Sermon Tone Analysis

Welcome & Announcements

There are a few announcements that I’ve made a handful of times, but to save time and not bore you with those announcements again, they’re in your worship guides.

Instead, let me just give you a couple of new announcements:

On December 11th, 2022, we’ll have a brief special business meeting after AM Worship.

On December 17th, 2022, Ladies Cookie Baking Extravaganza starting at 11am until finished.

Let me remind you to continue worshiping the Lord through your giving.

To help you give, we have three ways to do so, (1) cash and checks can be given at the offering box.

Checks should be written to Grace & Peace; debit, credit, and ACH transfers can be done either by (2) texting 84321 with your $[amount] and following the text prompts or (3) by visiting us online at www.giving.gapb.church.

Of course, everything you give goes to the building up of our local church and the spread of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Prayer of Repentance and Adoration

Call to Worship (Ps 67)

Our Call to Worship is Psalm 67, which is an anonymous psalm in which the psalmist calls for the blessing of God to be upon the people.

Though it is anonymous, some think that this may have been written by Abraham, but that is an educated guess, based on some of the terminology used in the psalm itself.

Please stand and read with me Psalm 67—I’ll read the odd-numbered verses; please join me in reading the even-numbered verses.

Congregational Singing

By Faith (361)

Christ, the Sure and Steady Anchor (406)

My Faith has Found a Resting Place (404)

Scripture Reading (Acts 6:8-8:3)

Now normally, our Scripture Reading works chapter by chapter through the Bible, but because of where we’re at in the book of Acts, we’re actually going to be reading through Acts 6:8-8:3.

The reason for this is simple, the section of Scripture that I’m preaching through is Acts 6:8-15, but that’s not the full context of the passage.

To best help us understand everything going on in the text that I’m preaching through, we’re going to read through the whole section every week that we’re working through Stephen’s martyrdom.

This will help us keep it all in context as we work through the three sections of the text.

Tara can you read Acts 6:8-8:3?

Preaching of God’s Word (Acts 6:8-15)

Introduction

As you noticed from our Scripture Reading, we’re in a large passage of Scripture concerning a specific event that’s of great importance in the early church.

It’s of great importance because in it we see two different people—we see Stephen, who becomes the first martyr of Christendom and we’re introduced to the man who not only witnessed the death of Stephen but approved of his death—a man who later repents from his sins, believes in Jesus, and makes a significant impact on Christianity.

This morning, we’re only working through the first eight verses of the passage, which will give us everything that leads up to the sermon that gets Stephen killed.

Keep this in mind as we read Acts 6:8-15 together.

As we study these verses together, we’re going to break the text into two parts: (1) The Setting (8-10) and (2) The Opposition (11-15).

It is a smaller amount of text, but there are a lot of details worth us sitting on a thinking through.

What we’ll see as we study through this text is Stephen, who was just selected to be deacon, doing the work of ministry and those who oppose the Gospel making up lies to rile up the people against him.

Our message this morning will encourage us to not wait to do the work of the ministry and to not be discouraged when people oppose the message of Jesus Christ.

Prayer for Illumination

The Setting 8-10

Our text starts by narrowing in on a specific person—his name’s Stephen, we read, “Stephen, full of grace and power, was doing great wonders and signs among the people.”

Remember, this is the same Stephen that we just read about last week in Acts 6:1-14.

If you remember with me last week’s passage, we saw the apostles lay hands on seven men selected by the congregation and approved of by the elders to serve in a specific role within the church.

They were selected because they were men full of the Spirit and their specific purpose was to serve the local church in meeting the temporal needs of the church.

And we see Stephen doing just this, serving with grace and power, doing great wonders and signs among the people.

Notice how he doesn’t hesitate whatsoever in fulfilling the role that Jesus has for him.

He didn’t wait around to start serving in the capacity that he was asked to serve in.

He didn’t wait around waiting for a sign from God to confirm that he wasn’t supposed to do this.

No, he was selected for a role and he steps straight into serving how he was meant to serve.

Note also, that the performing of great wonders and signs among the people, much like in the case of the apostles was not a normative situation.

Stephen didn’t get selected to be a deacon and go out to perform signs and wonders—that wasn’t his intent.

He went to serve and the signs and wonders occurred for a specific reason—to validate the message that he was about to proclaim, which we won’t even get to today.

We’ll get to the message itself next week.

All we see so far is that Stephen was called by the apostles to serve the church in meeting the temporal needs of the congregation.

And he didn’t hesitate, he jumped straight into serving and he did so in a way that was full of grace and power.

There’s a lot that we can learn from Stephen—especially considering his desire to serve without hesitation.

Consider how many times we feel a calling of God to serve in a certain way and instead of immediately doing it, we question God and we test God’s calling on our life—if this happens, God, then I’ll know that you want me to do this.

Consider how many times we know what God has told us to do and instead of doing it, we do something else or we avoid doing it altogether—like when we know that Jesus has commissioned us to make disciples of every nation, but then we choose not to even bother; or we know that God has commanded us to love one another, but we choose not to.

It is significant that Stephen was called to a specific role—he was commissioned and instead of hesitating, instead of waiting, he jumped straight into the role that God had called him into.

In vv.

9-10, we see how the people respond to Stephen doing these things.

In particular, we see how certain unbelievers respond to the work that Stephen was performing, v. 9, “Then some of those who belonged to the synagogue of the Freedman (as it was called), and of the Cyrenians, and of the Alexandrians, and of those from Cilicia and Asia, rose up and disputed with Stephen.”

Now there’s a lot going on in this verse, so let’s take a few minutes to break it down.

Luke mentions several different groups of people that are all members of what are called the Freedman synagogue.

It being a synagogue tells us that Stephen’s opposition were Jewish—this opposition isn’t from pagan unbelievers outside of Judaism—it’s from those who are faithfully attending the Jewish synagogue.

The term freedman that’s used to describe this synagogue could have one of two meanings:

Either it’s referring to Jewish people who were either once enslaved but now free and those who were never enslaved but always free.

Or it’s referring to those who had been separated in what’s referred to as the diaspora and are now together as a Jewish synagogue.

I think this is more likely since Luke makes it a point to mention where they were from.

So, we have Jewish people from Cyrene, Alexandria, Cilicia, and Asia.

Which simply tells us that they’re coming from all around the southern Mediterranean, the Eastern Mediterranean, into modern-day Turkey.

There were Jewish people from all around the area disputing that of what Stephen said, but because all that Stephen said was wisdom from God in the Spirit of the Lord, there really isn’t much that they could say.

V. 10 says,.

“But they could not withstand the wisdom and the Spirit with which he was speaking.”

We would say it like this—they heard what Stephen was saying, they didn’t like it, but they couldn’t disagree with what he was saying or how he was saying it.

They heard what he was saying and wanted to argue against it, but nothing Stephen said was wrong and the way he said it wasn’t incorrect.

Or in other words.

he was speaking truth and he was speaking truth correctly—probably in the same way that he was serving—with grace and with power.

As he confronted them with the truth, he did it with power or boldness and he did it graciously.

The issue is and you’ve heard me say this before, when someone doesn’t want to believe, when they don’t want to hear the truth.

When they don’t want to follow Jesus, they won’t.

They will refuse to believe, they will reject truth, they will follow their own path and that’s precisely what these people did concerning Stephen.

Take a look at vv. 11-15.

The Opposition 11-15

These individuals so hated what Stephen said that they riled up the people against him.

But remember, v. 10, “they could not withstand the wisdom and the Spirit with which he was speaking.”

What Stephen said and how he said it was right; they just didn’t want to believe him, so they resorted to lies.

Which let’s be honest, because Stephen was proclaiming the truth according to God—the Gospel of Jesus Christ and only the Gospel of Jesus Christ, there was nothing that the people could complain about what Stephen was saying.

And because he was proclaiming the truth according to God—the Gospel of Jesus Christ with power and grace, there was nothing that the people could complain about how he was saying what he was saying.

But again, they didn’t want to believe, they didn’t want to hear the truth, they didn’t want to follow Jesus, so they made up lies against Stephen.

In particular, they claimed that he was speaking blasphemy against Moses and God.

Blasphemy is a very specific sin that many people misunderstand, so let’s briefly discuss what it is so that we can see what the accusation against Stephen was.

According to the Lexham Bible Dictionary, blasphemy is “a verbal insult uttered intentionally and malevolently against God” that reveals the offender’s contempt towards God.

I’d add to that definition, that blasphemy doesn’t have to be verbal—you can blaspheme against God not only through verbal word, but you can blaspheme against him in written form and to some extent through physical actions.

I’d also point out that even though the people in v. 11 claim that Stephen is blaspheming against Moses, the term blasphemy is typically reserved for God and the Holy Spirit.

The only reason that they would think someone could blaspheme against a person is because they essentially venerated Moses because he spoke face-to-face with God.

To the Jewish people, Moses was an important person who was to be respected and viewed a certain way—thus, if someone would speak against Moses, the Jewish people would treat that like the person spoke against God.

I hope you can see the problem with that mindset—the idea that any person could be blasphemed against the same way that God could be blasphemed against is utterly absurd and is the definition of blaspheming against God.

By placing Moses at the same level of God—able to be blasphemed, they themselves blasphemed against God.

But remember, Stephen didn’t blaspheme against God—he said nothing wrong whatsoever.

In addition to accusing Stephen, these people in v. 12, “stirred up the people and the elders and the scribes, and they came upon him and seized him and brought him before the council, and they set up false witnesses.”

Despite the fact that Stephen didn’t say anything wrong and despite the fact that what he did say, he said with grace and power, those who opposed what he said sought to not just discredit him, but to completely remove him.

The elders and council refer to the same group of people who have been charging the apostles to not proclaim the name of Jesus, this is the same council who crucified Jesus.

In our modern context, when we think of scribes we typically think of those who copy and recopy books.