0:04
Speaker 2Alright, everybody. Y'all are really good at that, but we're gonna ask you
0:07
Speaker 1to climb aboard and just have a seat. I'm so glad. Singing a song like we sang a few minutes ago was written, I think, in the twenties. But I'm sure when it came out, there were people that were like, oh my goodness. I'm not sure that's worshipful.
6:14
I'm not sure that that's holy music and sacred music, but every generation has that. You know, we all have that kind of thing. And I wanna tell a quick story before I get started on acts six is where we're going. I wanna tell a quick story about a guy named Isaac Watts. Young man Isaac Watts is?
6:30
Yes. You read his name in the hymn book over and over and over again. Isaac Watts was born I think like 1674. It's it's been a while. So Isaac, I was on the way home from youth group.
6:41
No. He's on the way home from from church one Sunday and he was complaining to his dad and he said, dad, it's just that the music is terrible. And they had fallen in line with the tradition since the reformation. The reformers said what we ought to sing in scriptures and we ought to sing it in metrical verse exactly this way. This is the way it must be done and they did that and when they were saying it had to be a certain way, they were kind of excluding that and Isaac's main complaint was, it sounds like people are disinterested because it's so far removed.
7:13
You know, David wrote a lot of the songs and we're singing stuff David wrote. It's from his perspective not ours and music terrible and the meter's boring. That's what he said. And dad looked at him and said, well, Isaac, I think that your work is cut out for you. He said, what do you mean?
7:32
He said, you need to be writing music that's better than what we sing. That's what you need to be doing. And he took him at his challenge, I guess, and he wrote like 4,000 hymns. He wrote lots and lots of them, of which they're about 400 business. We got an 800 page hymnal and we have probably 20 or 25 in in that one.
7:55
He wrote When I Survey the Wondrous Cross, he wrote George of the World. He's written a bunch of things and what he decided that he would do is go back and look at the Old Testament through the lens of the new testament and see that Christ is a fulfillment of these things and it is within the heart of every believer. You know, David was king and prophet but not priest. Jesus was prophet, priest, and king. And he knew that from this side of Calvary, it's easier to translate and interpret some of what David was saying.
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So when he writes the songs he would write them from when I survey the wondrous cross on which the prince of glory died. My richest gain account but lost. He's taking psalms and he's updating them and bringing them on up in. This will come back up in the sermon but that's just I wanted to lead off without the blocks and and go from there. So I'm gonna give you the proposition this morning straight up front.
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I'm not gonna hide it. Preaching professors that hide it. No. I want you to see this. So every Christian will be better equipped for life and ministry by recognizing these three assaults of the evil one.
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And I bring that up because in Corinthians, Paul tells us that we need to be wise as to what the schemes of the devil are. So far in acts, we've seen a couple of his trips. We've seen a couple of his assaults, and that's what I wanna do. Groundwork first based on what we've already studied thus far in acts in its four slides. It's real quick.
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But then we wanna go into looking for what the third one is in this section in acts. So the first one is persecution. We saw that when Jesus told them at the beginning, you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and outermost parts. That's like a table of contents for the book of Acts. So Jerusalem, they pretty much covered up.
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While they were there outside the temple and and Peter through God's power is able to heal this guy and lift him up, they immediately suffer persecution. They're arrested. They go to jail. They're told not to speak in the name of Jesus. How should we deal with the assault of persecution?
10:04
But the way they dealt with it was they said we must obey God rather than men, and they dug deep into his word and they prayed for boldness that they would proclaim that word. That's the way they did with it. So application point real quick, how should we deal with this assault, the persecution? Persecution in our day looks completely different than that. It's not likely that a ruling council of elders somewhere is gonna drag us through the streets.
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I don't think Chuck Lindahl and Tom Tom Nelson and David Jeremiah are gonna come get me. You know what I'm saying? I don't think that there's anybody that's gonna just come get me and say, no. No. You can't do this.
10:45
You can't say that. Persecution in our day looks more like peer pressure. It comes up a lot in youth group. We don't think about it a whole lot in normal life. But I was thinking this week on society says that it's okay to end human life.
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As long as it's within the womb are really bad off in old age. That's okay. That's a relative thing and we can make a call on that. God is the one. He's the author of life.
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He's the giver of life. He's the only one that should be able to take it away. That's what the Bible says. So as far as persecution from our society goes, there are a lot of things that they say, no, that's fine. Don't be such a prude.
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Don't be so ugly about things. You're so narrow minded. You're so exclusive. No. That's not the case.
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What should we do? We should do just what they did. Hold fast to the word of God, what it says, believe it, and obey God rather than men. And when... Then we pray to our sovereign Lord as they pray.
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Pray to a sovereign God that can and does change things or use them for his glory and pray for boldness. That's the way I pray for boldness amidst persecution to share lovingly the gospel with those who would persecute you. Many captors, not captives, many captors have been persuaded by their captives with a Christian attitude. So persecution, that's the way to handle it. So continue proclaiming this word and then do so.
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The next one is hypocrisy. We saw this in the example last week a week before of Amnesty and Sapphira. That's the way it worked out in the Bible. Amnesty and Sapphira wanted to look better than they were. They wanted it to appear that they had given all just like Barnabas, but they held some back.
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Security was more important than generosity. And they were an example, negative example given, and it was really about hypocrisy. Jesus called the Pharisees hypocrites. He had not good things to say about hypocrisy, but we all know that we're all apt to do it. We all wanna look better than we know that we are.
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Better than our old nature. Now we know that Christ can make us better than our old nature, and that's where we need to be living our life. But we do fall into the trap as we'll see later on in acts when Peter starts acting a different way because somebody else is around. It's like, oh, he's got out Christian them at that point. So hypocrisy of internal pressure.
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External pressure, you can't really do anything about when it comes upon you, but you can pray for boldness to stand up against it. Internal pressure, what can we do? The whole paragraph. All of us have the capacity for self deception and hypocrisy. And if you don't think that you do, you've already slept.
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Be careful lest you fall, Peter said. Paul said it to you. Recognizing that it's possible for us to fall is a good step. Seeing that it is actually pride, the original sin, the one that got the devil thrown out of the band of angels. The boldness to admit to God.
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So it's boldness again. We So gotta pray for boldness to stand up against persecution, and then the boldness to admit to ourselves and to God, and oh, gracious, oh, uncomfortable to others sometimes. That's what's required to get past it. Admitting to ourselves and others and to God that we are not what we have been putting on to be. Hypocrite, you know, originally means putting on a mask, someone who would hide themselves behind a mask.
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God will give us a righteous way to escape. He said that I will put no more on you than you can bear, and I will give you a way out. Usually, though, the way is through tenants. That's tough. Realizing that you have been wrong and admitting that to God, yourself, and to others.
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And then he's able to forgive. He can and does forgive, and that's the glorious thing. That's why we have such a blessed hope in Christ because he is able to do that. And we've seen that so far in Acts. Those are the two.
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The third one, I'm gonna let you look for in the first verse, we'll see what it was. First verse this week is Acts six verses one through seven. We'll concentrate on for right now. And verses one for right now, it says, but as the believers rapidly multiply, there were rumblings of discontent. Actually, in the Greek right there, it says, That word is.
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It sounds like murmuring. It sounds like like that. It's actually onomatopoeia, if you know what it is. Onomatopoeia is when a word sounds like a word it represents like. Okay?
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Don't be nice. Don't nice. It sounds like murmuring. It is murmuring. Rumbling with the discontent is the way doctor Larkin and the New Living Translator saw it.
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Translator. The Greek speaking believers, the Hellenistic Jews, Jewish Christians complained about the Hebrew speaking believers. Those are Hebrews. Hebrew or Aramaic speaking believers. Saying that their widows, the Greek speaking widows, were being discriminated against in the daily distribution of food.
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Do you see what the third one is? The third assault of the devil or scheme of Satan? The first one, persecution. The second one is hypocrisy. The third one is murmuring.
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Murmuring. Murmuring. So the possibility for destruction, the potential for destruction is so great when there is murmuring. Now we don't see this word. The reason I key in on it is because in the New Testament, this word is only used twice.
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Two times in the whole New Testament. One of them, Jesus uses it himself, and he's talking about when the the Pharisees were murmuring. Actually, it's it's during the time when Jesus said, I am the bread of life, and the Pharisees are murmuring against him, it says. They're murmuring against him because he said he's the bread of life and the real bread that has come down from heaven like the manna. Oh, that messes our tradition again.
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Moses and the manna and the whole deal, we know that story. Do you remember the part about the people murmuring? I hate this stuff. It's terrible stuff. It's gift given from God.
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Anyway, murmuring. So how did the apostle's handle it? Murmuring is what it was. That's what came up. And I say the potential for destruction because division is the possibility.
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How did they not handle it? That's a better way of looking at it. How did the apostles not handle this situation? This is a very real problem. The Greek speaking believers complain about the Hebrew speaking believers saying that their widows were being discriminated against in the daily distribution of food.
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How did they not handle it? They did not form a committee that would think about it. They did not. Did not put it off and hope it would go away because sometimes we do that too. They...
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What are the things? There are about 50 things you couldn't do. What did they do about it? How did they handle it? We'll read verses two through seven here.
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So the 12 called the meeting, but it wasn't a meeting just amongst themselves to discuss things. It was called the meeting of all the believers, and they said, we apostles should spend our time teaching the word of God in the ministry of the word is what the the the administering or the ministry of the word. Paying attention to what the word says and applying it to people's lives. It has a connotation of being both regular services like this one and more informal sessions where someone would come and say, I have this struggle in my life. And then looking over the word of God and seeing what that has.
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So the ministry of the word is the application of God's word to our lives, not on a food program. And so, brothers, select seven men who are well respected and are full of the spirit and wisdom, and we will give them this responsibility. So that's what they did. Then the apostles can spend our time again, they say, in prayer and in the ministry of the word, the teaching of the word of God. Everyone liked this idea, and they chose the following.
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Stephen, a man full of faith in the Holy Spirit, and we'll see Stephen in this chapter and the next chapter. Philip, we'll see him in the following chapter. Prophorus, Mecaner, Timon, Hermanus, Nicholas of Antioch, an earlier convert to the Jewish faith. It's interesting. Antioch is where most tradition holds that Luke is from, so he probably throws that little tidbit in because he's a hometown boy.
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And he's a convert to the Jewish faith because he's showing that God has always cared about the nations. Eric read Psalm 67 a little while ago. He's always cared about the nations and he's been proclaiming it and he says, God bless us and make your place to shine upon us so that the nations may know you. It's always a so that. There's always a so that.
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And I forgot to mention our Peter Halter is here this morning from Bangladesh. He's a missionary there. Someone we pray for every Wednesday morning and throughout the week. But I just want you all to know, he's right here up front. Peter Hollar, Bangladesh.
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And then the service is over. If you'd like to speak to him about what's going on with you for Christ, it's really exciting. I just forgot to do that. I wanna wanna make sure. So an early convert to the Jewish faith.
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These seven were presented to the apostles who prayed for them as they laid their hands on them. That's it. So one through six... Two through six there. So what did they do?
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They said, we've got a concentrated effort where we need to concentrate effort, and that's the ministry of the word. And as I was going through this week this week, this was speaking to me big time. I had a I had a message to work on for Ray. All three points and prayer at the end had to hit me square in the heart before I could deliver a a different message to y'all. Mine was about ministry of the word and not letting other things crowd out the ministry of the word, whether it's preparing for this regular service or being there in the office during counseling type situations.
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That's what that's what y'all have appointed and let your hands on me to do. So I thank you for that. And I appreciate it. So God is really working in my heart right now on that. But this message is...
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These seven guys, called the meeting and they said, we apostles spend our time on that. So select seven men. Now this is a tremendous leap of faith for the apostles. They know that this is the body of believers that God has gathered. They have seen some impurity in it over the time, but they...
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What they did was they considered the merits of the murmuring. That's what they did. They listened and they heard the murmuring and they thought, you know what? They're right. We have our way of doing this.
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In Judaism, they have a weekly collection for the poor. They knew how to administrate it. It was a normal thing that they normally did. The seven men, that's a normal thing that Jews would normally do. Seven is the right number of guys to look that out.
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Look out for that. So they took the seven guys. The laying on hands, that's exactly the way that Judaism would handle this. Y'all know that it'd be ten more years in Antioch, by the way, when Christians were finally called Christians, and it was a term of derision. They're still Jews.
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It's a fact of Judaism scene at this point. So what they're doing is in the same form, but what they did was take a leap of faith and say, we will give them this responsibility. The apostles were not trying to control at all. They were not micromanaging. They probably had been up to that point.
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They were trying to do ministry to work and make sure that everybody was fed. All the all the stuff happened too. But they realized they couldn't handle the load alone and the church had grown to the point now that they could hand over this responsibility, not just delegated away because they didn't wanna do it, because they wanted to focus on the ministry of the word. So they could spend time doing that. And what's interesting about this list, if you study each one of the names, Stephanus, Philip, Prochorus, all those are Greek names.
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So the Greek ones were the ones that were grumbling. They named seven guys. All of them are Greek. All of them speak Greek. The apostles handed off.
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They said, y'all, everybody, big body out there, appoint seven folks that you trust to do this. And they did. And so now, all of the guys are Greek speaking, but they know what it's like to be behind. They know what it's like to be discriminated against, and they're full of the Holy Spirit and of wisdom. That's what the...
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Well respected full spirit and wisdom. And then those seven were presented. They accept him. They prayed. They laid their hands on this morning.
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The first service, Cameron Lundy, who's a teenager and member of the youth group here, is going on a mission trip for several weeks. The rest of the summer, she's going to New York City to The Bronx to work downtown. Yes. In New York City with a kids program called Metro. And so when she came, a couple of the elders got up this morning, we laid our hands on her commissioning her to go and do that work.
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Trusting her to do as God has led her to do. Full of spirit, full of wisdom for her age to go do that. So once recognize this assault, another paragraph. Once I recognize the assault of murmuring in my own life, it affects me either way, whether I'm the one murmuring or the one murmured against. How should I deal with this?
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If I'm the one murmuring, it would be best to go to the person or to the group that I'm murmuring against. The against is really strong in there too. That word, every time that it's only used twice in the New Testament, I didn't mention that it's used over and over in the Old Testament. And it's always mostly during the Exodus when they were... And they murmured against or they grumbled or they complained against Moses or they murmured against God.
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They murmured against God for bringing them out of Egypt. Well, they were slaves in Egypt. Making bricks without straw sometimes. Murmuring. If I'm the one murmuring, it would be best to go to the person or group I'm murmuring against for resolution.
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Boldness. Again, it's amazing how often that comes up. The just shall live by faith. You can live a very quiet life by faith, but in order to set things right with the world, it would be better to be bold and take the stand that you need to take upon the word of God. Boldness is what's required.
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Now, if we're the ones that are being murmured against and that happens, it happens. If we're the ones that are being murmured against, it's best to boldly confront the situation to bring about reconciliation. God says in Colossians that he's given to us the ministry of reconciliation. We should be reconciled as much as it depends upon you. Live at peace with all men.
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It's a it's a New Testament idea. It's a New Testament thing that comes up over and over. Try to see the merits of their murmuring. That's what the apostles did. They looked and they saw, you know what?
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You're right. The Greek widows are being overlooked, and we did not mean to do that. We apologize for it. Y'all figure out how to deal with this, and we bless it. And they did.
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Then act accordingly. And did it work? This is my favorite part. Did it work? Chapter one verse seven says, so God's message continued to spread.
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It continued to spread. You remember verse one? Verse one said that as the number was multiplying rapidly, God's message continued to spread. The number of believers greatly increased in Jerusalem, and many of the Jewish priests were converted too. They had put in a seal of approval on the Jewish custom of the seven men.
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They put a seal of approval on the layman of hands. They had done it well, though. They didn't ward it over the the whole body. They said, you come up with the with the solution and we'll bless it. We're paying attention to the word.
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The word they had was the old testament. They knew the right way. They knew their Bible, but the Jewish priests were converted because they saw that this was not a rebellious band of people that were rebelling for no reason. Jesus possibly could be the author and finisher of this faith. He could be the messiah that they are claiming that he is because of their actions.
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Now every week he comes back around to this, that let your light shine before men so that they may see your good deeds and glorify your father who's in heaven. I think that in a way they dealt with this administrative difficulty, they proved that that's what they were doing. And I went back to verse one there. As the believers rapidly multiply, there were grumbling. There was murmuring.
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Times of growth and change always present the opportunity for the adversary to scheme. The potential for destruction is always at hand. And we need to know that it's just like our choice, our conscious choice to sin or not sin ever before us. It always is. We always have the potential for putting on the mask of hypocrisy.
28:01
We always have the potential for giving in to persecution. We always have the potential for murmuring. It's always in front of us, and that can be a very destructive force in a body, but it's incredibly attractive when it's not that way. So every Christian will be better equipped for life and ministry by recognizing these three assault, persecution, hypocrisy, and murmuring. But how will the enemy respond?
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This is why I said we're gonna count and cut on verses six one through seven. I want you to just hear verses eight through 15. This is kinda how the devil will respond. So Christ said, I will build my church. Right?
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He said that. In Matthew 16, he said, I will build my church and the gates of Hades or the gates of hell will not prevail against it. Now gates are a defensive weapon. He didn't say the tanks. He didn't say the arrows or swings or anything else.
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Gates are a defensive weapon. When we do have the boldness to proclaim God's word in the midst of persecution, when we do have the boldness to say I was wrong, forgive me. When we do have the boldness to go to the people we're murmuring against or to listen to the people who are murmuring against us. When we have that kind of boldness, that is crashing the gates of hell. How will the enemy respond to us crashing the gates of hell?
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Acts six eight through 15. This will lay groundwork for next week's passage. If you wanna go ahead and read that, I'm gonna try not to read the whole thing next time. But he... Stephen's speech that he gives in his defense is next week.
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I'm trying not to read the whole thing. I might do it anyway. Stephen, a man full of God's grace and power. He's the first one on that list that they gave the Greek name, Hellenistic believer. He performed amazing miracles and signs among the people.
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He's a man full of the spirit, well respected, and wise, it said earlier, and now it's saying he's full of God's grace and power. He's doing amazing miracles. Now he is not one of the apostles, the original 12, not even of the replacement 12. He is somebody that is a deputy, basically. He's been deputized by the apostles, and he's doing the same things that they did.
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He's not just administering the food. He has paid attention to their ministry of the word, and he is proclaiming God's word. But one day, some men from the synagogue of the freed slaves as it was called, started to debate with them. So in order for them to be debating, he has to be proclaiming with boldness the word of God. They started to debate with them.
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They were Jews from Cyrene, Alexandria, Cilicia, and the province of Asia. Cilicia is interesting because it's the capital of Tarsus, Saul of Tarsus. It's just interesting. None of them could stand against the wisdom and the spirit with which Stephen spoke. So they persuaded some men to lie about Stephen.
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What is that? How does Satan respond after he's tried persecution, hypocrisy, and murmuring? He started the list over. Persecution. They persuaded some men to lie about Stephen saying, we heard a blessing Moses and even God.
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This roused the people, the elders, and the teachers of the religious law. Now we've just been told that some of the priests are being converted because they're paying attention, but they're swinging popular opinion at this point. So they arrested Stephen, they brought him before the high council, and the lying witnesses said, this man is always speaking against the holy temple, our tradition. You know, against the law of Moses. We've heard him say, Jesus of Nazareth will destroy the temple and change the customs Moses handed down to.
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And at this point, everyone in the high council stared at Stephen. They glared at Stephen because his studies became the bride of the angels. That sets us up for chapter seven next week. But... Can't go back.
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I'm gonna tell another story. Now, start off with Isaac Lot, and Isaac was complaining. He was murmuring on his way home. And he wasn't murmuring to the bishop or the guy in charge, you know, the the preacher. He wasn't complaining to the music master.
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He was complaining to his dad. He was murmuring. You know, Goosebumps. He said music stinks. We gotta do something about that.
32:23
And his dad said, well, you need to do it. You need to fix it. Eric mentioned this week that that Ronnie Reno is Lindsey's dad. While you all know Lindsey, is our... Has been lead music for two years and he's just been hired on as our youth guy who started in August.
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But this past week, he texted me about 11:00 one night and said, my dad is with the Lord. He's passed. And so we've been praying for him that he would be... Have a comfortable passing or a miraculous healing. Either one would be fine.
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And so he let me know that his dad did pass earlier in the week. His funeral arranged for next Saturday. But I got to thinking about Isaac Watts because of that. Because when we were going through the process of interviewing Lindsey and thinking about Lindsey and when I was talking to him in the beginning, I said, just tell me why, you know, what what your deal with youth is. So it started when I was in high school.
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And he said I was on the way home from youth group and I told my dad, this is spanks. I hate this. You hear this terrible. It's just awful. I don't like it and it's uncomfortable and I don't wanna be there.
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Why do I have to go? I hate it. And so Ronnie Reno, his dad, full of spirit, full of the Holy Spirit, and a man of wisdom said, well, Randy, you need to do something about that. The change needs to start with you. It can be the cool place to be if the cool guy that you are is making it cool.
33:51
You've gotta do something about that. When I was thinking about this, I've also thought about my Honda's Gandhi. Actually, look at the lady Jackson and you see this bumper sticker all over the place. The bumper sticker said, be the change you wanna see in the world. I know Hindu, Muslim with all his country was up...
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It was warring against itself, and it's Hindu against Muslim mostly. And when he said, be the change you want to see in the world, that's not what he said. He didn't say that at all. What he said was this. This is the quote that have collapsed that have made a bumper sticker out of it.
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This quote is, if we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. And as a man changes his own nature, so does attitude of the world change towards him. We need not wait to see what others do. Now in a way, that is the same thing that Isaac Watts dad told him. It's the same thing that Renzi's dad told him in a way.
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But I like what Gandhi said, not because he was who he was, but because he said, if we could change ourselves, we can't. We cannot change ourselves. We must be changed and transformed by the only one that can do it. Christ is the only one that can do it. These guys were relying on Jesus building his church.
35:08
We'll see the martyrdom of Stephen. That's the way he spread the gospel to Judea, Samaria. Philip, in that list, persecution drove him into Samaria. That's the way it's spread there. Paul conversion.
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My goodness. The end of the earth, T e o t e, T e t e, the end of the earth. Because people were changed from the inside out by Christ. They would not go to the stake because of themselves. They would go to the stake because they knew that Christ was true.
35:42
We're gonna sing have thine own way. I laid out the challenge this morning for the for the whole service. The way that Tony and I originally got to the mission field, some of y'all heard before, it's really quickly. I was sitting in church and I heard the pastor say what I'm about to say right now. He said, if you are currently doing a ministry that the church does not yet know about, let us know about it and let us help you with whatever it is that you're doing.
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We we trust that God's spirit is the one that's moving among his people, and if he is well enough within you, something that you feel like needs to be done, you know, that pinotrip has happened because there were people that felt like this is what we need to do. So if there's a ministry that you're currently seeking to do, the pastor at my church said, just talk to James Colbert who was the guy. I leaned up. He was sitting right in front of me and I said, James, can you give me some Spanish bibles? Yeah.
36:36
We got a mission trip in Mexico in two weeks and know how to translate it. Will you go? That's the beginning of how we got to do that. If there's something that you feel like God has got for you to do or if there's something that you're murmuring against, you might be the one to fix it. Have that on the way, Lord.
36:53
Alright. It's how we become up and we'll sing this. This is not typically kind of a lead in for a traditional invitation, but an altar is open. And if you have something that God's dealing with you on and that's something that you've been murmuring, even if it's just within yourself about and you feel like you might be the one to change that. Altar's open for you.
39:46
Thank you for such a beautiful group and that all were gathered together, Lord. I thank you that you fill us with your spirit, that you write your law in our hearts, Lord. I thank you that that offer is still open for anybody out there that does not know you. God, use us this week to find those people who do not yet know you and share you boldly. Proclaim your word to them with love.
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In Jesus name, Lord. Amen. Amen. Amen.
