Sermon Manuscript

Good morning and welcome to the Fountain. My name is Isaiah Carrell and I’m the Worship Pastor here. This morning we’re closing out our sermon series, Faith under Fire, where we’ve explored the ideas of sharing the gospel even when it is hard. We’re gonna dive into Acts chapter seven, if you’d like to go ahead and turn your Bibles there. As we get started, I want you to think about these questions… How does the Holy Spirit speak to you? - Who does the Holy Spirit use? - Can our minds run so loud that we quit listening to Him?

I think that everyone in this room could list a million ways that the Holy Spirit speaks, whether it’s through God putting someone with an encouraging word in your path, prayer, Bible reading, Him putting something on your mind and heart. We could list a ton of people that the Holy Spirit works in because if we are honest, the Holy Spirit can and does use anyone. And that last question, can our minds run so loud that we quit listening to Him? That answer is also yes. There are so many ways that God moves that offend us. Sometimes He confronts our comfort and challenges us with a push to do something we’d never dream of. Sometimes He uses people from outside of our theological camp or denomination to challenge us. I have even at times seen God work through people I find offensive and wonder, why would He be using them?

In today’s passage we’re going to look at how we respond when the Holy Spirit confronts our comfort through the lens of Stephen’s speech to the members of the Sanhedrin and other leaders of the synagogue. The Sanhedrin was basically the highest religious court in Israel. These were the most powerful religious leaders, the ones who interpreted the law and kept order in the Jewish faith. This was who Stephen is up against… But let me catch you up on how we got here. Last week, Seth told us about how the disciples had a complaint raised to them about unfair treatment regarding the Hellenist widows in food distribution. One of the people appointed to serve them was a man named Stephen. Stephen, as Acts chapter six says, was full of grace and power. He moved in great signs and wonders, but the religious people could not stand him. Chapter 6 tells us that they could not stand the wisdom and the Spirit with which he was speaking. So they instigated false accusations; they seeded people to bring up these false claims so that they could stone him. Here is what they came up with: the first one, they accused him of speaking blasphemy against Moses and God; the second, that he spoke against this holy place (meaning the temple) and the law; and the third was that he was claiming Jesus would destroy the temple and Moses’ customs. As they gazed at him, Acts 6:15 says that his face was like the face of an angel. The high priest asked of Stephen, “Are these things so?” Now he has the ability to respond. So, let’s read starting in chapter seven, verse 2. (Read through verse 8)

Stephen starts with some of the story of Abraham. God appeared to him while he was in Mesopotamia and told him to go. Leave the land of his people and go into the land that God would show him. This land, which they are now standing in, which Stephen is speaking in, which was promised to Abraham… God gave no inheritance to him; he never saw that promise fulfilled. Now, you might be thinking, ok… what does this have to do with anything? This guy is about to be stoned and he takes time to talk about land? Talk about where God met Abraham? This directly addressed the accusations that were being slung at Stephen. He was telling them… God met with Abraham long before there was a temple, before there was this land, way far away in Mesopotamia, long before there was a nation of Israel. Stephen is showing them something: God has never been confined to the places or systems people build for Him. He went out of his way to say “the glory of God appeared to Abraham.” To their ears, that was temple language. God’s glory only resided in the temple as they knew it. But Stephen made sure they knew it appeared outside of the boundaries they had established. With Abraham, Stephen shows that God is not confined to our traditions.

God has never been confined to a place like the religious people of that day believed. God has never been confined by anything we put on Him. He isn’t only in non-denominational churches; He isn’t only in independent Christian churches; He isn’t only in charismatic churches. He’s with the Christians who believe differently than we do, who worship differently than we do, the ones who have Sunday school and the ones who don’t. He’s with the hymn-singing churches and the ones who do modern worship music. God is with the Calvinist churches and the ones who believe in free will. God has not ever been confined to a building or system that we put Him in… God speaks where He deems fit, not where we do, not under the “acceptable circumstances” that we prescribe.

The issue was not the temple. God ordained and even had a temple built for Him; the issue was that the religious people thought they had control over where God worked, where His glory showed up. They thought they understood exactly how and where God showed up. If God could appear to Abraham in Mesopotamia, long before there was a temple, way before the nation of Israel, then why couldn’t God be working now through Jesus? God moves outside of our expectations; He is not confined to our traditions and understanding.

Let’s continue reading starting in verse 9 (through 16).

The sons of Jacob, who later become the tribes of Israel, were jealous of their brother Joseph. Joseph had found favor with God; God gave him dreams and visions; Jacob, his father, showed him special attention. They sold him into slavery, and God showed favor to him even there. Pharaoh made him ruler over his household and all of Egypt. When a famine came over the land of Egypt and Canaan, Jacob sent his sons to Egypt to find grain, and only on their second visit did Joseph reveal who he was to them. Joseph was rejected by his own family, chosen by God, but rejected. Still God showed favor on him. In Joseph’s story, Stephen shows us that God’s chosen deliverer is often rejected.

Joseph’s brothers had already rejected the very person that God sent to deliver them. And this story should sound familiar to you, as it would to the people who are accusing Stephen. The pattern was this: God sends a deliverer, and God’s people reject him. His people rejected Joseph. Stephen will later in this passage bring up the prophets that God sent them that they also killed. This should sound familiar to you because just like Joseph, sent by God to deliver and save his family and others from a famine… Jesus was rejected by His own. And that is why Stephen is in the situation he is in now. The tragedy is not that they were rejected; it’s that Israel’s consistent pattern was rejection.

When the people God chose were brought onto the scene, His people turned them away every time. Many of the prophets God sent didn’t look like the kind of messengers people expected. They were strange, uncomfortable, disruptive people. The prophet Isaiah even walked stripped, possibly naked, and barefoot for three years as a prophetic sign. Imagine seeing that. Most people would say, “That man is crazy.” But that was God’s messenger. That was who and the means that God chose to use. I just have to wonder how many times we have rejected what the Holy Spirit wants to do because it made us uncomfortable; it upset us. And that raises the same question for us this morning: What do we do when the Holy Spirit confronts our comfort? Because often God works through people we wouldn’t expect and in ways we didn’t plan. It will be way different than we could ever imagine, but it will always be the exact way we need it. And this is where it gets even clearer: Israel repeatedly rejected God’s messengers, including one who they hold so highly, Moses. Let’s continue reading in verse 35 (through verse 42).

This Moses, whom they rejected, who led them out of Egypt, who received the Ten Commandments, a father and tentpole of their faith, was rejected over and over. Even while he was on Mount Sinai, they rejected God and His messenger by making an idol and sacrificing to it. Even in the midst of miracles and deliverance, their hearts turned back to Egypt. They rejected the one God sent to deliver them. They rejected God’s leader; they rejected the ways God was working, so they made a god they could control. They made an idol; they made a god into what they thought they really needed. With Moses’ story, Stephen shows us: when we reject how God leads, we often replace Him with something we can control.

And this manifests itself in many ways. For some people, it’s bending Scripture to be more comfortable to us; it challenges or rubs against our experiences and morals. Sometimes this is just a Sunday Jesus that we keep in a box and only visit a Sunday or two a month. But I think the more common trap we fall into is losing the awe and wonder of God. Here’s what I mean by that: when we can explain God down to a system, when all I need to do are these steps or take these actions to get or to see these results… then we have explained away God. I was recently reminded of something I experienced when I was younger. I grew up in a continuationist church, meaning we believed the gifts of the Spirit were still active, but functionally, nobody practiced the uncomfortable ones. I’m talking about gifts like prophecy, tongues, gifts of healing, miracles… So when I was younger, I was asked what I believed about the gifts and asked why I didn’t believe that all the gifts were alive and active today. I don’t remember my answer, but I do remember the response I got. He told me, make a list of all the gifts of the Spirit that you think God no longer works in. Then he said, you’ve just made a list of ways that you don’t want God to use you. This is how we limit the Holy Spirit; this was how I was, at least.

If you can explain how God acts in everything, it is no longer Him who you’re talking about. There are mysteries; there are uncomfortable things in the Bible and things that we go through in life. But control is not the answer. That’s just idolatry, rejecting an uncontrollable, uncomfortable God for one that can be controlled and understood. I’m reminded of a C.S. Lewis quote from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, a fiction book that encompasses many biblical themes and narratives, in which this conversation is had:

“Aslan is a lion—the Lion, the great Lion.”

“Ooh,” said Susan. “I’d thought he was a man. Is he—quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion.”

“Safe?” said Mr. Beaver. “Who said anything about safe? ’Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.”

Aslan in this book is the parallel for Jesus, and that interaction just characterizes the way we try to put God in a box. We try to make Him “safe” by our standards. Our standard of safe would be that God never puts us in dangerous situations, but many times we have to go into places and talk with people we wouldn’t regularly talk to in order to share the gospel. Our definition of safe would be so limiting that our beliefs would never be challenged and grow. Our sin would never be convicted. We try to control Him in ways that make us comfortable, that make us feel safe. His ways are so much better than ours, and they’re not our ways. But He is good; He’s the King.

After walking through Abraham, Joseph, and Moses, Stephen finally says out loud what he has been showing them the whole time… “You stiff-necked people, uncircumcised in heart and ears, you always resist the Holy Spirit. As your fathers did, so do you. Which of the prophets did your fathers not persecute? And they killed those who announced beforehand the coming of the Righteous One, whom you have now betrayed and murdered, you who received the law as delivered by angels and did not keep it.”

Stephen characterized their behavior and the behavior of their ancestors as “resisting the Holy Spirit.” He called them stiff-necked people—this was imagery of an ox that refused to be steered, corrected, led. That next line, uncircumcised in heart and ears, he’s saying outwardly you have all the makings of a Jew, but inwardly you are not transformed. Stephen is basically saying, you’re stubborn, you’re closed off, and you’re not listening. You know all the right things about God, but you’re refusing to respond to Him. They were resisting the Holy Spirit. That’s what they were doing with Jesus, with Stephen—that is what they had always done. I know that is a heavy statement; that is what Stephen was leaving them with before he would be stoned. But if we’re honest, for us it’s not a question of, “have I resisted the Holy Spirit?” The real question is, “when was the last time I resisted Him?”

It’s not just their story; it’s ours too. We resist and reject God because sometimes we’re just uncomfortable with it. It puts us in situations that we’d selfishly rather not get into. The good news is that just because we have rejected Him before doesn’t mean He quits speaking. God chases us down mistake after mistake and continues to speak to us. God doesn’t stop speaking just because we’ve resisted Him before.

The same Holy Spirit they resisted is the same Holy Spirit that is pursuing us. So the question now becomes, what will I do the next time He speaks?

Unlike the religious leaders Stephen was up against: we stay open, we stay humble, we stay surrendered. The first is to stay open. Stay open to how God might be working, even if it’s unfamiliar. God may not be moving in the ways you expect, but that doesn’t mean He isn’t moving at all. The next thing we can do is to stay humble. One of the biggest problems that these religious leaders had was they believed they were protecting truth, when really all they were protecting was their pride. They could not be wrong about this. So we need to stay humble enough to be corrected. The Holy Spirit doesn’t just comfort us; He also confronts us. He confronts our sin and the ways we are resisting Him. His confrontation isn’t rejection; it’s love. All of these things will fall in line if we stay surrendered, because the moment we try to control God is the moment we quit following Him. He may not always feel safe, but He is good and He is leading you exactly where you need to go.

This week I want you to pray this prayer every day. Just say…

“Holy Spirit, help me not resist You. Let me know the sound of Your voice and recognize where You’re leading me even when it is uncomfortable.”

I know He will honor it.

Let’s go to the Lord in prayer.

Lord, we thank You that You are near. We thank You that You still speak. Help us recognize Your voice. Give us clear and undeniable guidance. Give us a burning in our spirit when You speak that we would feel You clearly. Help us to be open to where You’re moving, humble that we could be confronted by You, and let us continually surrender everything we are to Your perfect plan. In Jesus’ name we pray, Amen.

23 For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you: The Lord Jesus, on the night He was betrayed, took bread, 24 and when He had given thanks, He broke it and said, “This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me.” 25 In the same way, after supper He took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me.” 26 For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes.

Let us enter into this time of communion together. If you are a believer, you are welcome to come to any of the four tables in the room and partake of communion. You may also give of your offerings during this time.

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