Three Assaults of the Evil One
First B Jackson
2013-07-14

Automatically transcribed. Where this and the recording disagree, the recording is the record.

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I would like to invite up just for a minute here, Cameron Maloney. Cameron is here. Cameron is a youth in our church and she came recently and said, hey, I'm headed on a mission trip. I was really with her. And she said, I'm going to New York.

It's an inner city mission trip in New York. And so whenever God is stirring up our young people, we wanna recognize that Thanks, Kevin.

Good morning. I'm I'm excited about that. That's cool to see. I went when I was 19 years old, I went on a summer missions. They called it fun in the sun '91 and it was yeah Panama City Beach it was a tough gig somebody needed to do a campground ministry but it was one of those kind of a foreshadowing of what God had for me in life So I really do appreciate that.

We want to celebrate like you said and commission her to go out. It's probably going to come up at some point during the sermon to lay it on the hands of the elders when you're equipped to do a work or commission to do work. I want to start off with the proposal here. My proposition today is that every Christian will be better equipped for life and ministry by recognizing these three assaults of the evil. I'm gonna start off with it.

Okay. I'm starting off there because we have been so far in Acts. We've gotten up to chapter six and we've seen a couple of the ways that the that the adversary, the devil, say, can you hear me over the mic, sir? Okay. We 've seen a couple of the ways that he's been trying to get at this nation church, this very beginning.

Jesus said that he would build his church in Matthew 16. Remember when he said that I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. It's interesting that the gates of hell are defensive weapons. That means when we are doing the Lord's work, we're crashing the gates of hell. So I want you to recognize the three assaults of the evil one.

And the first one is persecution. That's external pressure. We saw that in the first couple of chapters. We saw that there was persecution in chapter three and chapter four. For sure we saw it with after Peter through faith and God's power healed this beggar, they were arrested.

They were told not to speak in the name of Jesus anymore. Don't do that anymore. So, there was external pressure and we face external pressure today too. Persecution that we face is a little different shape in this country. In Bangladesh, there's a little more pronounced persecution.

In Azerbaijan, I got an email from a missionary this morning from Azerbaijan and it's a little different there too but the persecution we face is a little different than The US usually it can take the form since we're speaking of youth this always comes up of peer pressure just kind of the societal blow of things. It's okay to do this. It's okay to do that. Don't be so crazy. Don't be such a prude.

Don't be ugly. This is just it's only ugliness. It's so narrow minded that you think that. You excluded all these people. Well, the gospel is by nature actually exclusive.

It is, but it's also inclusive and there is a very clear invitation. So the persecution that we face is different usually than the persecution of these guys face. So once we recognize it, I'm not propositioned being, we need to recognize those hostages. And once we recognize persecution, how do we get over it? Well, hold fast to the word of God.

Do you remember what they did? They said we must obey God rather than man. They went back into the scriptures and started pulling out references. All of these different places and these were with people, the Jewish leadership, Sadducees, and Sanhedrin that agreed with. And when we pray, when we pray today, we should pray like they prayed to a sovereign God who can change things and can make a difference and wants to include those people who are now excluded.

We should pray for the boldness to continue proclaiming his word, and then we need to do so. That's the way to go. I'm getting to that. I'm just defending. But this is kind of the groundwork.

So that's persecution. Every Christian will be better equipped for life and ministry if we recognize the second one. It's hypocrisy. This is internal pressure. We all have the capacity for this.

Don't pull yourself into thinking. Peter would say later on, be careful. Let's be followed. Paul would say the same thing. Hypocrisy is internal pressure that we get from it within ourselves to try to make ourselves look better than we are.

We are all dissidents. If we're extending the gospel call to someone else, it's like one beggar who's found bread telling another beggar where to find bread. We don't deserve it. So hypocrisy, it's putting on a mask. Once recognized, how can we deal with this assault?

All of us need to realize that we have a capacity for self deception. We can tell ourselves we're the right thing and we can out Christian one another. We can do that. Recognizing that's a good step, but the boldness again keeps coming up. The boldness to admit it to ourselves and to God is what's required to get past it.

God will give us a righteous way of escape. There's nothing that's ever befallen you that God will not give you a way out. But usually that way, humbly said, is repentance. It's almost always that we see what's wrong in our lives and we have to take a step of faith and admit to God that we're wrong and then repent of it. God can forgive.

This sound more like a class today than it does a sermon to me. So Acts six one through seven. Let's go through the scripture and then I want you to look for the third one. So that's the first two. There is a third one that I think it comes around so often.

This comes around so often in scripture and I want you to look for it as we go through and see what you see. Acts six one through seven. The first verse. But as the believers rapidly multiplied, there were rumblings and discontent. This is the New Living Translation about.

The Greek speaking believers complained about the Hebrew speaking believers saying that their widows were being discriminated against in the daily distribution of food. That's a very practical problem in there. If we look at that, as the believers rapidly multiply, there were rumblings of discontent. We've seen some pretty amazing things. The word there for the rumblings of discontent in in Greek is gongousness.

Gongousness. Gongousness. Can you hear that? Gongousness. Can you hear what that sounds like?

Murmuring, whispering. It's an onomatopoetic word in the Greek. It's saying there are rumblings of discontent, meaning people are whispering. And it's the Greek speaking believers that are doing so about the Hebrew speaking believers. So it's not just that they're grumbling or whispering or murmuring, they're murmuring against.

And it's a very specific word that's used and it's only used twice in the New Testament. It's used a ton of times in the Greek version of the Old Testament. It's only used twice in the New Testament. And that word is where that third one lies. So bring it through.

Every Christian will be better equipped for life and ministry by recognizing these three. Persecution, hypocrisy, and murmuring. I wanna say this week, as I was going through this, the first sermon that I came up with this week was all for me. And it took me till Thursday to finish it and probably took me till Friday to repent of it. So a lot of my preparation this week was towards me and it wasn't about these three things necessarily.

I don't think it was. Maybe I might have to repent of it later but these things were not the ones that were bothering me. The next few verses, how did the apostles handle it? How did they handle the murmuring? How did they handle it?

So the 12 called a meeting of all believers. They didn't just call the meeting a secret. They called the meeting of all believers and they said, we apostles should spend our time teaching the word of God, not running a food program. That sounds kind of extreme, don't it? And so brothers, select seven men who are well respected and are full of spirit and wisdom, and we'll give this responsibility to them.

Then we apostles can spend our time in prayer and then teaching the word. The ministry of the word is what they say. And everyone liked this idea, and they chose the following Stephen, a man full of faith in the Holy Spirit, Philip, Prothuris, Nicaragua, Timon, Parmenus and Nicholas of Antioch, an earlier convert to the Jewish faith. And these seven were presented to the apostles who prayed for them as they laid their hands on them. I'll come back to that.

So the message that I had for me this week, I'll just share with you. I try to do a whole lot. I try to keep on doing pretty much everything. I love playing the bass. I love doing all those sorts of things.

But I realized this week that the thing that lacks the most is ministry for the work, handling the work well and so it's I love it and I do it every morning. It's what the first thing that I do when I get here in the morning but I just want you to know that I take that very very seriously and know that that's kind of why y'all have meat standing up here on Sunday morning. I take it very very seriously. I'm more nervous this morning than I am most mornings. The reason being because it was straight at me But the cool thing about it is, God has given us lots of options for how to deal with stuff.

What he did, I don't think that these apostles had a specific format that they just came together. They brainstormed and they said, well, what we should do is form a committee. What we should do is x y z. What we should do is wait and see if it'll go away. What we should do is just forget about them.

They're Greek speaking anyway. We're Hebrew speaking. Let them build their own church. Will they take care of their own business? No.

They kinda continue the tradition that God had had throughout the Old Testament, the laying on of hands, the equipping people for ministry and work. That's the way that God had done it throughout the Old Testament. They set up for people that were taking on new offices especially spiritual offices. They would lay their hands on them and say God has commissioned you for this work and we're sending you out to do it. It's a great great thing.

It's cool to be a man and staff here. That was not part of this, but to see that and go, wow. God is equipping people from ministry from within this body, and he's sending out people like Cameron, and sending out ladies like the ladies going to Kenya. And he's working right now through this body. If there is something this is the way my missionary career started.

This is the way my ministry career started. If there's something that you feel like God is currently telling you that you need to be doing It's that simple. So, if God is doing something in your life, this is the this is what I got this week. You can't do it all. You can't do it all but the thing that God has specifically asked you to do is the thing he wants you to do And if you will let us know, maybe we can help with that.

Does that make sense? Now, we'll get back to the message. If you recognize that murmuring is going on and if I am the one that's murmuring, it would be best for me if I'm the one murmuring to go to the person or group that I'm murmuring against as the scripture said. If people they were murmuring against the Hebrew belief. If I'm murmuring against, I need to go to the person I'm murmuring against for resolution and see if I can help them get to the point where we can come to a resolution.

Does that make sense? Yes. It's the Matthew 18 principle. If you see somebody that's kind of saying whether it's against you or not, you go to that person alone first then back with another brother and then bring it further if you have to. But it's not something just go around.

Murmur about. Right? Now, boldness is required to do that. It's harder to go to them and just go, I don't like the way so and so is going. It's easier.

I think if they're they're overlooking our lids, all they care about is their own. It's easier to say that to somebody than to go to the apostles and say, hey, check it out. You're skipping so and so and so and so. Boldness is required. If we're the ones being murmured against and that apostles were in this case, it's best to boldly confront the situation to bring about reconciliation.

What's cool about what the apostles did is that they didn't say, we're in charge. We've been given this. Jesus laid his hands on us directly. We've been given this charge and we're it and what we say goes and if I don't want your widows to get anything, they don't get anything. Period.

Build your own church. They didn't say that. Try to see the merits of the murmuring. That's tough. If somebody comes up to you and says, I really think that the way you do that is not the best way to do that.

Well, it's the best way I know how is the response, but could you help me get better at it? Does that make sense? Same same thing. You can see why this is happening to me. Can you see that?

Can you see why this one was a strong one for me? Try to see the merits of their mourning and then act accordingly, and that's what they did. So did it work? Did it work in this passage? We're read back through the passage again.

The 12 called the meeting of all believers out in front of everybody that said, we apostles feel that we should spend our time in the ministry of the word. That's what we need to do. Not running a food program. Now, the the way that the pregrees there, it can be not running a food program especially looking back at what they were complaining about who lives or being overlooked in daily distribution food. But it's about tables that says not looking at your tables.

Waiting tables, you read it that way. But you know how Jesus flipped over the tables in the temple? The money stuff. That's another. That's something else where he said, we really everybody's coming in there laying this at our feet, laying the money at our feet.

We don't feel like we're the ones that need to necessarily do this. We just need to finish the word. Free us up to do that and then choose from among you, all believers. Choose from among you seven guys who are well respected and full of spirit and wisdom and will give them this responsibility. That's an incredible amount of trust, isn't it?

It's not control free. It's not somebody saying upfront that says, this is the way that it is because this is the way that I say that it is. It's handing over to the elders in this case in our church but it's handing over to these guys who were not called deacons at this point the verb and the noun there was service They were service. They were ones who were willing to serve and the qualifications were that they be well respected, full of the spirit, and wisdom. I'm laying the groundwork for next week's sermon too because Stephen, first one on the list that says flat out that he's a man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit.

There's no doubt about where he stood. He believed God. He believed the apostles teaching. He was all about the breaking of bread and about prayer. There's no doubt about it, and we see that in the next chapter, especially in later on in these verses.

But it says, Stephen, a man full of faith in the Holy Spirit. And Philip we'll meet Philip in another chapter. It's an introduction to these people. They have been paying attention closely to the ministry of the word that the apostles have been doing, and they saw that they were overworked, and they were glad to take part. Those seven represented to the apostles that had their hands on them, did it work?

And the next verse I love, so God's message continued to spread. The number of believers greatly increased in Jerusalem and many of the Jewish priests were converted to. Now that's awesome. That is saying, now they did things the same way that they have been doing in Judaism. It would be probably ten more years before they started calling people Christians and saw them as different from Jews.

Does this make sense? So the priests are still in Judaism, but they're seeing something different. Now this is the way we do things. We appoint them the seventh man. Seven's the number.

Yeah. Seven's the right number of guys. And laying on their hands, that's the right way to do that. But you know what? They did it when someone was murmuring because the purpose of murmuring was right.

Woah. That's crazy. They actually did this. And it touched the heart of those Jewish priests, and they said, this is the way that it's supposed to be. That's what convinced them.

You know, every week we come back to let your good deeds point towards your father and who's in heaven. Let men see your good deeds so that they may glorify your father in heaven. These two priests that were converted were seeing what these guys were doing. They were considering the merits of murmuring. The first verse said, as the believers were rapidly multiplying, there were rungings of discontent.

Times of growth and change always present an opportunity for the adversary to scheme And the potential for destruction is at hand. This is quiet. This is a somber place this morning. It seems the potential for destruction is always at hand. It's the tent the potential for sin is always at hand.

It's ever before us but looking to God and just walk in my faith. We can get past that. The murmurer needs the boldness to go to the one in charge and this is not something that specifically right now. I don't think anybody's murmuring. I'm not trying to point that out.

That's what the passage is saying. Every Christian be better equipped for life and ministry by recognizing these three assaults. That persecution, that external pressure, do not just go downstream. It's easy to just go downstream, but swim upstream. In order that no advantage be taken of us by Satan, second Corinthians two says, we're not ignorant of his schemes.

Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, Ephesians says, but against principalities and powers, the prince of the power of the the air. This side, our old nature is working against us in hypocrisy and murmuring the potential for division is always there. I think that it's cool that just last chapter he said in great grace was upon them all. We saw the hypocrisy played out in Ananias' Sapphira that was a very hard lesson to teach, a hard lesson to learn but Ananias and Sapphira had gotten to the point that they wanted to look better than they actually wanted to be. Security was more important to them than generosity So that internal pressure, that hypocrisy that was there was one of those things where it's a devil's trick.

It's a scheme. And then the mermaid. So how will the enemy respond? And this is I'm just gonna give you scripture on this. We're not gonna preach this for a long time.

But how will the enemy respond if he tries the first line? The first line is persecution. He tries the second line hypocrisy. He's trying to convince you you're better or you need to look better than you really are. And if murmuring doesn't work because it didn't work none of those things work.

Do you see that? You'll see it? They got past it. Reading Acts six:eight-fifteen, Stephen, a man full of God's grace and power and he's been called a man of faith. He's been told we've been told he's well respected and full of the Holy Spirit.

Now he's full of God's grace and power. He performed amazing miracles and signs among the people. Now he's doing the same thing the apostles were doing. That makes sense. He has paid attention to their words, been paying attention to the ministry of the word.

He's not just waiting tables. He has the word so to be written on his heart that it's coming out and he can't help it But one day, some of some men from the synagogue of the free slaves as it was called, started to debate with them. There were Jews from Cyrene and Alexandria, Cilicia, and the pilots of Asia. That's just a list of names to us. We could be saying smooth acting thing we could be saying anything but Cilicia is the capital of Tarsus and the guys around there we took their work very very seriously.

Saul of Tarsus were setting things up. For people who would have read this and knew Saul and Paul was they started to debate with him but none of them could stand against the wisdom and the spirit with which demons spoke. So there is a persecution that started. They persuaded some men to lie about Stephen saying we heard a blasphemy about Moses and even about God. This roused the people, elders, the teachers of religious law.

So they arrested Stephen. They brought him before the high council. Is that persecution? If the devil can't issue with persecution or with hypocrisy or with murmuring, he's gonna try persecution again, and it's gonna get stronger. And he's gonna give you a direct temptation to be a hypocrite, and he's gonna give you a greater temptation to murmur.

He doesn't have a whole lot of schemes, but they're pretty effective. The lying witnesses said, this man is always speaking against the holy temple and against the law of Moses. We've heard him say that this Jesus of Nazareth will destroy the temple and change the customs that Moses handed down to us. People love their tradition. That's the way that we are.

When I said that about the murmurings at the beginning, if you look back at the which is the Greek version of the Old Testament, everywhere where they're leaving in Exodus and they murmur against Moses. Wow. It's horrible. They love the tradition. You like what we did in Egypt.

Egypt. You were slaves in Egypt. It was horrible. We're building bricks, sometimes without a straw. No.

You don't wanna go back there. And Moses was the gun the guy that they were going against. Isn't that funny? Moses is the guy he's gonna change the things that Moses Moses was the guy that were most consistently murmuring against. Stephen is gonna point this out in the next chapter, and it's not gonna go well for Stephen.

It's gonna go well for Christ's church though because God will spread his word. God will. Christ will build his church, and he will do it through persecution. He will do it through hypocrisy, and he'll do it through murmuring. But it's even better when you can get on board and be told to speak for him in the face of all that.

At this point, everyone in the high council stared at Stephen because his face became as bright as an angel's. So, Gloria, you don't come on like that. I've got a story that's about a couple of different people. One of them is Isaac Watts and the other one is Rinsey Reno. Rinsey is not here this morning and I have not mentioned it yet, but Rinsey's dad, we've been praying for him to have a comfortable death or a miraculous healing.

Either or. Do you want him to be fine? By 11:00, midweek, Rinsey called Tuesday Wednesday and said that his father had passed and that he would hold his hand he he said I I don't think I can get up now. So they helped him up, they helped him back to bed and Rizzy knew that it was coming, his father knew it was coming, coming to hold his hands and he said pray for that says, be the change you wanna see in the world. Have you seen that?

That's a terrible quote. It's inaccurate. It's find the real quote. He didn't say being changed once in the world. There are lots of little ellipses in that quote.

What Gandhi actually said was if we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As man changes his own nature so does the attitude of the world change towards him. We need not wait to see what others do. That's what he said. If he said, if we could change ourselves, though, that's the opportunity.

Praise there. We can't change ourselves. That's why Christ is available. That's why he's there. That's why I hope as That's ugly.

I hope it hits you just as hard that if there's something that you're burned about, you're probably one to change. So praise God that that's true. It's not a traditional invitation to him coming up after this message, but we're gonna sing glorious day. Living he loved. Amen.

Let's stand up.