Acts 7:54-60
54Now when they heard these things they were enraged, and they ground their teeth at him. 55But he, full of the Holy Spirit, gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. 56And he said, "Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God." 57But they cried out with a loud voice and stopped their ears and rushed together at him. 58Then they cast him out of the city and stoned him. And the witnesses laid down their garments at the feet of a young man named Saul. 59And as they were stoning Stephen, he called out, "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit." 60And falling to his knees he cried out with a loud voice, "Lord, do not hold this sin against them." And when he had said this, he fell asleep.
Not sure how many of you have siblings, but me and Dorothy used to throw things at each other. In hindsight, I almost always instinctively picked up something that I knew was threatening, but not life threatening. So when I imagine the stoning of Stephen, I just thinking of people picking up smooth pebbles like they were going to skip them over a pond. Think about stoning for a sec. Take a moment and imagine this scene. Murderous people. They weren’t picking up smooth pebbles. Dozens of people were picking up jagged rocks and pitching them to this one guy in the middle of the circle, until he was literally a bloody carcus.
Which is what made Stephen’s response just crazy to me. In the middle of this circle, facing a choice between appeasing the crowd or facing certain death, he picked death. But not before he boldly proclaimed Jesus, which pretty much sealed his fate.
When we’ve been trying to be obedient to God, “do something for God”, we naturally expect to be rewarded somehow. So when we step out in faith and give beyond our means, or rep Jesus’ name and stand up for Him, and we just end up broke, judged, uncertain about our future, and outcasted from our relationships, we naturally think something is wrong. Like maybe we shouldn’t be so bold, or not so radical, or so black and white. The prayers we say to God is usually “Why am I suffering?” and “Please stop the suffering”.
But neither of those sentiments were even on the radar here. I mean Stephen wasn’t praying that the persecution would go away. When the church in Acts 5 got persecuted, got beaten up, they prayed for boldness to keep doing what got them beaten up in the first place. Suffering and persecution was something the Acts church embraced. They took it as an honour to suffer for the name of Jesus. They didn’t think it was weird at all.
So I got to thinking about why we think it’s weird when our lives don’t work the way we would like, when our lives seemingly turn out worse than the non-Christians around us. Isn’t God suppose to bless me and love me and take care of me more than these secular people? Then I bumped into this sermon on Youtube by Francis Chan, this bald, dirty ‘stached Chinese pastor. He gives me a lot of hope for teachers in the Kingdom that are Chinese. I mean hope as in we can also be bold and courageous, and utterly truthful about the Word, not hope in the bald mustache part.
We’re going on a survey of the earthly consequences of living for God as found in the Word, and I gotta confess, the content isn’t entirely original. Well, no sermon is really original, but the list of scriptures I got from Francis Chan’s “Is Suffering Optional?”. Look it up on Youtube. I wrestled with these scriptures all week, and I’m just giving an abbreviated version of what really hit me. So yeah, it’s on Youtube, look it up, he’s a lot funnier.
Some of you already resonate with these scriptures, and I’m not trying to make you feel like you’re not good enough or anything like that. But I know for a lot of us, myself included, haven’t really looked at these passages before. These verses aren’t popular. So today I really want us to encounter these often ignored passages that describes what living for God is like.
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