From His Heart

Dr. Jeff Schreve: Today on From His Heart with Pastor Jeff Schreve, a message that will cut to the quick. Now, we are attracted to people of courage, to people who are strong and courageous. There's just something about it when we see somebody stand up and be brave and bold. We're attracted to that. And we want to emulate that.

But now, we also know that not everybody is gung-ho about the courageous. And when you stand up to boldly speak up for Jesus, to boldly walk with Jesus, to be a lamp shining in a dark place as the scripture says, not everybody's going to cheer you.

Guest (Male): In the book of Acts, Stephen was a man full of the Holy Spirit, and we can learn so much from his fearlessness as he preached to and was ultimately stoned to death by the Sanhedrin. They headed up the supreme Jewish religious and civil court in Jerusalem, composed of priests and elders and led by the High Priest. Stephen didn't have a long ministry, but God used him in a powerful way.

This is From His Heart with Pastor Jeff Schreve. Thank you for joining us today for a message that will cut to the quick about what God wants from us related to being courageous in our faith. Open your Bible to the book of Acts chapter seven. Here's Pastor Jeff Schreve to begin the lesson called Cut to the Quick.

Dr. Jeff Schreve: Our world is filled with critics, and the critics don't do anything, they just criticize the one that is standing up boldly for the challenge ahead. Now we don't want to be critics, we want to be strong and courageous. And so I'm going to finish out this series today with a message on Stephen from the book of Acts.

Stephen, who was strong and courageous. Stephen, who was a relatively young man, probably late 20s, early 30s. He is the first martyr of Christendom. He was stoned to death for the sermon that he preached that the Sanhedrin really didn't like. It wasn't their favorite, to say the least. But God used his death in a great way.

Acts chapter seven records the sermon of Stephen. It's the longest sermon recorded in the New Testament outside of the Sermon on the Mount given by Jesus. And this is what it says as we pick it up in verse 51. He's speaking to the Sanhedrin, the Jewish religious leaders, the Jewish Supreme Court.

"You men who are stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears are always resisting the Holy Spirit. You are doing just as your fathers did. Which one of the prophets did your fathers not persecute? They killed those who had previously announced the coming of the Righteous One, whose betrayers and murderers you have now become; you who received the law as ordained by angels and yet did not keep it."

Now when they heard this, they were cut to the quick, and they began gnashing their teeth at him. But being full of the Holy Spirit, he gazed intently into heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God; and he said, "Behold, I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God."

But they cried out with a loud voice and covered their ears and rushed at him with one impulse. When they had driven him out of the city, they began stoning him, and the witnesses laid aside their robes at the feet of a young man named Saul. Then they went on stoning Stephen as he called on the Lord and said, "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit."

Then falling to his knees, he cried out with a loud voice, "Lord, do not hold this sin against them." Having said this, he fell asleep. Such a powerful testimony of the life of Stephen. Now we want to look at four lessons today from the stoning of Stephen, the ministry of Stephen and his stoning. Lessons to help you and me be strong and courageous.

Lesson number one: we're called to grow in our Christian lives. Stephen, we read about him beginning in Acts chapter six because there was a problem in the early church. Verse eight says Stephen was full of grace and power and was performing many wonders and signs among the people.

Here's the thing that struck me about Stephen: he couldn't have been a Christian for that long because the church hasn't been going that long. Acts chapter six is at the most two years from Acts chapter two. The Bible doesn't tell us exactly, so we've just got to guess, but it couldn't be longer than two years.

So this guy has been a Christian about two years, late 20s, early 30s. And he is blowing and going. He is growing. He is something else as it relates to his Christian life. The Bible tells us in Second Peter chapter three, verse 18, it's the last thing Peter ever wrote, "grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ."

That's a command to grow. And Stephen, no doubt he was being taught by the disciples as they were teaching day to day. And he heard Peter say that this is how you grow, and he longed for the pure milk of the word that by it he may grow with respect to salvation, and he began to grow. His life was yielded to the Holy Spirit. He was a man full of the spirit and full of faith and full of grace and full of power.

You and I are to grow in our Christian lives. Years ago I heard a story about some British pastors who were getting together talking about a series of meetings they wanted to have and make a big impact there in Great Britain. The pastors came together and said, "Who should we get for this to be our speaker?" and some of the pastors kept saying, "We need to get Dwight L. Moody."

Dwight L. Moody was the Billy Graham of his day in the 1800s. Dwight L. Moody was an uneducated shoe clerk who came to Christ and God used him in great ways. As these pastors began to say in this meeting of pastors, "Dwight L. Moody, Dwight L. Moody," one pastor didn't want to get him.

He said, "Why do we want to get that guy? He's uneducated, he's inexperienced, he doesn't have degrees by his name. What is the deal with Dwight L. Moody? Does Dwight L. Moody have a monopoly on the Holy Spirit?" And one of the pastors said, "No, Dwight L. Moody doesn't have a monopoly on the Holy Spirit, but it sure seems like the Holy Spirit has a monopoly on Dwight L. Moody. That's why we want to get him."

Listen, we can grow like Stephen grew in the Lord. The Holy Spirit had a monopoly on Stephen's life, and you can be one that says, "Holy Spirit of God, I want you to have a monopoly on me." We're called to grow strong in our Christian lives.

Lesson number two: we're called to be his faithful witnesses. His faithful witnesses. Now, that's the reason, if you really want to know what are you here for as a Christian. You are here to witness to a lost and dying world about Jesus who's mighty to save.

That's your only reason, really, for being here. You say, "Well, my reason for being is to glorify God." Yes, it is, but you can glorify God in heaven. You can do lots of things in heaven that you can't do here on earth, but there's one thing here on earth that you can't do in heaven and that is witness to a lost person about Jesus.

And so when the disciples in Acts chapter one were asking Jesus, "Lord, is it at this time that you're going to set up your kingdom in Israel?" Because they were always taught that when Messiah comes, he sets up his kingdom and Israel's no longer the tail, they're going to be the head. "Lord, is it at this time that you're going to do that?"

Jesus said, "It's not for you to know times and epochs, times and seasons which the Father has decreed by his own authority, but you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you shall be my witnesses both in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and even to the remotest parts of the earth." You shall be my witnesses, and you don't do it on your own; you get power from the Holy Spirit.

Stephen was a faithful witness. A faithful witness. When he gets up to speak, we're going to see that he's falsely accused and he stands before the Sanhedrin, the 70 plus one, the Jewish Supreme Court. It would have been the most intimidating experience of a person's life.

These are the same guys who tried Jesus and found him guilty through a crooked court, but they delivered him over to Pilate and made sure that he was crucified. He's before those guys, and he stands and delivers. He's a faithful witness. You and I can be faithful witnesses.

Now, a faithful witness is somebody who tells what they've seen and heard. You've maybe been a witness in a court of law. What do they ask you to do? "Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth so help you God?" Yes. And then they ask you questions about what you saw and what you heard because you're a witness in a court of law.

You don't have to be the smartest guy in the room to be a witness. Now, often in a court of law, they have witnesses and then they have expert witnesses. And an expert witness is somebody who is very knowledgeable in a particular field that can speak very intelligently on that particular issue.

A doctor may be an expert witness, or an engineer may be an expert witness, somebody who has training in that area to be an expert witness. Here's the thing. You may have been saved for 24 hours, and you can be a faithful witness for the Lord Jesus Christ.

But God doesn't want us to just be a faithful witness, he wants us to be faithful expert witnesses. He wants us to grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ and grow in our understanding and obedience to the word. That needs to be increasing.

Peter said, talks about these qualities that we're supposed to have in us, he said, "If these qualities are yours and are increasing, they render you neither useless nor unfruitful in the true knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. For he who lacks these qualities is blind or short-sighted, having forgotten his purification from his former sins."

Remember what John the Baptist said about Jesus? "He must increase and I must decrease." That's the Christian life. The Lord increases in your life in terms of how he controls everything in your life and you're just more and more committed to him, and people see more and more of Jesus and less and less of you.

He must increase and I must decrease. Well, when you first get saved, everything's new, you're a brand-new creation, but you're a baby in Christ and so you have to grow. And the Bible says, "study to show yourself approved to God as a workman who does not need to be ashamed, handling accurately the word of truth."

We're going to see in Stephen's life, a Christian for maybe two years. And man, he is a powerhouse for the Lord and he knows the scripture. Now, all they had in Stephen's day was the Old Testament scripture, but he studied it and he knew it and he was ready when called upon to give a defense.

First Peter chapter three and verses 14 and 15 says, "But even if you should suffer for the sake of righteousness, you are blessed. And do not fear their intimidation, and do not be troubled, but sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts, always being ready to make a defense to everyone who asks you to give an account of the hope that is in you, yet with gentleness and reverence."

Always be ready to make a defense. We get our word from that Greek word "defense" there, we get our English word "apologetics". What is apologetics? Apologetics is the defense of the faith. It's your ability to stand up to answer questions and to defend the faith once for all delivered to the saints, Jude chapter one, verse three.

Stephen is going to be one who's not going to be intimidated. He's going to stand up, he's going to deliver, he's going to speak up, he's going to be a faithful witness and a faithful expert witness. Friday I had on my radio program Dr. Alex McFarland.

Dr. Alex McFarland is one of the foremost apologetics in America. Great guy. He has a radio program on American Family Radio called Exploring the Word with Bert Harper. But he has a brand-new free ebook out and it's called Core Truths for an Unshakable Faith.

If you go to alexmcfarland.com, you can check out his materials and he works to try and build up the body of Christ so that we go from being a witness to a faithful witness to a faithful expert witness where we can really handle accurately the word of truth and where we can defend the faith.

So we're called to grow strong in the Christian life, we're called to be his faithful witnesses. Number three: we're called to boldly and humbly speak the truth in love. We do that with boldness, but we do that in humility to speak the truth in love. People desperately need to hear the truth.

Stephen, it says in Acts six, verse eight, full of grace and power, was performing great wonders and signs among the people. But some men from what was called the Synagogue of the Freedmen, including both Cyrenians and Alexandrians, and some from Cilicia and Asia, rose up and argued with Stephen.

But they were unable to cope with the wisdom and the spirit with which he was speaking. They argued with him, but they weren't winning the argument. And so they got mad because Stephen was putting them to shame in their argument. It says in verse 11, "Then they secretly induced men to say, 'We have heard him speak blasphemies against Moses and against God.'"

That wasn't true. He wasn't doing that. And they stirred up the people, the elders and the scribes, and they came up to him and dragged him away and brought him before the council. They put forward false witnesses who said, "This man incessantly speaks against the holy place and the law."

He speaks against the temple and he speaks against the law and he does it without stopping. He's incessant. "For we have heard him say that this Nazarene, Jesus"—you can just hear the vitriol and the sarcasm and the mockery about this Nazarene, Jesus of Nazareth. Remember what they said about Nazareth? Nazareth, can any good thing come out of Nazareth?

So they always wanted to call him Jesus the Nazarene. "Well, we've heard him say that this Nazarene, Jesus, will destroy this place and alter the customs which Moses handed down to us." And fixing their gaze on him, all who were sitting in the council saw his face like the face of an angel.

The High Priest said to him, "Are these things so?" And he said, "Hear me, brethren and fathers," and he begins his sermon. We're called to boldly and yet humbly speak the truth in love. We don't need to be afraid of man and what man can do to us.

Stephen is standing there before the Sanhedrin, the 70 plus one plus the High Priest, the guys, I mean, you talk about being called before the tribunal, he's being called before the tribunal and these Jewish guys, the Synagogue of the Freedmen, have stirred everybody up against Stephen, they've lied about Stephen.

He blasphemes God. That's a serious crime, you do that and you're going to be killed; the penalty for blasphemy was death. He blasphemed Moses, he blasphemed the temple, he blasphemed the law. I mean, they just threw all this stuff at him. Said Jesus, this Nazarene's going to destroy the temple.

I mean, all these things and they say, "Okay, Stephen, what's your defense? What is this they are saying?" Well, he could have just said, "Hey, time out, guys. I mean, that's not true. That's not what I said. I don't know what those guys are so upset about. That's not what I said. And no, those things aren't true."

He could have tried to deflect, he could have tried to smooth it over, he could have tried to say, "This is just a big misunderstanding. If I need to back off some, I can back off some." He didn't back off at all. He turned it up several notches in his response.

He gives a long sermon, detailing the history of Israel. He starts with the God of glory appearing to Abraham, and how Abraham left Ur of the Chaldees and went to Haran and then from Haran went to the promised land. And then he talks about Joseph, Isaac and Jacob, and then Joseph, and Joseph was hated by his brothers.

He goes through the history of Israel and he talks about Moses and how Moses tried to deliver Israel but he didn't do it in his own strength and had to run away and he ran away for 40 years. And then God brought him back as the deliverer. And how they worshipped the golden calf and all these times in Israel's history where they were given the truth, but they rejected the truth.

He spoke boldly. He wasn't afraid of man. I had a situation where a friend of mine texted me yesterday, my old basketball coach, and he texted me yesterday and he said, "Jeff, I saw some posts on Facebook and it seems like you might be under some attack from some people and have lost some friends and maybe even some church members over some things that you've said, and I just want you to know if I can help you, you can count on me."

I really appreciated that. And I said, "Thanks coach, I appreciate you and appreciate that sentiment." But you know, I never think, it's just not on my radar screen that I might say something that could offend some people that they would unfriend me on Facebook.

I have all these quote-unquote friends on Facebook, I don't even have haven't met probably three-fourths of them. And so it's like, well, people are going to unfriend you. Go ahead. But I mean, it's just like, hey, I'm going to tell you the truth and if the shoe fits, wear it, and if that bothers you, so be it.

The fear of man, Proverbs tells us, is a snare, but he who trusts in the Lord will be exalted. Now, we do need to focus our attention on the Lord and focus our attention on pleasing an audience of one. That's what Stephen does.

He preaches a sermon for the people, but he's preaching it and standing up to please an audience of one. He says in verse 55 of chapter seven, "But being full of the spirit, he gazed intently into heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God; and he said, 'Behold, I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.'"

Now, we know from the book of Hebrews that when Jesus ascended to heaven, he sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. But when Stephen got through with his sermon, he stood up in honor of Stephen. Stephen was living his life and preaching and speaking the truth in love to an audience of one.

That's how you need to live, that's how I need to live, that's how we need to live. Please an audience of one. Don't be afraid of man.

Guest (Male): Today's lesson called Cut to the Quick is the last in Pastor Jeff's series Strong and Courageous, and it's a helpful and encouraging message for sure. And with that in mind, Pastor Jeff has some important words for you today.

Dr. Jeff Schreve: First, I want to thank you for listening to From His Heart and supporting this worldwide outreach each day. Why do we seek to grow? It's because Christians today are under increasing pressure to stop standing for the truth.

The world wants to force us, even violently as we've seen recently, to keep quiet, to fall in line with a godless agenda. But it's in this difficult environment that we can find the inner strength through Christ to stay strong and courageous. Stephen did it, and we can do it too.