Sermon 08 - Acts 7,55-8,4 - Pass the Salt Please - 8-8-04
INTRODUCTION:
1. ((illus)) In his book Led by the Carpenter, D. James Kennedy writes:
A man walked into a little mom-and-pop grocery store and asked, "Do you sell salt?"
"Ha!" said Pop the proprietor. "Do we sell salt! Just look!" And Pop showed the customer one entire wall of shelves stocked with nothing but salt—Morton salt, iodized salt, kosher salt, sea salt, rock salt, garlic salt, seasoning salt, Epsom salts—every kind of salt imaginable.
"Wow!" said the customer."You think that's something?" said Pop with a wave of his hand. "That's nothing! Come look." And Pop led the customer to a back room filled with shelves and bins and cartons and barrels and boxes of salt. "Do we sell salt!" he said.
"Unbelievable!" said the customer.
"You think that's something?" said Pop. "Come! I'll show you salt!" And Pop led the customer down some steps into a huge basement, five times as large as the previous room, filled wall, floor, to ceiling, with every imaginable form and size and shape of salt—even huge ten-pound salt licks for the cow pasture.
"Incredible!" said the customer. "You really do sell salt!"
"No!" said Pop. "That's just the problem! We never sell salt! But that salt salesman—Hoo-boy! Does he sell salt!"
Salt that stays on the shelf doesn't do any good at all.
2. I like salt. But I like salt on food.
a. I don’t like it because it’s pretty, or because it looks good in fancy saltshakers.
b. I like it because it makes my food taste better.
i) Can you imagine corn on the cob without salt?
ii) A hamburger without salt?
c. It seasons my food. That’s why I like salt on food.
3. How many times have we said “PASS THE SALT, PLEASE.”
a. We’ve all said it.
b. It’s a common occurrence at mealtime.
4. Wouldn’t it be a shame to have lots of salt and not be able to get it out of the shaker?
a. Ever been to a restaurant where you can’t get the salt out of a salt-shaker.
b. Do you know how frustrating that is?
c. It’s frustrating to have salt trapped in the saltshaker.
5. But that’s where most Christians are today — trapped in the saltshaker.
a. Jesus called His disciples (you and me) the salt of the earth
b. The saltshaker to which I refer is, of course, the churches and Christian communities to which we belong.
c. ((illus)) It has been calculated by those who analyze churches that if you bring someone to Christ, give that new Christian about two years, and they will probably have so thoroughly disassociated themselves from non-Christians that they literally have no real non-Christian friends.
6. And the sad thing about that situation is that many Christians think it is good.
a. Indeed, there are those who would have you believe that to have no non-Christian friends is to fulfill the biblical command to not be "of the world."
i) But the practical result is that we isolate ourselves from opportunities to share Jesus Christ.
ii) We become salt trapped in the saltshaker.
iii) It may be a stained-glass container, but we are trapped nonetheless.
7. And that’s where our text comes in today.
a. Acts 7:54 (page 933)
b. Here is a the early church – sailing along.
c. Unified
d. Jerusalem was being evangelized in a most effective way.
8. There was JUST ONE PROBLEM:
a. Acts 1:8 (NLT) But when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, you will receive power and will tell people about me everywhere—in Jerusalem, throughout Judea, in Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”
b. The Church started in Jerusalem but was not to stay just in Jerusalem.
c. It was and is for the whole world.
i) There are the Judeas and the Samarias and the ends of the earth.
ii) But the believers in Jerusalem were not moving in that direction.
9. And so the question was, “How was God going to get the message outside the walls of the city?”
a. Look how this plays out:
i) After the appointing of the servants/first deacons, one of them, Stephen, is falsely accused of speaking against the law of God and the temple.
ii) He is hauled before the council or the Sanhedrin.
iii) There, Stephen reviewed the history of Israel and told of them murdering the Messiah.
b. We pick up the story in 7:54
10. Acts 7:54-8:4 –
54 The Jewish leaders were infuriated by Stephen’s accusation, and they shook their fists in rage.
55 But Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit, gazed steadily upward into heaven and saw the glory of God, and he saw Jesus standing in the place of honor at God’s right hand.
56 And he told them, “Look, I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing in the place of honor at God’s right hand!”
57 Then they put their hands over their ears, and drowning out his voice with their shouts, they rushed at him.
58 They dragged him out of the city and began to stone him. The official witnesses took off their coats and laid them at the feet of a young man named Saul.
59 And as they stoned him, Stephen prayed, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.”
60 And he fell to his knees, shouting, “Lord, don’t charge them with this sin!” And with that, he died.
1 Saul was one of the official witnesses at the killing of Stephen. A great wave of persecution began that day, sweeping over the church in Jerusalem, and all the believers except the apostles fled into Judea and Samaria.
2 (Some godly men came and buried Stephen with loud weeping.)
3 Saul was going everywhere to devastate the church. He went from house to house, dragging out both men and women to throw them into jail.
4 But the believers who had fled Jerusalem went everywhere preaching the Good News about Jesus.
11. “How was God going to get the message outside the walls of the city?”
a. Good, old fashioned PERSECUTION.
b. The focus of this text is that God rules over the suffering of the church and causes her to spread spiritual power and the joy of faith to a lost world.
c. It's not the only way God spreads truth or righteousness or joy, but it seems to be an extraordinarily common way.
i) He spurs the church into ministry by suffering.
ii) ((illus)) How many times have I said to individual Christians that their most effective ministries will grow out of their most negative and painful life experiences.
iii) Therefore, we must be careful not to judge before the time.
iv) How quick we are to say, "It's a defeat," when in fact God is positioning the church through an apparent setback for strategic advance.
12. Some of you are heading back to school where there will be pressure and persecution against your faith.
a. Some of you face pressure against your faith at work.
b. In your community.
c. Among family members – sometimes the hardest.
i) And you’re not trying to do something wrong, but right.
13. Could it be that God is using this pressure and is overruling it for the advancement of the Gospel – through you.
a. Let me encourage those of you this morning who feel that you are under the gun with your faith.
b. By the way – because of time, we have to set aside the fact that there is more persecution going on today among the nations of the world than in all of history.
c. There are more martyrs for Jesus Christ today than in all of history.
d. We are focusing just on where we are at today.
14. Let me give you from this passage at least FOUR ENCOURAGING TRUTHS
PASS THE SALT, PLEASE
Acts 7:54-8:4
1. ENCOURAGING TRUTH #1 - GOD MAKES PERSECUTION SERVE THE GREAT COMMISSION.
a. :1 …A great wave of persecution began that day, sweeping over the church in Jerusalem, and all the believers except the apostles fled into Judea and Samaria.
b. Until now in the Book of Acts all the activity happened in Jerusalem.
i) Nobody, evidently, left Jerusalem to go anywhere with the gospel.
ii) Acts 1:8 – the Great Commission was given.
iii) But they are still in Jerusalem until the persecution comes.
c. Where are the two places to which they are scattered?
i) Judea and Samaria.
ii) Is that an accident? That's no accident.
iii) That's a clear teaching of Luke the writer that it took persecution to get them off their rear ends.
iv) This is a good church. This is a powerful church. This is a Holy Spirit-blessed church in Jerusalem, but they are not doing evangelism outside Jerusalem.
v) They did not see the unreached peoples out there, so God will even take the apple of his eye, if he must--on whom he pours out his Holy Spirit in power in Jerusalem--to move them to the unreached.
vi) He will do whatever he must to take a good church ministering to one another and reaching their village to give them a world vision and keep them moving.
d. Chapter 11:19 shows Luke will play this out even further as he writes the story: - Now those who were scattered because of the persecution that arose over Stephen [same situation] traveled as far as Phoenicia [now we're beyond Samaria up the coast] and Cyprus [off the coast, an island in the Mediterranean] and Antioch [near the bend of the Mediterranean Sea], speaking the word to none except Jews. But in Antioch they began to speak to Greeks [and the whole thing breaks open].
e. It was the persecution initiated through the suffering of Stephen that got the church going--not only to Judea, not only to Samaria but to the uttermost parts of the world,
i) out where the Gentiles are who have absolutely no access to the gospel
ii) unless a good, happy, self-satisfied church breaks out and inconveniences itself, loses its sons and daughters and goes.
f. The lesson is clear – God is sovereign and he can turn your seeming setbacks and put downs by family members into triumphs for the Gospel.
i) Keep praying and trusting.
ii) Keep looking and reaching beyond yourself.
iii) Don’t let affluence and desire for ease and comfort cause you to lose the vision.
iv) ((illus)) An article in the Chicago Tribune some time back said the poor give a higher percent of income to churches than the rich do.
¨ The study said the poorest fifth of the church members gave on an average 3.4 percent of their income, while the wealthiest fifth gave 1.6 percent--one half as much.
¨ The richer you get, the less you give--only you don't think you're giving less because you're giving more in dollars. It feels like you're giving a lot.
¨ As you get richer and richer and give more and more (and you give less and less), more goes to the bank and more goes to the house and more goes to the cabin and more goes to the cars and the toys.
v) GOD MAKES PERSECUTION SERVE THE GREAT COMMISSION
2. ENCOURAGING TRUTH #2 - TROUBLE FOR THE SAKE OF TRUTH BRINGS HONOR.
a. Stephen is honored and not blamed by godly people.
i) The persecution in Jerusalem was owed to Stephen's speech.
ii) He brought this on Jerusalem.
iii) I can imagine some cautious, prudent, well-meaning believers in Jerusalem behind closed doors saying, "Stephen's speech was utterly uncalled for. There are less inflammatory ways to defend the truth than to say to the Sanhedrin that they are stiff-necked people who always resist the Holy Spirit. That's not what you should say to the Sanhedrin. It's always hotheads like this who get us in trouble as a church. Now the whole city is against us. How are you going to minister if the city is against you? Look at the waste of life and property and time. Look at the families broken up as people get put in prison. What about the children who were taken away from their families? Now we've all got to live like refugees and exiles in Judea and Samaria. Why didn't Stephen think before he spoke?"
iv) I wonder if anyone might talk like that.
b. Well, that's not God's version of the story.
i) Luke wrote God's version of the story, and Luke says Stephen was a man full of grace and wisdom, a man full of the Holy Spirit and power, a man whose wisdom was irresistible.
ii) Acts 7:55--Stephen was a man who in the last moment opened his mouth to speak the words that caused his enemies to clamp their ears, gnash their teeth, rush upon him, and decimate the church in Jerusalem. He was filled with the Holy Spirit--and he brought persecution on the church filled with the Holy Spirit.
c. Acts 8:2 is Luke's tribute to this man.
i) He made no innuendo of correction: Why didn't he soften his tongue to the Sanhedrin and avoid persecution?
ii) There is not a whiff of that in the book of Acts.
iii) Just this: 2 (Some godly men came and buried Stephen with loud weeping.)
d. TROUBLE FOR THE SAKE OF TRUTH BRINGS HONOR.
i) ((illus)) I think of valedictorian (Chris Clayton) of Seminole High School.
ii) Worldly people would say “what a waste.”
iii) Godly people will honor you.
- GOD MAKES PERSECUTION SERVE THE GREAT COMMISSION
- TROUBLE FOR THE SAKE OF TRUTH BRINGS HONOR.
3. ENCOURAGING TRUTH #3 - SOMETIMES OUR WORST ENEMIES BECOME OUR BEST FRIENDS.
a. :3 - Saul was going everywhere to devastate the church. He went from house to house, dragging out both men and women to throw them into jail.
b. Saul ravaged the church and entered house after house.
i) He dragged off men and women and committed them to prison, and that Saul is the same Saul who in a few weeks would be so dramatically converted that he would become the greatest advocate that Christianity has ever had in the history of the world.
ii) I love it, and I need to hear this, because by experience and by temperament--and I think I speak for the average human being--I find it easy to believe that the closest friends can become enemies.
¨ I can believe in Judas. I've seen that happen.
¨ That's the way the world is--betrayal.
¨ But we need help to believe that the opposite happens. It does.
¨ I've seen it happen--the worst critic can become the closest comrade;
(a) enemies can become friends;
(b) adversaries can become advocates.
iii) ((illus)) How many times has someone said to me "There's a person at work, and I had just about thrown in the towel on their foul mouth and hatred towards me and the gospel. But I feel a new sense of hope to press on in prayer. God can do it."
c. I want you to feel hope like that.
i) I want you to believe that if Saul, breathing out murders and threats, hating the gospel--nobody was more opposed to you or the gospel than Paul was opposed.
ii) If Paul can get saved, anybody can get saved.
iii) He said in 1 Timothy 1:16–17: The reason I got saved is to show that the patience of Christ will work for anybody. That's why God chose him.
d. Look through the eyes of faith, for the people you are about to give up on--your family, people at work because they are hostile against you or against the gospel--there's hope.
i) Light can break forth out of heaven and knock them off their donkeys and grab them to be saved.
- GOD MAKES PERSECUTION SERVE THE GREAT COMMISSION
- TROUBLE FOR THE SAKE OF TRUTH BRINGS HONOR.
- ENCOURAGING TRUTH #3 - SOMETIMES OUR WORST ENEMIES BECOME OUR BEST FRIENDS.
4. ENCOURAGING TRUTH #4 - PERSECUTION BRINGS JOY.
a. The same Word that brings persecution, brings joy.
b. :4 - But the believers who had fled Jerusalem went everywhere preaching the Good News about Jesus.
i) This word for preaching means "preaching it as good news, 'gospeling' it."
ii) The Word caused them so much pain, they had to leave home.
iii) But they went around saying, "Hear the good news! Hear the good news."
c. These are strange people.
i) This Word that cost them their homeland, cost them their families, cost them their security, cost them who knows what, they now proclaim as good news.
ii) Later, Philip leaves and goes to Samaria and shares the Gospel in one of its cities and :8 says So there was great joy in that city.
iii) Why?
¨ :5 - told the people there about the Messiah.
¨ And people were transformed and freed from the bondage which comes from sin.
CONCLUSION:
1. I want to close by encouraging you, urging you, pleading with you to receive--and if you have, hold fast to Christ as the sum of everything in life.
2. If you have Christ, no matter how great the persecution, no matter how great the suffering, you have hope and joy that can never end.
a. Sometimes belonging to Christ brings persecution, but always belonging to Christ brings joy, and the always lasts forever.
b. Persecution is temporary.
i) Even if like Stephen you have to die, it's temporary because you enter into glory, and your joy never ends.
ii) The joy that began in the city--"There was much joy in that city"--never ended. It lasts today in heaven.
iii) Those people are still rejoicing because Philip came and preached the Word that brought persecution for some but joy for all who believed.
3. Embrace Christ, and these four encouragements that I've given you from the text will not only be true in general, they will be true personally for you.
- GOD MAKES PERSECUTION SERVE THE GREAT COMMISSION
- TROUBLE FOR THE SAKE OF TRUTH BRINGS HONOR.
- ENCOURAGING TRUTH #3 - SOMETIMES OUR WORST ENEMIES BECOME OUR BEST FRIENDS.
- ENCOURAGING TRUTH #4 - PERSECUTION BRINGS JOY.
On January 9, 1985, a Congregational pastor in Bulgaria named Christo Kuleczef, was arrested and put in jail. His crime was preaching in his church, just like I am right now. It was a crime because the week before the village committee had appointed a new pastor. The secular committee who runs the village put a new pastor in even though the Congregational church doesn't recognize any pastors but the ones they elect and install. So he preached, and they clamped him in jail immediately, and he immediately began to share Christ and make the truth known while he was in prison. He had a trial. It was a mockery of justice, and he was sentenced to eight months.
He did his eight months, got out, and wrote these words: "Both prisoners and jailers asked many questions, and we had a more fruitful ministry there than we could have expected in church. God was better served by our presence in prison than if we had been free."