This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

I want to welcome you to day four of week three of our look through the book of
Acts. Acts chapter seven today as we go through a chapter a day. Acts chapter
seven focuses on Stephen, a man of priceless, valueless faith.

If you want to see a priceless person, you look at their price tag. And Stephen
had no price tag. He was a man who lived a life of integrity.

As you read through the life of Stephen in this chapter, the question is, am I
the type of person who would sell out or hold out no matter what? We read the
life of Stephen in Acts chapter seven and we're reading faith's final exam. He
faces, Stephen faces the ultimate question.

Would I be willing to give up my life for what I believe? There's the test. We
sing about Jesus being more important than life itself.

We tell him we'd surrender all. But what if that threat were real? I've not had
to face that.

You probably have not had to face that. And the life of Stephen brings some
questions to our minds. What would it mean to face that?

It's an important test for your attitude toward dying for the faith has much to
do with how you would live for the faith. In Acts chapter six, we saw that
Christianity began to spread out from Jerusalem to the world. That's the story
of Acts.

The first step outward, like a rocket taking off, happens in this chapter. God's
working. God's doing amazing things.

How does he do it? He uses people. Stephen and Philip and Paul.

Stephen starts with Stephen. What kind of man would give his life for the
gospel? We're going to see in this chapter what Stephen was full of.

Stephen was full of some amazing things. He was full, first of all, of faith.
The great showdown in Acts chapter seven is the showdown of faith versus
tradition, of Christian faith versus religious tradition.

And Stephen has a defense for his faith. He is brought in before the rulers and
the elders, and he's called to make a defense for his faith. And he makes a long
defense.

I'm not going to read all the verses. It's the longest chapter in the book of
Acts. It is a long sermon that he preaches.

He tells the whole history of the Jewish nation, all about Abraham, all about
Moses, all the history of what has happened. But in the midst of this history,
he's talking about faith, and he's facing some of the most important questions
about faith. As he talks with what we've said a few days ago, where these bland
people who are empty of faith, who are living just for themselves, just for
their comfort, he asks some of the most important, most difficult questions of
life.

He asks a question about conviction. He asks if our conviction is born of a
steady heart or a stiff neck. Some people look like they have a lot of
conviction, but it's just their stubbornness.

They're very convinced, but they're convinced about the wrong thing. In verse
51, Stephen says to them, "You stubborn people. You're heathen at heart and deaf
to the truth.

Must you forever resist the Holy Spirit? But your ancestors did, and so do you.
Their conviction was not a healthy conviction.

" And this challenges me. I hope it challenges you to think, "There are some
convictions I can have in my life about what I do for God that are not healthy
convictions. They're born of just how I've always done it.

Is it a stiff neck, my stubbornness, or is it a steady heart, my trust in him,
that's bringing this conviction into my life? " That's the question you ask if
you want to be full of faith. That's the question you ask if you want to
confront the traditions in your life.

It's easy to read about the traditions of the Pharisees' life, of the Sadducees'
lives. What about the traditions in your life? Another question that comes out
of what Stephen teaches them this day is, "Is my guide God's promise or my past?

" He talks a lot about the guide that they could have in God's promise, but it
had become for them just their past, just their history. Those of faith are
always sent out. They always outlive their past.

And we need to learn the difference between being steadfast and being stubborn.
We need to learn the difference between living for what we used to do and living
out what God wants to do in our lives now. Is your guide right now doing what
you did yesterday, or is it God's new promise for tomorrow?

When I'm guided by what I did yesterday, I'm living in a place of comfort. When
I'm living out what God wants for tomorrow, I am living in a place of challenge
and change. Another question that comes out of Stephen's teaching is the
question, "Have I recognized my own tendency to reject God's plan?

" Have you recognized that in yourself? If these Pharisees, if these Sadducees
could reject God's plan, I could too. In verse 9, he talks about Joseph, and he
says, "These sons of Jacob were very jealous of their brother Joseph, and they
sold him to be a slave in Egypt, but God was with him.

" They rejected God's plan, these other sons of Jacob. In verse 39, "But our
ancestors rejected Moses, and they wanted to return to Egypt. " They rejected
God's plan to go to the promised land and wanted to go back to Egypt.

Moses and Joseph, two of the great heroes of faith in the Old Testament. Stephen
reminds these Jewish leaders that day they were not accepted at first. While
Moses was on the mountain receiving the Ten Commandments, the people worshiped
false gods.

"You resist the Spirit," he says. That is our natural human tendency. So am I
following the Spirit, or am I resisting the Spirit?

I have to recognize in myself my tendency to reject the plan of God because of
my own And to go to God in prayer and say, "God, speak to me. Talk to me. Help
me to grow.

" It's just an honest humility about who you really are that Stephen challenges
in these verses. Another question of honest humility that he challenges, the
final one is, "Am I trying to contain God? " You want to be full of faith, you
have to ask these questions.

Am I trying to contain God as the last of them? In verse 48 and 49, "However,
the Most High God does not live in temples made by human hands. As the prophet
says, 'Heaven is my throne and the earth is my footstool.

' Could you ever build me a temple as good as that? " says the Lord. God does
not live in houses.

Now they worshiped him in a temple, but that was not a temple made to contain
God. It was a place they could go and worship God. And now God's burst forth
from that temple to live in the lives and hearts of people.

But we are not containing God. We're a place where God's power is to be lived
out. Do you try to contain God to a building or to a day?

I worship God on this day. Or even to a single person. I've got more of God in
me than he or she has in him or her.

Or does God's spirit overflow into every aspect of your life? And do you
recognize that he's overflowing into every aspect of other people's lives? When
you start to confront those questions, you realize it's easy to contain God, to
put him in a box.

Am I trying to contain God to some small subset of what he wants to do in my
life? If I want to be full of faith, I've got to confront those kinds of
questions. Stephen was a man who was full of faith.

And because of that, God's going to use him in an amazing way in this chapter.
Stephen was also a man who was full of the spirit. In verses 55 through 57, "But
Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit, gazed steadily upward into heaven and saw the
glory of God.

And he saw Jesus standing at the place of honor at God's right hand. And he told
them, 'Look, I see the heavens open and the Son of Man standing in the place of
honor at God's right hand. ' And then they put their hands over their ears, and
drowning out his voice with their shouts, they rushed at him.

" Because he was full of God's spirit, Stephen saw things that no one else in
the room saw. Because he was full of God's spirit. Stephen told them, "I see the
Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.

" None of them could see it because they were living for themselves. There's
something really significant here. In this moment, Stephen, who's about to give
his life for his faith, sees Jesus.

Jesus standing at God's right hand, honoring what Stephen is about to do.
Standing. Not sitting at the throne of God, but standing in honor of what
Stephen's going to do in giving his life.

In seeing Jesus in this moment, Stephen is reminded he is not dying for an idea.
He is dying for a person. He's full of God's spirit.

Stephen's full of faith. He's full of God's spirit. He's also full of grace.

In verse 8, Stephen, a man, all the way back in verse 8, Stephen, a man full of
God's grace and power, performed amazing miracles. He's full of grace. And that
grace is shown as he gives his life for Jesus Christ.

In verses 59 and 60, as they stoned him, taking huge rocks and throwing them on
him to take his life, as they stoned him, Stephen prayed, "Lord Jesus, receive
my spirit," and he fell to his knees shouting, "Lord, don't charge them with
this sin," and with that he died. That's grace. Jesus prayed, "Father, forgive
them.

They don't know what they're doing. " And Stephen, following in the footsteps of
Jesus, prays as he's giving his life, "Lord, don't charge them with this sin. "
That's grace.

And that grace spoke, full of faith, full of the spirit, full of grace, but also
full of power. You see God's power in Stephen's life. That power expressed
itself in three ways.

In verse 8, we saw he's a man full of grace and God's power. He performed
amazing miracles and signs among the people. It expressed itself in wonders.

You see in Stephen's life the wonders and miraculous signs. The power of God
also expressed itself in Stephen's life in wisdom. You see Stephen's wisdom in
this long sermon that he preaches, but you also see the power of God in
Stephen's witness, wonder and wisdom, but then his witness.

His witness goes to today. You and I read about it and read the witness of his
giving his life because of his love for Jesus Christ, but don't forget what
happened that day. His witness to a man who was fighting the faith, a man who
was conflicted about what it meant to trust in Jesus Christ.

In verse 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, Saul who would be later named Paul. The impact of Stephen's witness
is immeasurable.

Warren Wiersby says of Stephen, "For Stephen, his death meant coronation. For
the Sanhedrin, his death meant condemnation. For the church, his death meant
liberation.

And for Saul, his death meant salvation. " Augustine has said the church owes
Saul to the prayer of Stephen. Saul stands and he watches this man give his
life.

And Saul, who was a man of deep conviction, saw a conviction that he could not
understand. It was not human made. It was a different thing.

Now Saul's going to go through a bit of struggle here, but because of what
happens this day and other witness that comes into his life, he's going to come
to know Jesus Christ. Stephen is the first martyr for the faith. We get our word
martyr directly from the Greek word for witness.

He is witnessing his faith this day. And in this day, there is that coronation
for Stephen. There are two words in Greek for crown.

One is diadema, which means the crown of royalty, the other is stepons, which
means the crown of victory. It's Stephen's name. He is wearing this day the
crown of victory.

The man whose name meant crown of victory lived out his name that day and he was
crowned with victory from the Lord. "To him who overcomes," the scripture says,
"I will give the crown of life. " Let's thank the Lord.

Lord, thank you for the life of Stephen. Thank you for the gift of his life
given for this early church, but also given for me, given for us. Thank you for
his witness.

And I pray that his witness would speak to my life today so that I would be full
of faith so that I would be full of your spirit, so that I would be full of
grace, full of power to share your word with people that need to hear. Lord, let
something about his life change something in my life. In Jesus' name I pray,
amen.

Tomorrow we look at chapter 8 as the good news starts to spread out into the
world.