's presence would come upon. But Stephen is reminding them, we see God moving in all different people and all different places all throughout time.

But we see some of these words here where he's reminding them of what happened to Joseph and almost what's happening in this moment. As Stephen was preaching the word of God, all of a sudden they start coming up against him, and you can kind of sense there was some jealousy that was happening there of, well, we're the religious leaders. We should be the one that holds all the power and all the control. We should be the one that God is allowing the miracles to flow through. And then this apostle starts rising up and God is moving left and right. And it's like this jealousy rises up.

So I think it's interesting then that he's reminding them of Joseph and the brothers. He's saying they became jealous. Joseph was sold into slavery by his brothers because they were jealous, not because he did anything wrong. And this is such a good reminder for us too. As we continue to follow God, we still might come up against things. We still might get pushed around a little bit. It doesn't mean that everything is going to be smooth sailing, but we can continue to trust God's plan in the midst.

You can see this in Stephen, that he was so trusting of God. He was so trusting of what God had really created him for. I love Galatians 1:10 where Paul says.

Am I here to please men or God? For if I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ.

Galatians 1:10

You see, Stephen in this moment, as he continues to remind people of these stories, rather than using his last words to defend himself, it's so clear that he knows, I'm not here to appease you. I'm not here to make you love me or think that I'm so good and worthy. I'm here to lead you closer to Jesus. I'm here to please God.

The pattern of God's provision

So let me remind you of the patterns that we see in scripture, and let me remind you that God's presence came not just here anymore in a certain place or a certain time for a certain people, but for all people. Let's keep reading.

As the time was approaching to fulfill the promise that God had made to Abraham, the people flourished and multiplied in Egypt until a different king who did not know Joseph ruled over Egypt. He dealt deceitfully with our race and oppressed our ancestors by making them abandon their infants outside so they wouldn't survive. At this time Moses was born and he was beautiful in God's sight. He was cared for in his father's home for three months. When he was put outside, Pharaoh's daughter adopted and raised him as her own. So Moses was educated in all the wisdom of the Egyptians and was powerful in his speech and action.

Acts 7:17-22

I love here where it starts to mention that the king didn't know the story, that the king had forgotten Joseph. So something had happened here where they no longer knew what was happening.

I also want us to start to notice here some of the patterns. When it talks about God appeared to Abraham as he was in Mesopotamia, and then it talks about now God is coming and he's going to use Moses, even though Moses was now in this place of Egypt and he's being educated. So we start to see the different types of people that God uses, right? We start to follow these patterns that they don't all look the same. They don't all come from the same places. But God is using them regardless.

When he was 40 years old, he decided to visit his own people, the Israelites. When he saw one of them being mistreated, he came to his rescue and avenged the oppressed man by striking down the Egyptian. He assumed his people would understand that God would give them deliverance through him, but they did not understand. The next day he showed up while they were fighting and tried to reconcile them peacefully, saying, "Men, you are brothers. Why are you mistreating each other?" But the one who was mistreating his neighbor pushed Moses aside, saying, "Who appointed you a ruler and a judge over us? Do you want to kill me the same way you killed the Egyptian yesterday?" When he heard that Moses had fled and became an exile in the land of Midian, he became the father of two sons. After 40 years, an angel appeared to him in the wilderness of Mount Sinai in the flame of a burning bush. When Moses saw it, he was amazed at the sight. As he was approaching to look at it, the voice of the Lord came. "I am the God of your ancestors, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob." Moses began to tremble and did not dare to look.

Acts 7:23-32

Now, what I love about this in the passage too is you start to see. It's like Stephen is reminding the people of his day about the God of our ancestors. And he's quoting a time where God appeared to Moses to remind him that he is the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, the God of his ancestors. We're seeing this pattern again of this idea that we need to be reminded that God's presence is coming upon us as a people and that he wants to meet with us and appear to us.

We need to be reminded, because it's so easy for us to forget, just like the religious leaders forgot, and to start to make things about the wrong thing and to start to make things about the wrong people and anything other than the person of Jesus.

Remembrance prevents us from repeating mistakes

So we're going to jump here to verse 37.

Moses who said to the Israelites, "I will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your brothers. He is the one who was in the assembly in the wilderness with the angel who spoke to him on Mount Sinai and with our ancestors. He received living oracles to give to us. Our ancestors were unwilling to obey him. Instead, they pushed him aside and in their hearts turned back to Egypt."

Acts 7:37-39

Remembrance. Why do we need to remember these things? Because remembrance prevents us from repeating the same mistakes. We see it. We see the patterns that continue to happen. He's going through these stories, and he's reading them, and he's reminding them of what happened. Our ancestors were unwilling to obey. So instead, they pushed him aside, and their hearts turned back towards Egypt. Egypt was their place of captivity. Egypt was their place of slavery. Egypt was the place that they had been stuck in, the place that God had freed them from. But in their disobedience, they went back because they forgot.

The moment that Moses left them, they went and they built this golden calf, something else to worship and to replace God with because they forgot. We are forgetful people. We need to be reminded of how God has moved and will move.

So you see another pattern here. They would say our ancestors did this, the fathers did this. And then when the sons of the next generation came along, they forgot. We forget so fast. They didn't know who Joseph was anymore by the time you get to the end of these stories. They forgot all of these things that were happening.

Do we tell stories about where we have seen God and what God is doing? Are we practicing telling stories of how God has moved in our life?

Just this week, I was sitting with someone from our church, and they were reminding me of just last year. They're like, "Oh, remember that one time that me, you, so-and-so, and so-and-so were praying?" And I was like, I have no memory of that. They shared this story, and they're like, "That time in prayer changed my life. After that, I've never been the same." And I was like, whoa. As they started sharing, I started to remember. And now it's like I'm encouraged to keep going. I feel that empowerment again to be like, God, you are moving. And sometimes we don't always see it. I forget it so quickly. But you are doing miracles all around us. Your presence is right here in our midst.

So will we continue to turn and to be aware and to be obedient? Or will we forget? And will we turn to try and replace God with anything else that we can in the moment?

God's dwelling place is now among us

It goes on.

Our ancestors have the tabernacle of the testimony in the wilderness, just as he who spoke to Moses commanded him to make it according to the pattern he had seen. Our ancestors in turn received it, and with Joshua brought it in when they dispossessed the nations, and God drove out before them until the days of David. He found favor in God's sight and asked that he might provide a dwelling place for the God of Jacob. It was Solomon, rather, who built him a house. But the Most High does not dwell in sanctuaries made with hands, as the prophet says. "Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool. What sort of house will you have built for me, says the Lord? Or what will be my resting place? Did not my hand make all things?" The Most High does not dwell in sanctuaries made by hands.

Acts 7:44-50

You see, when Jesus came, things changed. Because Jesus came as both fully human and fully divine. And when he died on the cross to pay the price for our sins and was raised back to life, he then left with us his Holy Spirit and said, "You, now my people, you will be my dwelling place." His presence is among us. His presence is within us. His presence is all around us.

And we don't have to wait till we get here on Sundays to be in the presence of God, right? We don't have to wait until we're praying with certain people to be in the presence of God. We can call upon the name of the Lord Jesus, and he is with us through his Holy Spirit.

Stephen is using his last words here to remind people of this, to make them aware of this so that they know his dwelling is now among you. Where people all over scripture continue to get off is when they start to think that it was about a person. When they started to pick certain people on these pedestals and think it's all about them. Where people started to get off and where we still get off is when we think that it's about a certain place. If only we're here in this moment, in this time, then God is going to move.

But Jesus came. Jesus did the work on the cross. He who knew no sin became sin so that we could experience his presence to the fullness. And this is the reality that we get to live in today.

But the devil wants nothing more than for us to believe that it's just certain people, it's certain places. But what would it look like for us to start to believe the word of God and walk in the ways of Jesus, trusting that he wants the miracles to flow through our hands? That he wants to see people come to know him and is going to use our words and us walking in his ways to do that?

Let us not just get stuck in doing what we've done because that's what we've done. You see, the religious leaders at this time, they started to see these things happen with Stephen and it's like the jealousy rises up and this intimidation rises up. And now they're like, well, we've got to stop this because this isn't what we were expecting. This isn't what we're used to.

But God is moving. He is creating new things all around us each and every day. Will we listen?

When we go back to read the stories, we start to see that things change from generation to generation. It wasn't the same type of people. It wasn't the same type of places. It didn't look the same. But what was the same was God's presence. And he was pouring his presence out on all people.

Our last words, our witness

In the midst of persecution, what comes out of Stephen is the word of God. When he is being pressed and pushed up against, it is the word of God and stories of how God has moved among his people that start to come out of him. He is reminding us that sometimes it's the moments and it's the people and it's the places that we least expect it that God decides to pour his spirit out.

Stephen was not who they were expecting. Last week, we talked about how Stephen was chosen to be one of the seven, one of the apostles that would take care of the church and take care of the people. And there was a divide that was happening between the Hebraic Jews and the Hellenistic Jews. The Hebraic Jews were like, it's got to be us. The Hebraic Jews, like we have to be the ones that hold down the fort, right? And instead they chose someone like Stephen, a Hellenistic Jew, someone that did not make sense to maybe who they thought God was going to use to be the one to lead the church at that time.

And now this young man is being persecuted. And what flows out of him is not just a speech. It's not him defending and trying to get out of what's about to happen. But it is a sermon. It is him preaching the gospel. This speech was made to proclaim the gospel of Jesus.

And I can't help but wonder for us, when we are in our darkest moments, when we feel like everything is coming up against us, do we use that to push back? Or do we use that to push people closer to Jesus? Do we use that to use our words to defend ourselves? Or do we use our words to direct them to the glory of God and to remind them that God still wants to appear to them today?

You see, in life, we will not always be treated fairly. We will have even religious people that will try to come up, maybe against us at times. Because they're coming to him, and they're coming with all of these crazy expectations. They're like, well, we can't find anything wrong, so let's try and accuse him of this. They have all of these standards. They're being unfair. They're being unkind.

But Stephen had a choice to make. And we have a choice to make. Will we use that time to show people how wrong they are? Or to show them that there is another way? And that way is Jesus?

And I'll be honest, so often that's the thing that rises up in us, right? Is when someone's treating you wrongly, it's like all I want to do is just show you how wrong you are right now. I'm mad, I'm hurt, and our feelings are real. So there's this thing inside of us that maybe our go-to is just that of I want to now show people how wrong. But what Stephen does is he completely flips the script. He's like, I want to remind you of the ways of Jesus and how God has been moving leading up to the cross and now after the cross. How God poured his spirit out and how his spirit is among us here in this moment.

What do you do with your last words to people? If people are treating you wrongly, what would your last words be to them? Would you use it to tell them how evil they are, that they are condemned? Or would you remind them of the good news, the hope, the love of Jesus?

Because God wants relationship with us. He longs to dwell with us and be in communion with us. That's why he sent Jesus to die on the cross, to make way for us to have relationship for all of eternity. And he longs for us to use our words and the way that we live to draw people closer to him.

But if we're going to be like Stephen, where when we're pushed up against, what comes as a response is the words of God, the scriptures, then we're going to have to read the word of God. We're going to have to know the scriptures. We're going to have to be committed to telling stories of how we see God at work, reminding each other of how we see God at work.

So in those moments, we don't use the words that we have to condemn people, to defend ourselves. But rather to call them closer to Jesus and to remind them that he longs to dwell with them too.

The influence of faithful witness

In a couple weeks, we're going to jump into Acts chapter 8 and 9. In Acts 8:1 it says, it starts to talk about Saul who was persecuting Christians. It says Saul was there and gave approval to Stephen's death. Saul, he was persecuting Christians, and he sees that Stephen's died, and it says he gave approval to that death.

And then we're going to read shortly after that in chapter nine, that Saul meets Jesus. Saul's life is completely changed, is completely transformed by meeting Jesus. He's never the same. His name is no longer Saul and that old identity. Now he goes by Paul, which, thanks to Paul, we have the majority of the New Testament.

And I want to point back to Galatians. We read this verse in Galatians 1:10 where it says Paul, this is Paul writing, and Paul says, "Am I not here to please man or am I here to please God? For if I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ."

Saul was there when Stephen died. And I can't help but wonder the influence that Stephen's death had on the life of Paul. Paul witnessed Stephen's last words being words that pointed other people to Jesus. He witnessed Stephen love Jesus so much that he literally gave his life for Jesus. And then we see that Paul did the same.

Paul used every word. His hand probably went numb from the amount of words that he was writing and the ways that he spoke. He laid down his life for Jesus. And I can't help but wonder for Stephen, what it was like taking that final breath, not knowing how God was going to use it, but trusting that as he was obedient to continue to follow the ways of Jesus, to lay down his life, to preach the word of God, that God was going to use it. And then we see Paul.

You see, we never know the weight and the influence that our words can have. We never know who is around, who's listening, who's watching. And so the next time that we find ourselves in any moment that we get to speak, that we get to live in the ways of Jesus, sometimes it might not come easy. Sometimes we might want to give a defense. But instead, would we too use our last breath, our last words to preach the hope that Jesus came and that Jesus is coming again?

May this be hope for you that if you find yourself in a place where you're like, I don't really understand what God is doing with this situation. I don't really understand what he's doing. Maybe you can't see a way forward. Maybe you can't see a way that God is moving. Trust that he is. Trust that he is doing more than we could ever begin to comprehend.

We never know what God is doing through our obedience. And so today, when we talk about reading the word, it might seem like, yeah, that's simple. But we read the word so that we can continue to be reminded of who God is, of how he has been moving, and his presence is in our midst. So that we can be reminded that we were created to dwell in his presence for all of eternity and that we can trust that what he is doing is good, that what he is doing is for his glory.

Stephen knew this. And so Stephen was willing to say, God, I give you this last moment. I surrender it to you. So I'm going to invite you to stand today. We're just going to close in a time of worship. There's going to be people available in the back. If you are here today and you're like, I would love someone to partner with me in prayer, I would love for you to come and to pray.

But I just want to encourage you today that if you're here and maybe you find yourself in a situation where you're like, man, I don't even know where to begin when it comes to having a relationship with Jesus, when it comes to being in the presence of God, just invite him in today and trust in the same way that he appeared to Moses, he appeared to Joseph. These were all people with crazy different stories. And it wasn't dependent on what they had done, but their willingness to surrender and say, God, will you come? God, I trust you in this moment.

So invite the spirit to do that. And if you're here today and you're in a place where you're like, God, I just need you to remind me because right now I'm struggling to see how you're going to work it out. I'm struggling how you're going to use the situations that I'm in. Would you surrender that to the Lord today?

And would you say, God, I trust you. Like Stephen, would you help me to use my words? Would you remind me of who you are? Help me to use my words to point people to you and to your glory. So let's just take these few minutes to just pray together. If you would like someone to partner with you in prayer, you can come to the back.