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Thank you. Excuse me. We are getting back to our scheme. Going back to Acts, we've been in the book of Acts for the past couple of months and I took an excursus for Christmas to kind of tell the Christmas story again and kind of the big picture story last Sunday and again on Christmas Eve but I'm trying to get back to the book of Acts and we're just going to keep on plotting through scripture a little bit at a time expository preaching hopefully exposing what's there. That's the idea but I want to remind you kind of where we were in the text too.
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We're we're up to chapter six. It'll be the introduction of deacons into the mix although it doesn't call em that yet. Acts six one through 15 is the whole chapter of Acts six but this I wanna bring up first. Anybody recognize this? We're on a mission from God.
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This is my favorite movie of all time. It's my favorite. Not even anything's even really close to it and that may sound sacrilegious and yeah, there are few things I would have left out but it's great and if you read the book of Acts and you don't at some point relate it to this movie and you've seen this movie, they just, they know. We're putting the band back together, right? We're putting the band back together.
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John Belushi's character in this gets to see a vision from the Lord that he's supposed to put the band back together to save an orphanage blah blah blah and no matter what happens, they just keep on getting through it. They keep on until the mission is accomplished. So, the book of Acts, we're on a mission from God. As Gamaliel stands up the last time that I preached, Gamaliel stood up and said, hey, I see that you're opposing these people but my advice is this, if it's of man, it'll die out but if it's of God, you're going to find yourself opposing God. You need to let these guys go, right?
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We're on a mission from God. Acts five twelve through 42 was the last passage that I presented. Carl had presented the first part of chapter five with Ananias and Sapphira, that hard story but five twelve through 42 presents a familiar pattern in the book of Acts and I'll show you the pattern probably multiple times before we get to the last chapter here. It's like this, God moves with power and think about the day of Pentecost. God moves with great power and what has been forecast from long past that the new covenant is coming and that he's going to pour out his spirit on his sons and his daughters, right?
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God moves with power. Now, he had given him instructions. He had given his disciples instructions to stay here in Jerusalem until you've been empowered from on high. You'll recognize it but stick together. Stay close together.
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Stay here in Jerusalem. God moves with power. And then, when he does, his word. In this case, in the hearts and in the mouths of his apostles, Peter being the primary example. God's word interprets what has just happened in his powerful move.
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So, God moves with power. His word is used to interpret what's going on and then, opposition arises and it's always been that way. Since the birth of the church, the very first day, when God moves with power and someone uses the scripture to interpret the circumstances of what's going on and opposition will arise but the deal is, it will be thwarted too and there are multiple ways that this happens. We'll talk about it as we advance then the witness goes forward because why? Because we're on a mission from God.
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So, in chapter two, we see it. God moves with power in Pentecost. His word interprets and then opposition arises. Don't do this anymore. You can't do this, right?
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Chapter three and four, same thing happens. Opposition arises. This one, we get the opposition arises in chapter four but we even see it in the history books of Josephus if you go through this, Acts five twelve through 42, you'll see it again. I'm not going to re preach the whole sermon but God moving with power is his prerogative. We don't know when he's going to move.
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We don't know exactly what he's going to do. He's given us his word and he's given us something to hold on to and something to study and something to look forward to but when God begins to move with power, we don't know when that's going to be. It's all his prerogative and I can say right now from what I see, we are seeing a movement in this valley among teenagers like never since I've been here which is wonderful to see. We're seeing unity among the churches like I've never seen before which is wonderful to see. We're seeing ladies ministries, men's ministries, overarching stuff that is wonderful and God is moving with power and people are coming into the kingdom and people are being built up in other ways to be able to be more effective.
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God's moving with power is on him. It's his prerogative. Usually, we recognize it when we're praying. His word interprets. Now, this is our spiritual responsibility as believers.
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God has given us the Bible. He's given us propositional truth. Old and New Testaments to study, to know, and since we're talking about Acts and spend a lot of time in Luke over Christmas so that we can have confidence in the things that we were taught. So, we can have confidence in the word. It's our spiritual responsibility to know the Bible so that when we see things take place, we interpret them through the lens of God's word.
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It's our spiritual responsibility to do so and you see Peter speaks so effectively in the book of Acts. It's happened over and over so far and even when they were arrested, think about this. When they're arrested and they were flogged and they were beaten and then they were turned out and they said, don't ever preach in this name again and they said, who are we going to follow after? Are we going to obey God? Are we going to obey men?
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The traditions of men. It's our spiritual responsibility to know the word, internalize it, and allow it to interpret our circumstances. Opposition arises. This is normal. It's also normal for God to rid your rid the opposition.
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It's not within our ability to control and there will be times actually next week's sermon will confirm this but there will be times when even martyrdom does happen. It's not within our ability to control when opposition takes place or how it takes place but God's word will not be thwarted. The opposition will be. It's not within our ability to control. That's on God.
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So, what types of opposition have we seen so far? What we've seen is external pressure in the form of persecution and it it's hard to say that it's that it's really external. At this time, it's long before Christians were ever called Christians. This is the the nascent church. It's very beginnings and they were not even considered to be a sect of Judaism at this point because it's new enough that they didn't really have a name for it.
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They just were followers of the way and so the persecution came from the religious council and the religious or the religious people, the chief priest, the scribes, the Sanhedrin, you remember the Sanhedrin from the last couple of sermons. The 71 people seated in this semi circle in the chamber of Hewn Stone and they made the declarations for how this went. That external pressure of don't ever speak again in this name. We're going to beat you if you do. We're going to throw you in the even the public jail if you do under threats.
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It still grew. In fact, probably grows faster under external pressure. Persecution is one of the ways that we've seen and we've seen it in chapter two. We saw it in chapter three. We saw it in chapter four and we saw it in chapter five.
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We're probably going to see it again. We do see it again a lot. Now, when I was away during Thanksgiving and Carl was preaching, he preached on hypocrisy. Actually, Ananias and Sapphira. He spoke on that.
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Oh my goodness. Blake. Blake caught me in the first service. I tried my best not to say it but I I just looked up and he's laughing again. I said, the second type of opposition is hypocrisy.
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We saw that when Carl preached last time. No. No. He was preaching about Ananias and Sapphira and Ananias and Sapphira were seeking to make themselves look better than they actually were. They felt that earthly security was important enough to hold back a pro a portion of what their sale of their land was.
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They kept it. It was theirs that they could keep but they lied about it. They pretended that they gave it all and in that case, how was the opposition overcome? God smoked them. He killed them on the spot one at a time and the youth group carried them out.
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The text says, the young men came in to carry them away and then Peter said, tell me, Sapphira, how did this go? And she told the same story that they had concocted. He said, the same young men that carried your husband away are coming back to carry you away. I don't want for that to be the way that God handles the opposition but it is the way he handled it. The purity of the church was very very important.
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External pressure, what happened when they were arrested and when they were turned out, they said, who must we obey God or man? They made a determination that they would follow God rather than men, the traditions of men and they prayed for boldness to continue with the word that was internalized that Jesus had explained to them all of the ways Old Testament points to his messiahship and they were internalizing that and they were boldly sharing it. That was the way that persecution was overcome. The way hypocrisy was overcome in that case of Ananias and Sapphira was God killed them. Well, what's what are we going to see today?
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Today, we're going to see murmuring. Murmur, murmur, murmur, murmur, murmur is not a monopoetic word in English and we hear it. We actually get our the word in Greek is in Greek, it sounds like murmur, murmur, murmur, murmur. It's it's division from the inside and so, here we go. Oh, let me say, the witness advances.
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I didn't hit this one. The witness advances. This is about our obedience. As long as we are boldly proclaiming in the way we live our lives, in the way we use our words, that Jesus is the Christ, actually, the next slide says that, right? Every day in the temple and from house to house, summary statement.
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They continue to teach and preach this message. Jesus is the Messiah. Amen. That's how the gospel goes forward and the witness advances out of obedience because they did not cease teaching and preaching Jesus as the Christ. So, we're on a mission from God.
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If that feels a little bit uncomfortable for you that I'm even using a secular reference there. I I'm sorry. I I see I see this and I go, wow, it's such a great way to see that God's will is not going to be thwarted. Do you all know the name Isaac Watts? Do you know who that is?
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This this service should know Isaac Watts. I see a couple of songwriters in here right now. Isaac Watts was on the way home from church with his dad, with his whole family presumably. He's born in like the sixteen seventies. He's been around a while.
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He's on the way home from church with his family and he says, dad, the music is so horrible. It's just terrible and it's it's hard to sit through. It's really hard to even sit through the song service. Now, when we sing When I Survey the Wondrous Cross, that's a beautiful song, isn't it? Well, Isaac's dad is responsible for that.
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Isaac's dad said, Isaac, if you're hearing that and you're sensing that it's terrible, you ought to do something about it and so he said about writing hymns and he wrote thousands of hymns like 7,000 hymns. About 400 of them, you'd probably recognize the names of. Most a lot of them are in our hymnals and when I survey the wondrous cross is one of those. Just a beautiful song and he went back to the Psalms and he personalized it to his experience with when I survey the wondrous cross. On which the prince of glory died.
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My richest gain I count but lost. It's like it's so cool that he put himself right there and not to mention the the actual music. Before that, the music had gotten to be just stale and they're singing to the Lord a new song. It's there, you know. So, his dad was responsible for that.
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When I went through this book the first time, the book of Acts, the first time I was here, it was the summertime of twenty thirteen and Renzi Reno was changing in from being a volunteer who worked in the the band a little bit. Ran the sound booth. But he was becoming our youth guy and so as he was transitioning in, I was talking to him about, oh, when did you have start having an interest in ministering in the youth? He said, well, on the way home from youth group when I was about 14, I was coming home with my dad, my family, and I just said, dad, youth group is terrible. It's just awful.
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I can't stand it. It's just a terrible place to be and there are only a few of us and it's just bad. The music's bad. The teaching's bad. It's just bad and he says, it's just the worst place to be and he says, Renzy, if you're noticing that, it might be because you're the one who's supposed to do something about that and he says, so, you're a leader whether you wanna be or not and people kinda follow after you.
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You've got a great sense of humor and you're a handsome guy and people are going to follow you and if you make it the best place to be on Wednesday, it's going be the best place for anybody to be on Wednesday. Do your best to be that change that you want to see. As the believers rapid let me start over. Acts six one says, but as the believers rapidly multiplied, amen. There were rumblings of discontent.
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Oh, it's an immediately up. Oh, believers are rapidly multiplying. It's exponential growth and that's wonderful and then there were rumblings of discontent. There was going to get some might, going to get some might, going to get some might. The Greek speaking believers complained about the Hebrew speaking believers.
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Isn't that just the way we are? We divide so often. Us and them is so real to the human experience that if you're from the South, it's like, I don't trust them. They're Yankees. It's just immediate.
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It's something we all know. And if you are, you know, I mean, I could go to SEC football for crying out loud. Oh, he's an Alabama fan. Ugh. I would cheer for those.
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That's like cheering for Darth Vader. You know, that's you can hear this sort of stuff. You can feel it and we might do that politically but we tend to be opposed and often, it's on language based lines too. So, the Greek speaking believers. Now, on the day of Pentecost, they heard everything in their own language and these men from Galilee, how is it that we are confused because we understand.
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We hear everything that's coming out of their mouth and we understand it. The Greek speaking believers now are murmuring against the Hebrew speaking believers about what? The rumblings of discontent, the is about it's an onomatopoetic word. I keep saying that because it sounds like what it is. Like, haka doodle doo.
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Sounds like what it is. Go and get go and get to. Go and get to. Sounds like murmuring, murmuring, murmuring. Saying that their widows were being discriminated against in the daily distribution of food.
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Can you hear this? So, the apostles, they're gathering saying Solomon's colonnade outside of the temple out where anybody can get to them and be out of the weather and they're preaching and teaching Jesus as the Christ and then there are the practical things when you're holding all things in common of there's a distribution of food. And the Greek speaking ones are going, yeah, well, they're given their widows more than they're given our widows and then you can hear the murmuring. The rumblings of discontent saying that now, in Judaism, there's actually a provision for the widow, the widows, and the poor and it's normal for the Hebrew speaking believers to know the process for this. At the temple, they would have known how it was done.
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They would have understood that this is the way that it goes. Now, the Greek speaking folks that came into the church would not have a background from it. First of all, they're from the pagan lands. Who knows where and they don't have a common culture. They certainly don't have a culture like the Hebrew speaking believers do.
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There were things about Judaism that God instituted that worked for taking care of people and so the Hebrew apostles, Hebrew speaking believers, understood the process and saw and maybe the Greek speaking believers just came in and didn't really understand the process and they were getting short changed because they didn't get that. Having access to a service and actually accessing the service are two different things, right? But when the apostles heard the rumblings of discontent, they called a meeting of all of the believers. It was not a secret meeting. This is good.
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What have we seen in the secret meeting so far in Acts? Whenever the Sanhedrin gets together and they get to talking amongst us, we can't, we know that this is just getting out of hand. What are we going to do about it? We would kill em but that would cause a riot. We're going to beat them any secret meeting is usually scheming and underhanded and it says the 12 called a meeting of all the believers.
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That's thousands of people and when they called the meeting, they said, the apostles, the 12 said, we apostles really should spend our time teaching the word of God. That's what we need to be about. We had the access to scriptures. A lot of y'all had access to scriptures too but we were taught by Jesus. He he showed us specifically after the resurrection, these things and we really feel like we ought to spend our time teaching the word of God and not running a food program.
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We can't do everything and so brothers, and he calls them brothers. He's speaking specifically to the Greek speaking believers who were grumbling, mumbling, murmuring, and so brothers, y'all select seven men who are well respected and are full of the spirit and of wisdom. That in itself is absolutely transformational. The apostle, the apostles, presumably Peter, the apostles said, we need to be about the ministry of the word and not running this food pray program or managing tables, it says, in one translation. So, brothers, y'all select seven men who are well respected and full of the spirit and full of wisdom.
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They trusted that the Holy Spirit that brought people out of whatever their team was before, out of their tribe, tongue, nation, language. Whatever it was, brought them into the Ecclesia, the church. They trusted that the spirit of God that can call em out of their place and into this other could do his will through them. Now, this is somebody who's full of spirit and wisdom. And we'll give over responsibility to them to do this and then we, the apostles, can spend our time in prayer and in teaching the word.
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They weren't shirking the responsibility to take care of it. They trusted the spirit to use other people to take care of it which is great and everyone like this idea. You know what they did? And this this rings in my head from preaching this however many years ago. Shoot, it was like eleven or twelve years ago.
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They considered the merits of the murmuring. They considered the merits of the murmuring. If they're hearing murmuring, instead of just saying, we're the capital A apostles. You get what you get, you don't throw a fit. We're the ones who are in charge.
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Didn't you maybe your widows need to lose some weight. No. We don't know why, what they might have done but what they did was they considered it and said, you know what? Y'all choose from among yourselves and what's interesting, everyone like this idea and they chose the following. Steven, Steven's a Greek name, not a not a Hebrew name.
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This is a a Greek speaking believer. Y'all choose from among yourselves. Steven, a man who is full of faith and of the Holy Spirit. Oh, that that might be said of us. A man of full of faith and full of the Holy Spirit.
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We'll see Steven again at the end of this chapter. We'll see Steven all throughout the next chapter proclaiming by the spirit. And then murdered, right? Instrument of God, Steven, a man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit. Philip, we'll see Philip again in chapter eight running alongside a chariot introducing an Ethiopian eunuch to the long awaited savior that Isaiah wrote of.
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The suffering servant. Prochorus, I don't know anything else about Prochorus. Nicanor, don't know anything about Nicanor. Timon. Timon was Pumba's friend.
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I don't know anything about Timon either. Timon is his name. Parmenas. All of these are Greek names. We do know that.
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All of these are Greek names. Parmenas and Nicholas of Antioch. It's neat that it's Nicholas of Antioch. Antioch is the first place where they were actually called Christians. It was gonna be ten years down the road but Nicholas, Nicholas was an earlier convert to the Jewish faith.
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So, this is a guy who came out from the Greek speaking world and recognized the singularity, the goodness of the monotheistic Judaism of his day and he recognized something good about it and was drawn into the faith and then he recognized Messiah before the leaders of his faith recognized him. That's beautiful and he was full of the spirit and of wisdom. He's an earlier convert to the Jewish faith. Now, seven were presented to the apostles. This is the ones that the crowd came up with and they prayed for them.
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The apostles prayed for them and they laid their hands on them to do this work. So that is the way that Judaism would have handled this situation. If there were people that needed to be fed, if there's something, the way Judaism would handle it is the people in charge would lay their hands on the people that they had said, you are are given this responsibility. So, did it work? Well, the next verse says it did.
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So, God's message continued to spread. The gospel advances and it says how it continued to spread. The number of believers greatly increased in Jerusalem. Now, we see God is moving with power. This is his prerogative.
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He's moving with power because his word is going forward. As it happens, it says, many of the Jewish priests were converted too. Ain't that beautiful? That's wonderful. Now, Nicanor or the, you know, the was it Nicanor?
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The last guy. Let's see what his name was. Nicholas. Sorry. Nick Nicholas.
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Nicholas of Antioch recognized it before some of these guys but they recognized that this is the way that it ought to be. We ought to be able to trust the spirit of God. We ought to be able to trust it rather than trusting an authoritarian system where it's centralized authority. Only we know what's right. No.
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God knows what is right. Christ said that he was build his church. He would do it by his spirit and many of the Jewish priests were converted too and if I had to go out on a limb here, I'd say, the reason that they were converted is because they saw it working. It was no longer 71 guys seated in a room in the order of smartest guy in the middle, number two right here, number three right there, all the way out from smartest to dumbest. That literally is the way the Sanhedrin met and they sat like that and that is you stand right there in the middle and will determine and everybody's looking at the head guy trying to suck up to him honestly.
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That's not the way that the disciples handled this. They considered the merits of the murmuring. They laid it back in their lap and that's a pretty amazing thing. Now, I I went back. I said, I tried to find.
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It took me forever actually. Had to go through three different computers to find this thing. I wanted to hear what I preached on the first time that I did this and so, I was still trying to fit everything into sermon sermon format and so this is my every Christian will be better equipped for life and ministry by recognizing these three assaults of the evil one. Persecution, external pressure, hypocrisy, internal pressure, murmuring, division. I have become over the past thirteen years, more and more reliant on just saying what it says, right?
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Just say what it says. It's so good. You don't have to sermonize. Steven, and this is just an introduction for next week. Might be the shortest sermon you hear all year.
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Not this year. Steven, a man full of God's grace and power. Oh Lord, that that may be said of us. Steven, a man full of God's grace and power, performed amazing miracles and signs among the people and I'm sure Steven would have said just like Peter and John said earlier in Acts that this is Jesus that did this, not me. But one day, some men from the synagogue of freed slaves as it was called, started to debate with Stephen and they were Jews from Cyrene, Alexandria, Cilicia, and the province of Asia and none of them could stand against the wisdom and the spirit with which Stephen spoke.
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So, this in itself right here, this looks like one of those opportunities. If you run up against someone and you can't stand against their wisdom or against their spirit, the Holy Spirit, what should you do? Consider the merits of what they're saying. And not oppose and not debate them just from Gamaliel's advice. If it's of God, you're going to find yourself opposing God and that's not going to go well.
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None of them could stand against the wisdom and the spirit with which Stephen spoke and so, they persuaded some folks to lie about Stephen. Have we seen this before in the gospels? Yeah. We need for you to say that Jesus blasphemed. We need for you to go on record saying that you saw him threaten the temple.
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We need for you to go on record. So, lying witnesses. So, they persuaded some men to lie about Stephen saying, say this, we heard him blaspheme Moses and we heard him blaspheme God and this of course roused the people, it roused the elders, it roused the teachers of religious law, and so they arrested Stephen and they brought him before the high council and that high council presumably was that same Sanhedrin, established authority, no doubt about it, and the lying witnesses said, this man is always speaking against the holy temple. And he's speaking against the law of Moses. Now, Stephen, since he's full of grace and full of power and full of the spirit and wisdom was certainly declaring Jesus as the fulfillment of the law of Moses.
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He was certainly saying that the place where God heaven and earth meet is in the temple of the believer. Now, is he speaking against the temple and against the law of Moses? No. We've heard him say that this Jesus of Nazareth will destroy the temple and change the customs Moses handed down to us. Now, Jesus had said that that temple would be thrown down.
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Did he say that? That was that something that was noteworthy charge? I'm going leave you with this. At this point, everyone in the high council was staring at Stephen and because his face had become as bright as an angel's. There is opposition, significant opposition and will God's will be thwarted?
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That's the question. As you read through Acts, it's like the Blues Brothers. Every every every time you think they can't get over this one. They can't get out of this situation. They can't get out of this situation.
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How is it that God is going to get out them out of this situation? Well, in Stephen's case and we'll see it next week. He's going to present the sermon of a lifetime. He's going to sum up the whole of the Old Testament in one sermon and then what it's going to get is him stoned. So, opposition arises in the way that that witness advances in Stephen's case, it's through his martyrdom.
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But it's also an introduction to the next portion of the book of Acts where Jesus told him in Acts one eight, he said, you're going to be my witnesses. This is his prophecy over them. You are going to be my witnesses. In Jerusalem, they had done a great job in Jerusalem and in the great time when there's a movement going on and there's just wonderful happening and there's exponential growth. Man, everybody wants to be on board.
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But then, when that happens, we have to keep on letting his word interpret and what Jesus said is you're going to be my witnesses here in Jerusalem but also in Judea and Samaria even to the uttermost parts. Did they spread out? They didn't. They clumped up and it was Stephen's martyrdom that allowed them to fulfill prophecy of going forward to Judea and Samaria. So, that's the next thing we see.
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Is that the last one of the slides, Blake? So, that's the end of chapter six. It's really just kind of a teaser for chapter seven. I think that Stephen's speech is probably the best one sermon. It's it's not long but it is effective and just as we often say, if you proclaim the word, if you proclaim it faithfully, the way you live your life but if you proclaim it with your words, you're either going to get somebody to accept it or reject it or hear you again later.
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We'll see that in Acts 17 also but would you stand with me? We're going sing It Is Well with My Soul. We closed in the first service with take my life and let it be consecrated lord to thee. As we look into this New Year, I think that it's important to think, lord, I want to be doing your will. I long to do your will and your way, lord.
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I long to do your will. Show me your way and I'll walk in it. We long to do that collectively. Lord, we long to do your will. This this body, we long to do your will.
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Will you show us your way and we'll walk in it and I think that there's another component to that that taking our life and letting it be consecrated is great but we also have to be okay that we can't control when God moves and we can't control how he gets us through the opposition. So, let's sing It Is Well With My Soul.
