(Disclaimer: This transcript is auto-generated and may contain mistakes.)

In Acts chapter 7, we have, of course, Stephen preaching this great sermon. He's basically been arrested for preaching the gospel. And that happened at the end of chapter 6. Because of the fact that he was preaching in chapter 6, and tons of people were getting saved, and first of all, a lot of the scribes and so forth tried to catch him up in his words, and tried to find a way to accuse him, tried to argue with him. But they couldn't resist the wisdom that he had and the spirit by which he spake. And so then they resorted to turning the law on him and trying to get him arrested. So basically they lied about him, and they had these false witnesses bring lying accusations against him. They got him arrested, and now he's basically on trial with the high priest, with the leadership of Israel. And so this is the beginning of the trial. And in chapter 7, verse 1, it says, Then said the high priest, Are these things so? So all these accusations have been read against him, and now he's given a chance to answer for himself and explain his side of the story. Well, interestingly, he doesn't really answer the question. He just starts giving this history of the Old Testament. Now, there's a reason why there's a significance here, and I'm not going to go through every verse tonight, just verse by verse, because we already read the whole chapter just now, and all 60 verses. So I'm just going to give you an overview and kind of show you the highlights here. But he's basically giving an account of the children of Israel in the Old Testament, starting from Abraham, which is like Genesis chapter 12, all the way up to the time of Solomon's temple, which would be the book of 1 Kings. The first part of 1 Kings. So he gives that little history, but there's a theme that he's bringing out as he gives this history. There are certain points that he's emphasizing as he goes. And so let's start out in verse 2. We're not going to hit every verse, but I just want to show you the big theme here of what he's getting at and why he gives this big, long speech about the Old Testament. It says in verse 2, And he said, Men, brethren, and fathers harken. The God of glory appeared unto our father Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia before he dwelt in Karen, and said unto him, Get thee out of thy country and from thy kindred, and come into the land which I shall show you. And just to give you an idea of these places, you know, it's right over here. But anyway, Mesopotamia is what means the land between two rivers. It's talking about the Tigris and Euphrates River. And this is basically in the River of the Chaldees, where he started out. And then that place, Karen, in the Old Testament, that's spelled Haran. So those are both the same place. It's just a New Testament spelling. And it's basically talking about the fact that God appeared unto Abraham and told him to get out of his country, to get out of his father's house, and he just told him, Go to a land that I'll show thee. And in Hebrews chapter 11, it says, He went out not knowing whither he went. I mean, he was just obeying the voice of God. He did not know where he was going. But God just told him, It's a land that I will show thee. And so he went out by faith. He went to the land of Canaan. God gave him no possession in it. He just sojourned in the land as a stranger, dwelling in tapernacles, or tents, with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him in the same promise. And so he was just sojourning in the land, but he by faith believed God's promise. And that's what Stephen is emphasizing here, how Abraham was a great man of faith, a man that God blessed, and that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob had the faith to go to the promised land and to sojourn there, and so forth. But then he begins to show that Abraham's descendants were not of the same faith of Abraham. And he basically highlights throughout this history all the different places that the children of Israel rebelled against the prophets and leaders that God sent them. That's the point that he's making. And then at the very end of the chapter, he's going to tie it in and say, And you know what? You're the same way today. Just like your fathers resisted Moses and all these other... You also resist the Holy Ghost. But let's see some of those highlights. Look at verse 9. This is the first place he shows. In verse number 9, it says, And the patriarchs, these are the eleven brothers of Joseph, and the patriarchs moved with envy, sold Joseph into Egypt, but God was with him. Now, over and over, as you read the book of Exodus, that phrase is mentioned. I'm sorry, the book of Genesis. Over and over again, God was with him. The Lord was with Joseph. The Lord was with Joseph. Joseph was the most righteous of his brethren. He was the one that saved all their lives. They all ended up bowing down and worshiping him. He was the one who was exalted above his brethren, and Joseph was the one that they hated, rejected, and despised. There's the first symbolism that Stephen is showing. He goes on further to verse number 25. This is when Moses comes on the scene. Let's start reading in verse 23. This is talking about Moses. It says, It came into his heart to visit his brethren, the children of Israel. And seeing one of them suffer wrong, he defended them, and avenged him that was oppressed and smote the Egyptians. Watch verse 25. For he supposed his brethren would have understood how that God by his hand would deliver him, but they understood not. So now, God is sending to the children of Israel, as they're afflicted and bonded in Egypt, a deliverer, Moses. And they didn't understand that. They didn't accept Moses. And here's what they said to him in verse 27. It says, That's what they're saying to Moses. Look, if you would, down at verse 35. It says, So do you see a pattern? He's shown before how all the children of Israel sold Joseph into bondage, rejected him, and they questioned the exact same thing. If you remember when Joseph had those dreams in the Old Testament, where he said, Hey, I have a dream, and basically the sun and the moon and 11 stars were bowing down to me. And they got angry at him and said, Will thou rule over us? They basically said, We don't want you to rule over us. You're not going to be our ruler. But what ended up happening? He ended up ruling over them. They bowed down before him. Same thing with Moses. They said, Who made thee a ruler and a judge? And it says, God did make him a ruler and a deliverer. Look, if you would, at verse number 39. This is more about Moses. It says, To whom our fathers would not obey, but thrust him from them, and in their hearts turned back again to Egypt, saying unto Aaron, Make us gods to go before us, for as for this Moses which brought us out of the land of Egypt, we want not what has become of them. And they made a cap in those days, and offered sacrifice unto the idol, and rejoiced in the works of their own hands. It goes on to talk about their idolatry and so forth. Jump down to verse 51. This is where Stephen, so far, has just been preaching them a history of the children of Israel. But they don't even understand the point that he's making. They don't even get when he's driving home with this, as he shows this pattern over and over. But here's where he applies it to them in verse 51. So he's just giving this benign recitation of the history of Israel. But then in verse 51 he applies it. It says, You stiff-necked and uncircumcised and hard of ears, ye do always resist the Holy Ghost, as your fathers did, so do ye. Which of the prophets have not your fathers persecuted? And they have slain them which showed before of the coming of the just one, of whom ye have been now the betrayers and murderers, who have received the law by the disposition of angels, and have not kept it. When they heard these things, they were cut to the heart, and they gnashed on them with their teeth. So we see, out of all the verses in this chapter, Stephen's basically preaching for 49 verses. Nobody's offended. Nobody's mad. Everybody's fine. He's just given the history of the children of Israel. But just in those three verses, he basically seals his fate. He's going to be killed by this angry mob just because of what he said in those three little verses, because he applied these scriptures. So you see, over and over again, they're rejecting the prophets that God sent them. Jesus Christ talked about how they had slain... He said, upon this generation shall be brought the blood of all the prophets, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zacharias. All throughout the Old Testament, they persecuted, imprisoned, and killed the prophets that were sent to them. They rejected Joseph. They rejected Moses. They rejected so many times the people that God would send. And then they rejected Jesus Christ. The Bible says that Jesus came unto his own, and his own received him not. But as many as received him, to them gave him power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name. So this isn't just a random... He's just kind of stalling. He's in the courtroom, and he's trying to get everybody on his side. He's trying to make a point here, showing how their fathers had constantly turned away from the Lord, turned away from God. I mean, look at the book of Judges. Great example. In the book of Judges, you have a period of approximately 400 years that's represented in the book of Judges. And in the book of Judges, you have this cycle that's described in chapter 2 of Judges. Over and over again, God would send them a great leader like a Joshua. You know, that was the first guy that led them into the Promised Land. After the death of Joshua, they begin to worship other gods. They begin to go astray. They become heathen. And then God sends the first judge, which was Othniel, the son of Cana, Caleb's younger brother. Othniel comes in. He leads him to victory. He delivers him. And as long as Othniel's alive, everything's great. Then Othniel dies, and they go back, a-whoring after other gods. And then God sends Ehud. God sends Shamgar. God sends all these different judges. And every time that righteous leader's gone, you know, basically, they end up going back to their wicked ways. And even many times, those righteous leaders would rise up, and they wouldn't want to follow them. When Gideon first rose up in the book of Judges, they rejected Gideon. They tried to put Gideon to death. And only because Gideon's father, Joash, stepped in and saved his life, they were ready to execute Gideon, who would later lead them to victory. Same thing with Jephthah, another picture of the Lord Jesus Christ, where Jephthah was rejected and put out, but then they called upon him to come back and lead them to victory. And so Stephen is explaining to them, you've done the same thing here with Jesus. And Jesus preached this also when he was on this earth. He basically told them, he said, you know, you say that if we had been in the days of our fathers, we would not have killed the prophets. But he said, by saying that, you're admitting that your fathers are the ones who killed the prophets. And he said, fill then up ye the measure of your fathers. You serpents, you generation of vipers, how should ye escape the damnation of hell? And by the way, they put him to death too, for saying those type of things, for saying the same type of things. And so we see here this sermon by Stephen that's just highlighting the fact that the children of Israel throughout the Old Testament constantly were rejecting God, rejecting God's ways, worshiping idols, and worshiping false gods. That's the point of what he's explaining in this passage. Now let me show you a few other interesting things before I get to Stephen's comments at the end. Look at verse number 38. I'm just going to show you some highlights here. In verse 38 it says, This is he, speaking of Moses, which was in the church in the wilderness, with the angel which spake to him in the Mount Sinai, and with our fathers who received the light of the oracles to give unto us. That's interesting, right? Because we're talking about the Old Testament, and yet he uses the word church. Simply because the word church just means congregation, assembly of people. And he had that congregation in the Old Testament. When they started to worship other gods in the wilderness, Moses set up the tabernacle without the camp, and he said, anybody who's going to be on the Lord's side, he said, come out to the tabernacle. And they called it the tabernacle of the congregation. And that was representative or picturing the church of the New Testament, the local church. You know, where you're supposed to come out from the world and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing. It was a picture of the separation. They set that thing up without the camp, and people would go there to assemble with other believers, and that was called the tabernacle of the congregation. And congregation and church are synonymous. There are verses in the Bible, like in the book of Hebrews, where he quotes, in the midst of the church, I will sing praise unto thee. Psalm 22, 22 says, in the midst of the congregation, I will sing praise unto thee. It's the same verse. But in the Old Testament, it uses the word congregation. New Testament, it uses the word church. So let me ask you, is the church a building? No. It's a congregation. Is the church a denomination? No. It's an assembly of people. Is a church made of every believer? We're all part of the church. No. Church as is used 80 to 90 times, I don't know the exact number off the top of my head, in the New Testament. Church as, multiple churches, because it's multiple congregations or gatherings of God's people separating themselves from the world to get around other believers. And that's why church needs to be a place of believers, not a place where you just want to fill up a building with unsafe people and have music and preaching. And that's what a lot of people do in the name of evangelism. Hey, let's just bring in all the unsaved. Hey, if unsaved people come to church, you know, great, we'll try to get them saved. But I thank God that our church has always been and always will be predominantly saved people because we want to get them saved and then bring them to church. The Bible says, He that goeth forth and weepeth bearing precious seed shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him. And sheaves are the already harvested product. We shouldn't just bring unsaved people to church. Why don't you go get them saved and then bring them to church saved? Now, if they come to church unsaved, we'll get them saved. But you know what, wouldn't it be better if you get them saved? I don't want to be the only soul winner in this church. I'm not going to get up and preach salvation sermons three times a week because I preach salvation sermons from door to door throughout the week. And when I get in the pulpit here, I want to feed God's people. I want to feed the sheep. And so I'm going to preach on other subjects. I'm going to preach the whole Bible here. And so it's your job to go out, and it's my job to go out, win people to Christ, and then bring believers to church so they can be baptized so they can grow in the Lord. And so that helps us understand what the word church means there in verse 38. It's just a congregation. Even in the Old Testament, they were congregated. Therefore, it's called the church. Another interesting thing in this passage, look at verse 45. It says, Which also our fathers that came after brought in with... who? Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. into the possession of the Gentiles whom God graved out before the face of our fathers unto the days of David. Now that's actually talking about Joshua. Jesus is the New Testament spelling of the Old Testament word Joshua. There's one other place where it's used like this, Hebrews 4.8. In Hebrews 4.8, it calls Joshua Jesus. Because of the fact that the New Testament was written in Greek and the Old Testament was written in Hebrew, names are spelled a little different. Kind of like Heron in the Old Testament or sort of like Karen in the New Testament. Sort of like Elisha in the Old Testament. It's called Elicias in the New Testament. Elijah is called Elias. There's just a difference in spelling here. But Jesus is basically the Greek version of the Hebrew name Joshua. And so that's why it actually calls Joshua there Jesus. Because if you get the context here and the context in Hebrews 4.8, it's clearly talking about Joshua. Now if you get to verse number 51, and I want to focus now on Stephen's comments. At the end of this big long history of the children of Israel, explaining all the failures, explaining all the great leaders that God sent and how they rejected them time and time again, Stephen applies it to them in verse 51. And that's what bothers them. He says, Now, the problem with most preachers today is that basically their preaching consists of verses 2 through 50. And that's all they're going to preach. Verses 2 through 50. They're going to preach that Sunday morning and Sunday night and Wednesday night. And what I mean by that is they're going to preach the stories of the Bible. And they're going to preach quotes because Stephen's doing a lot of quoting of the Old Testament. He's telling the story. He's quoting verses. He's explaining it. It's all fine and dandy. But notice he makes application. And that's what we don't have today with a lot of preaching. You have preachers get up. They'll preach Bible stories. They'll preach statements and scriptures from the Bible. But if they're not applying it to the people that they're preaching to and they're not calling out sin for what it is, nobody's ever going to get mad. But nobody's ever going to get right with God either with this kind of vague preaching. Because if Stephen hadn't have tied it all together, I don't think I would have figured out what he was accomplishing. I don't think they would have figured it out. I don't think they got the message because they didn't get mad until he specifically applied it to them. And today preachers are afraid to make people mad. They're not a Stephen. They're not a Phillip. They're not filled with the Holy Ghost. And so they're trimming the message down to just verses 2 through 50. They just want to preach a story, preach some concepts of the Old Testament. But they don't want to apply it to today, to bring it into today's world. We need preaching that applies to 2010, today's issues, today's situations. Because you see, the Bible was written, obviously in eternity past as God's Word, in the beginning was the Word. But the Bible deals with the subjects of a few thousand years ago, when it actually names names and things. You know, Paul, when he's preaching against the false teachers of his day, it's people we've never heard of. He's ripping on some guy named Hermogenes. You know, you're not going home and turning on T.B.M. and watching Hermogenes and Philetus. You know, we need to take that and understand, well, if Paul was exposing the false teachers of his day, we ought to be exposing the false teachers of our day. And that's why we need preaching. That's why we don't just come to church and just have me read to you ten chapters of the Bible, pray and go home. You say, well, that'd be great. It's God's Word. But we need it to be applied today. Paul called out the false teachers of his day. We need to bring that into 2010 and point out the people who are preaching the same garbage today and call out their names. You know, we need to apply the Bible today. When the Bible says, I'll set no wicked thing before mine eyes, instead of just, well, I think I'm just going to let the Bible do the talking. You know, a lot of people just say, I'm just going to let the Holy Spirit convey, can I just read the scripture later? Well, then we don't need to. Because we can just get a machine up here to read this book. With today's technology, we can just have a computer voice just reading text to speech up here, just reading the Bible. Or we can just bring anybody. Why do we need somebody that's the husband of one wife and blameless and not given a wife? We can just get anybody to get up here and read this book. No, we need preaching of the Word. Not just reading the Word, but preaching the Word. And we need somebody to get up and not just say, I'll set no wicked thing before mine eyes, but to tell you what that is. It's what's on your TV set. It's the movies that Hollywood puts out. You say, which one's all of them? It's all of them. I mean, unless you could show me a movie that Hollywood's putting out where every woman is dressed in a feminine way and modestly and godly and every romance is only showing people physical that are married and we're not seeing anything and not knowing anything about it. But you and I know that that's not true. That theater, that television set, that cable TV, that satellite is promoting people who are dating, going to bed on the first date or going to bed before they're married. And even if it doesn't show anything, that's promoting the concept. Even if it's cut out. Even if the lights go out and then all of a sudden you're in the next morning and they're in their pajamas, you know. Oh, I wonder what happened. You know, they hopped into two separate bunk beds and this is the kind of garbage that Christians will watch and you say, I don't like this kind of preaching. No, you just don't like any kind of preaching. You're used to somebody maybe not applying the scripture. We need somebody who's going to point it out and name the names and tell you what I'm talking about right now. And so this kind of vague preaching is not the kind of preaching that Stephen did. You know, he applied it to them. He pointed it out and applied the scripture of the Bible to the situations of today. He said, you stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears. You do always resist the Holy Ghost. As your fathers did, so do ye. He said, why did he say stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears? What do you mean uncircumcised in heart and ears? Well, keep your finger here and look if you would at... Romans chapter 2. Romans chapter number 2. Just a few pages to the right in your Bible. See, he's preaching to the Jews. And the Jews pretty much were really... They were really proud to be the children of Abraham and they pretty much figured, hey, we're God's chosen people. We can do no wrong. You know, we're special. We're circumcised. You know, these bunch of uncircumcised filthy heatheners around us, but we're circumcised. We're clean. We're straight down the line. Remember, John the Baptist rebuked him for this and said, think not to say within yourselves we have Abraham to our father. For I say unto you that God is able in these stones to raise up children unto Abraham. Look what it says in Romans chapter number 28. I'm sorry, Romans chapter 2, verse 28. There is no Romans 28. Romans 2, 28, it says, For he is not a Jew which is one outwardly, neither is that circumcision which is outward in the flesh, but he is a Jew which is one inwardly, and circumcision is that of the heart in the spirit, and not in the letter whose praise is not of men, but of God. So there he's referring to circumcision. Go to Philippians, if you would, chapter number 3. He's referring to it as being a thing of the heart. You know, yes, they were physically circumcised in the Old Testament, starting with Moses and so forth, all the way back to Abraham, but then Moses had to recircumcise all the children of Israel. But that physical circumcision was a picture of something else. It was a picture of a spiritual circumcision, and the Bible tells us in Philippians chapter 3, verse number 3, For we are the circumcision which worship God in the spirit, and rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh. He's speaking to Gentiles there. He's speaking to the Philippians. He said we are the circumcision. He said we're Jews inwardly. And we're Jews because we're circumcised in the heart, in the spirit, not in the letter, not a physical circumcision, but a spiritual circumcision. And what circumcision pictured in the Old Testament was basically separation from the world. It wasn't salvation. The Bible says that Abraham, in Romans chapter 4, it explains that Abraham was saved long before he was circumcised. Circumcision was a seal of the righteousness of the faith, which he had yet being uncircumcised. But circumcision was a sign of separation from the world. It's what basically set apart God's people from the rest of the world around them. And interestingly, it's not really something that everybody necessarily around them knew. Because circumcision took place in an area that was not seen. Obviously, except for their wife is the only one who's really going to know. And that's a picture, too, of the fact that it's a relationship that we have with God where not everybody's always going to know who's the one who's really separated and who's not. Because a lot of people have secret sins. A lot of people, they do bad things when they're all by themselves. But God knows the difference. And these Jews in Acts chapter 7, they had it together on the outside. And they were physically circumcised. And they felt like they faulted. And he said, inwardly, he said, you're like white exemplars because you appear good on the outside, but inwardly you're rotten. You're full of dead men's bones. And that's basically what Stephen is accusing them of, if you want to go back to Acts chapter 7. He's saying, you stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears. You do always resist the Holy Ghost. As your fathers did, so do ye. Well, have you ever been sitting in church, for example, and heard preaching, this Bible preaching that's straight out of the Bible, but you don't necessarily like what's being preached, but you know that it's out of the Bible, you know that that is what the Bible says? Well, that's where you can resist the Holy Ghost. You know, when you hear somebody preaching on your favorite TV show, or your favorite movies, or your favorite music, and you know that what's being preached is biblical, you know that the Bible is condemning nudity, you know the Bible is condemning fornication, you know the Bible condemns homosexuality, you know that the Bible condemns all the filth that this world has to offer, and yet, you'll resist that, and fight against that, or you hear some other biblical truth preached, and you just fight it, you don't want to conform to it, you don't want to go with God's standards. That right there, you're doing exactly what Stephen's preaching against them doing, resisting the Holy Ghost. And it doesn't even just have to be church. Sometimes you're just reading your Bible, right? You might read a verse in the Bible, and you don't like what it's teaching, because the shoe fits, you know, because it's something that you're maybe guilty of. Because there are a lot of, hundreds and hundreds of commandments in the Bible, I'll tell you right now, there were a lot of things that I did when I was growing up that I didn't even realize were a sin. Until later I got in the Bible preaching church, later I started reading the Bible cover to cover, things that I hadn't even thought of as being sinful, I started to realize, hey, God has commanded against us, God says this is wrong. Well, when I see that, I have a choice to make. Am I going to make the changes necessary in my life, or am I going to resist the Holy Ghost? And the problem with resisting the Holy Ghost is you can develop a habit of resisting the Holy Ghost. You can start to harden your heart, the Bible says. And when you harden your heart, and your conscience isn't as much of a force in your life because you've shut it out for so long, and the Bible says that your conscience is the candle of the Lord, according to Proverbs, that will illuminate things in your heart, you'll start to do something, and you'll feel bad, your conscience will be there, and that's God's way of many times showing you that things are wrong. Sometimes the Holy Spirit will make you feel guilty about things that you're doing. And so we can't resist that. And the Bible says that if we doubt something, we shouldn't do it, except whatsoever is not a faith is sin. If you're not sure if something's right, let's say you have a movie, and you say, well, I'm not sure if this movie's right or not, then you shouldn't watch it. If you do watch it, it's a sin. Because the Bible says if you're not sure, if you doubt something, don't do it. He said whatsoever is not a faith is sin. He said unless you have a faith and know for sure that what you're doing is right. And you know what? When you doubt something, and here's a good saying, when in doubt, throw it out. Because when you doubt something, it's probably wrong. Because I don't have to doubt whether going to church is the right thing to do. I don't have to doubt whether, you know, playing a board game with my family is wrong or sinful. I don't have to doubt whether soul winning is wrong or reading the Bible or playing the piano. I don't have to doubt whether eating lunch today was the right thing to do. I don't have to doubt whether going to work is the right thing to do or not. But there are all these things where you start feeling bad and wondering, is this right? Is this wrong? You know, that could be the Holy Ghost convicting you through God's Word, through scriptures that you heard that things are wrong. You know, and there's so much today as a society that we accept and that we're just used to, but it's just because we've gotten used to, many times, resisting the Holy Ghost convict. You know, we've become just used to nudity or used to women that are scantily clad. You know, we're just used to it. We're just used to filth and sin and immorality. We're used to sodomy even because it's been crammed down our throat. And we need to stop resisting God's Spirit. We need to stop being like Lot who vexed his righteous soul daily in seeing and hearing their evil deeds. And we need to be very sensitive to God's Spirit feeding us through His Word to clean up our lives, to straighten out the things that need to be straightened out. And so he's accusing them of being stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears. He said they always resist the Holy Ghost. As your fathers did, so do ye. Which of the prophets have not your fathers persecuted? And they have slain them which showed before of the coming of the just one, of whom ye have been now the betrayers and murderers. You know, even David. You say, well, David was popular. David was hunted and rebelled against and thrown out of his kingdom how many times did they reject David? I mean, all the great men of God in the Old Testament were persecuted. They wanted to kill Moses. There was a time when they wanted to kill Moses. They wanted to kill Aaron. They wanted to kill David. They wanted to kill all these people. But today, today all the best preachers are actually really popular. Everybody likes them. Isn't that weird? Isn't that weird how every single preacher of the Old Testament was hated and persecuted, but today all the most loved preachers are right? Isn't that weird? Oh, yeah, that's not true. That's why it's not weird because it's not the case. And that's why the preachers that are on TV today, they must not be preaching the truth or they wouldn't be on it. And I'm not saying they're on CNN and stuff because I've been on there. I mean, like, they're on TV because they're, you know, given a chance to preach on TV. They're not on TV, you know, being arrested and stuff. You know, that's different. But the point is... Yeah, that's another sermon. But, you know, the point is tonight that we've got a bunch of preachers that are accepted and loved by the world and then we accept them. We should reject any preacher that's accepted and loved by the world. When you've got churches today and preachers where the mayor of the city loves them and the city council just loves them and the police chief loves them and the fire chief loves them, you know, I'm hated by all the above. No, I'm just kidding. I don't know. They love me too. No, I'm just kidding. But the point is, today, we have churches that are loved and accepted by the world and we think that they're right with God. Something's wrong with this picture. Are they better than Jesus? Because Jesus said the disciple is not above his master and the servant is not above his Lord. And if they called the master of the house Beelzebub, how much more shall they call them of his household? He said, ye shall be hated of all men for my name's sake. What part of that do we not understand? If he said, look, they called me Beelzebub, they're going to call followers of me even worse things than that. And he said the disciple is not above his master. Basically what he's saying is this. He said one of two things. You're better than me, or you're going to be persecuted like me if you're following me. That's basically what it is. So if you're going to tell me that there's a preacher today that's preaching all of God's Word and he's preaching it like Jesus would have him to preach, but he's not suffering persecution and he's actually loved by the world, what you're saying is that he's better than Jesus Christ. Because that's what Jesus said. He said, you're not better than me, and therefore you will be persecuted and called worse things than I am called. So basically we have a bunch of preachers today who think that they're better than Jesus Christ. That's the way he called it out. That's what he said. He said, well, you think you're better than me? You think that you're just going to have a better PR than I am? You're just better at getting along? You can preach all the same stuff I preached without drawing the same heat? He said, no, you're not better than me. Nobody's better than Jesus. Jesus Christ was the ultimate preacher. Jesus Christ was the ultimate pastor. And yet he's hated. They tried to throw him off a cliff in chapter 4 of the book of Luke. This was his first sermon in his hometown. And they tried to shove him off a cliff. You remember that story? And God miraculously allowed Jesus to escape because his time had not yet come. They took up stones to stone him repeatedly. They'd already tried to shove him off a cliff. They tried to get him executed. They tried to get him arrested. And eventually, they did arrest him. They did kill him. They killed Stephen here. Why? Because he was preaching the truth. Because Jesus' message and Stephen's message really go hand in hand. I mean, really, he's preaching a lot of the same things. He's saying a lot of the same type things. And you say, well, why didn't Stephen just leave out that last part? He could have just said, let's close in prayer after verse 50. Everything would have been fine. And Stephen lacked a little bit of wisdom here. I think it was because he was a young man in the ministry. I think he was just kind of a young preacher. He hadn't really learned enough. No, he was spirit-filled. And that's what's lacking in the preacher who won't preach verses 51 through 53. He's a 2 through 50 preacher. He doesn't want to preach the whole thing. And let me say this, too. There's a lot we can learn from this chapter. You don't have to shave off much to stay out of trouble. You can preach 95% of the Bible would be just fine. It's just that little 5% that gets you in trouble, isn't it? But you know what? That 5% is what separates the men from the boys. That little 5%. If you took the mass of a human being, circumcision isn't really a huge difference in mass. But you know what? It made a big difference to God. Circumcision is a little thing, right? But to God... Obviously, we don't circumcise today in the New Testament, but in the Old Testament, that symbol was there, and that was for the Jews in the Old Testament. But it wasn't a huge physical difference, right? If they got on the scale afterward, they're not going to be much different in size. But let me tell you something. It made a big difference to God. And today, we've got preachers who are cutting out the small part of the Bible, maybe that's offensive, but you know what? That's the part that needs to be preached, because we've got to preach it all. Or we're not worthy to be called a follower of Jesus Christ, or else we're insulting Jesus by thinking that we can be better than Him. We can do better than Jesus, because we can please the Father always, and please man at the same time, because we're better than Jesus. That's wrong. We can't please both God and man. Paul said, Do I now persuade man or Christ? He said, If I yet pleased man, I should not be the servant of Christ. And so it's that simple in this passage. He said in verse 52, Which of the prophets have not your fathers persecuted? I'll tell you which ones. Let me answer you, Stephen. Since the people you were talking to were too foolish to answer your question, I'll answer you, Stephen. The false prophets. There's your answer, Stephen. Which of the prophets did they not persecute? The false prophets. Because Jesus said, Woe unto you when all men speak well of you. Luke chapter 6. For so they did to the false prophets. The false prophets were loved by the mayor, and the police chief, and the county supervisor, and the governor. They're loved by them because they're of the world. That's why they're loved by the world. The Bible says, Behold what manner of love the Father had bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God. Therefore the world knoweth us not, because it knew Him not. Beloved, now are we the sons of God. And I'd rather be God's son than the son of Jan Brewer. I don't want to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter. I don't want to be the son of the mayor, the son of the governor, or the son of the county supervisor, or the son of all the... I don't want to be Obama's son tonight. I want to be the son of God. I want to be what God has bestowed upon me, a higher honor of being a son of God, not the son of all these politicians and the son of the world, but a son of the Lord Jesus Christ. That's what I want to be tonight. That's the life I want to live tonight. And that means that I'm going to be rejected by the world. Jesus said this in John 16. It says in verse 1, These things have I spoken unto you, that ye should not be offended. They shall put you out of the synagogues. Yea, the time cometh that whosoever killeth you will think that he doeth God's service. And these things will they do unto you, because they have not known the Father, nor me. But these things have I told you, that when the time shall come, ye may remember that I told you of them, and these things I said not unto you at the beginning, because I was with you. So he's just explaining to them how they're going to be disliked and persecuted and hated by the world. But let's move on in Acts 7 here. He calls them basically the betrayers and the murderers of Jesus Christ. That's a pretty strong word, but it's true, because they called out, crucified him. Basically, we can add this to the list of chapters so far. Acts chapter 2, Acts chapter 3, Acts chapter 4, Acts chapter 5, and Acts chapter 7. So out of the first seven chapters so far, five of them have included the apostles accusing the Jews of killing Jesus. Am I right about that? We saw it in chapter 2, 3, 4, 5, and 7. We didn't see it in chapter 1, and we didn't see it in chapter 6. But we did see it five out of seven chapters here, so we're seeing this theme over and over again. And it says in verse 53, who have received the law by the disposition of angels and have not kept it, because the Bible says unto whom much is given, of him shall much be required. The Jews had the advantage of having the Old Testament taught to them, read to them every Sabbath day in the synagogue, but yet they rejected it. What was the reaction? Verse 54. When they had heard these things, they were cut to the heart. You know why they were cut to the heart? Because it was true. See, when people insult me, and it's not true, you just laugh it off, right? I get all kinds of insults thrown at me every day of my life. Not a day goes by that I don't either get something in the mail, something on the phone, or something in the email calling me everything that's worse than the word beelzebub. You know, that Jesus was called. And I've been called everything. You can go into my email and search any four-letter word you want, and I've been called that a hundred times. But the thing is, it doesn't bother me, because I know it's not true. When someone writes to me and says, Oh, you're a racist. Only white people are allowed at your church. It doesn't really bother me, since my church is filled with people of all different nationalities. And I don't have a racist bone in my body. So I just laugh at that. It doesn't bother me. If somebody says to me, You're ignorant. It doesn't bother me. They'll tell me, You need to read so-and-so a book in the Bible. It's a book that I have memorized. Like, I have the whole book of Revelation memorized. They're like, You need to read Revelation. I'm like, Well, I haven't memorized. How about if I just quote it? Does that count? That doesn't bother me. I'm just going to laugh that off. But if somebody insults you and it's true, isn't that what hurts? Isn't that what cuts you to the heart? If you tell someone who's beautiful that they're ugly, they're not going to care. But don't tell somebody who's ugly that they're ugly. They're not going to like it. You know what I mean? Bad example. Anyway, if you tell me that my teeth are yellow, that's going to hurt. Because I'm not exactly Joel Osteen up here. But if you tell me that I'm a racist and I don't know the Bible, it's not really going to bother me. I didn't like it. When I was a kid, I didn't like it because I was really short when I was a kid growing up. Now I'm a normal appetite. When I was a child, I was always very short-run. Always the shortest kid in the class. So do you think I like being called short? That's going to hurt your feelings, right? That's going to cut you to the heart when people say something about you that's true. And that's why these people were so offended because they knew that what he was saying was true. That's why. And you know, the people who get the maddest about preaching, because I've been in church, and I've heard stuff preached that wasn't true, and I didn't just... You know, I get mad if they're preaching like a false doctrine about salvation or preaching some heresy. But let's say they preach and say that something's wrong, and I know it's not wrong. It doesn't make me mad. Like for example, there are people that get up and say that Christmas trees are a sin. I don't get mad about that because I know what the Christmas trees are. They say it's an idol. Well, I know what the biblical definition of an idol is. It's a graven image of an animal or a human being. That's what an idol is. And the Bible talks about them going and getting a tree and decking it with gold. Why don't you read the whole chapter? It talks about how they carved the tree into an idol and then overlaid it with gold. They weren't hanging gold ornaments on a pine tree. They brought a tree out of the forest, carved it into an image because that's what's wrong. Look, houseplants are not wrong. It's not wrong to have a potted plant in your house. It's not wrong to cut down a tree and put it in your living room. And somebody said that the round ornaments are pagan because they're round. So circles are pagan. Triangles are pagan. What is it pagan? Can I eat an orange? And look, if somebody believes that, I'm sorry to make fun of somebody for believing that. If somebody believes that, that's fine. I'm not offended by that, and I'm not mad about that tonight. And if somebody believes that Christmas trees are wrong, then don't have a Christmas tree, and that's fine with me. That doesn't bother me at all. And if somebody says, you have a dolla tree in your house because you have a tree in your living room, I know that a tree is not a graven image. God actually made the tree to look that way. I'm not carved in any way. So do I get mad about that? No, I don't care. If I sat in a queue and heard a creature get up and preach against Christmas trees, I wouldn't even care. It wouldn't cut me to the heart. Oh, you got me. But you know what? If I'm watching Seinfeld, and I've got to preach against shows that are off the air because I haven't watched TV in a really long time, if I'm watching Seinfeld every week, and the pastor gets up and hits on Seinfeld and explains how it's promoting promiscuity and fornication and adultery, that's going to cut to the heart if the shoe fits because it's true. That's why it cuts to the heart. And you'll find the people that just get really mad at preaching and they can't handle the preaching at a church like this, it's because what I'm saying is too true for them. And they know it's true. Because when you sit in church and you hear something preached that you don't agree with or that's not true, you just brush it off. Do you think you're going to agree with everything that I believe? Is there anybody in here that would say, Pastor Anderson, I agree with everything you believe before you even say it? I already know it's going to be true. Anybody like that? No. And if you talk to the people in our church, I'm sure that there are people here that agree with most of what I say. There are other people who agree with very little of what I say. They just like the way I say it. And there are some people who agree with a lot of what I say. That's not the point. They know that I'm up here preaching the Bible. They know that when they come here Sunday night, Sunday morning, and Wednesday night, they're getting truth. They're getting knowledge. They're learning the Bible. They're growing in the Lord by being here. Whether they agree with everything or not, they agree with everything in this book, and that's 99% what I'm preaching. And so that's why they're here. And they're not just going to get all burned up and mad over every little thing that I say that they don't agree with. But you know what is going to make them mad? When they're in sin, and I hit on that sin, and they know it's true, that's what's going to come into their heart. So you better examine yourself. Next time I'm preaching or some other preacher's preaching, and all of a sudden you start getting really mad at the preacher, ask yourself, wait a minute, why am I so mad here? Is it because the shoe fits? Or is it something else? And so you've got to be careful that you don't fall into the trap that these people fell into of just getting mad, and you know what they're doing really is just shooting the messenger. It's just God's word that he's preaching. It's sad that Stephen invented any of this. And so it says, they were cut to the heart, they gnashed on them with their teeth, but he being full of the Holy Ghost, looked up steadfastly into heaven and saw the glory of God and Jesus standing on the right hand of God. And I love the boldness of Stephen. You don't see him like, ooh, you know? It says he stood there and steadfastly looked up. As they're coming toward him, as they're physically attacking him, he stands tall, stands his ground, and looks up to heaven, and basically God shows him a vision where he says that he sees the heavens open and the Son of Man standing on the right hand of God. It's interesting because usually he's always seated, so Jesus stood up for this. Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints, the Bible says. And so Jesus Christ is actually standing on the right hand of God and as Stephen says that, then they just, they start doing that thing you do when you're a little kid when somebody's saying something you don't like and you go, buh, buh. Did you ever do that when you were a kid? Man, nobody did that? Like three people? We would always, maybe, okay, did you say something different? Okay, what did you say? That's so lame. La la la. The right way to do it is, buh. We used to do that all the time. Me and my brothers and sisters would all do that. And that's what they're doing. They're basically like a little kid. You know, they think that they're going to somehow escape from what he's saying by stopping their ears. This is, they cried with a loud voice and stopped their ears. So I don't know if it was a la la, or it was a buh, or whatever else, but they're just crying out, cover their ears, and ran upon him with one accord, cast him out of the city and stoned him. And the witnesses laid down their clothes at a young man's feet whose name was Saul. So he's really getting a lot of justice in this courtroom, huh? Just no judge, order, order. No, they just all run at him, grab him, assault him, cover their ears, won't listen to him, and they stone him and kill him. And it says they stoned Stephen, calling upon God. And by the way, the phrase calling upon God, removed in all the modern versions. Removed in the NIB, removed in the New American Standard. They take that out because it says he's calling upon God and saying, Lord Jesus, because Jesus is God, Lord Jesus received my spirit, and he kneeled down and cried with a loud voice, Lord, lay not this sin to their charge. And when he had said this, he fell asleep. So this is a great man, isn't it? I mean, he can stand there and just steadfastly not budge, but he didn't fight back or anything. I mean, he just took the beating, and eventually they killed him. They stoned him to death. And he was still forgiving in his heart the people who were assaulting him. I mean, it's an amazing man. This is like what Jesus said when he was on the cross. Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. Stephen is saying, Lord, lay not this sin to their charge. He's even praying for the people that are assaulting him. You know why this was so significant? Because you know, one of the people that really had Stephen's blood dripping from their hands was the Apostle Paul. Because that man Saul that's mentioned in verse number 58, it says they laid down their clothes at a young man's feet whose name was Saul, and Saul now jumped down to chapter 8, verse 1. It says, and Saul was what? Consenting unto his death. Saul had a partner. Saul was there. He said, yeah, let me hold your coat. Let me help you do this. I consent to what you're doing. And Stephen said, Lord, lay not this sin to their charge. Because you know what? It's a good thing that he said that, and it's a good thing that he forgave. Because who knows? Would God have really forgiven if he hadn't done that? Stephen hadn't prayed that intercessory prayer for those that were there. Stephen's death was not in vain. You know, when I first read this as a young person, I was lamented that such a powerful man, Stephen, such a great preacher, would die so young in his ministry. I mean, he hadn't really accomplished as much as he could have in a lifetime. I mean, so early on, Stephen is cut down and killed. But yet, the spirit of Stephen lived on in the Apostle Paul. Because that must have made an impression on Saul when he saw Stephen look steadfastly toward heaven and have such dignity and say, Lord, lay not this sin to their charge. You know, I'm sure that that played into Paul's later actions. I'm sure that Paul, once Paul got saved, looked back to Stephen as a role model, looked back to Stephen as a hero and as a person that he could have before him as an example. And so here's the moral that we can get from that. We need to be careful how we treat people sometimes that are our enemies because a lot of our enemies of today could be the friends of tomorrow. I've had people in my life who've done me dirty, you know, and then later on, those people became some of my best friends. I've had people that I've had terrible strife with, people who have hated my guts, later become Paul's friends and buddies. Who would say in here tonight there was somebody who used to be a real enemy, somebody who hated you, and later on they became a real good friend of yours? Put up your hand. Oh, they still hate him. They still hate you? All right. Hang in there. Honestly, you know, several hands went up because you know what? There are a lot of people. I can think of people who stabbed me in the back on the job. Later on, that person would have done anything for me and treated me well. You know, that's why it's important the Bible says to love our enemies. Now, contrary to popular belief, the Bible does not say to love pedophiles and rapists and sodomites and people who hate God and cannibals and all this weird stuff. You know, people who love everybody. Well, okay, but there are scores of verses that talk about hating people, so I'm not going to cut those out of my Bible. I don't know if I do. But one group that the Bible does not tell us to hate is our personal enemies. He says, love your enemies. Do good to them that hate you. Pray for them that despite who use you and persecute you... I mean, literally. I've been arrested by the police before, okay? No, really. I've been arrested by the police before, and one of the cops that was standing by there consenting, you know, holding the coats of those who had me on the ground in handcuffs, literally, I won him to Christ, what, two and a half weeks after. You know? So that's why we shouldn't just have hatred and bitterness for people who do us wrong. Because you know what? Sometimes they know not what they do. You know, some of these police officers could just be, you know, they're just fallen orders. Maybe they just don't see the big picture. They don't understand our freedom and our liberty. They don't understand Christianity. They don't understand what they're doing. You know, and you hope that eventually they'll get right. You know, you hope they'll get saved or you hope that they'll learn the truth about things. And so you've got to be careful that you don't just, you know, turn your wrath and hatred on somebody just because they knew you wrong. Because just because somebody hates you doesn't make them a bad person. Now if somebody hates God, then they are a bad person. But if somebody hates you, maybe they just hate your personality. And you're not perfect and you're not God. You know, and I think there are a lot of people in this world who don't like me personally. There are probably other preachers who just really don't like me and really hate me. But that doesn't make them a bad person. That doesn't mean that they're a horrible person. You know, they might just have a certain issue with me. Maybe they're just mixed up on something. Or maybe it's just something about my personality that they don't like. Because my personality is not perfect. It's not perfect. Believe it or not, it's not. But the thing is, I shouldn't just say, well, you know, I'll feel the same way about you. You know what? We shouldn't hate our enemies. We should love our enemies. Because some of the people that are maybe hating us and persecuting us today could be, you know, friends tomorrow, could be brothers in Christ tomorrow. And I told you right there, somebody who's sitting there while I'm being wrongfully persecuted and arrested and put in handcuffs, that I won to Christ two and a half weeks later. Hey, you know what? It's a good thing that I didn't just, you know, curse him in my heart. It's a good thing that I bless him in my heart, you know? And even the ones who beat me up, I basically was praying in the back of the squad car. I prayed by name that they would be saved. Because it doesn't mean that they're just horrible people who have no hope. Because you see here, the Apostle Paul, he said, I obtained mercy because I did it ignorantly and unbelief. When he talked about persecuting the cause of Christ, he said, I obtained mercy who was before a blasphemer and a persecutor and a jurist. He said, how be it I obtained mercy because I did it ignorantly and unbelief. Paul was not trying to do wrong here. He thought he was doing the right thing. This is what Jesus prophesied. He read it earlier in John 16. That the time will come that those that kill you will think that they do God a service. And that's what's going on here in the case of Saul. Now, a lot of these guys, there was no hope for them. You know, they were already just too far gone. They had shut their ears to the truth. God had hardened their hearts. But you know what? Saul represented one in that group who just... He was sincere, but he was sincerely wrong. And he would have gone to hell if he had not later decided to believe on Jesus Christ. A lot of sincere people. A lot of people think they're doing right. It doesn't mean that they're going to heaven. It doesn't mean that they're saved. And so we need to love our enemies, do good to those on the job. And there are those on the job who are going to steal your commission. Right? They're going to type in their code, steal your commission. There are going to be people on the job who, basically, they mess something up, they're going to blame you. It happens. They try to lie. The supervisor will throw you under the bus sometimes so that he doesn't get in trouble. But you know what? Love him. Give him the gospel. Pray for him to be saved. You know, I've had people do me dirty and light, and I anonymously did something nice for them because God said that he's going to bless me if I do that. And that's really the one who controls my destiny is God. And so those who do ill to us, pray for them. Love them. Should we love those who just hate God and who are monstrous, violent, wicked people? Well, the Bible tells another story on that. That's another story. And if you want to go through that litany of scripture with me sometimes, you know, make my day. Okay? So let's bow our heads and have a word of prayer. Father, we thank you so much for this man, Stephen. Great example of the Bible there, God, of what a preacher should be. Sadly, we didn't get to read the rest of his life story. I would have loved to see how his life turned out if he would have just kept on serving you and preaching. But I guess we did see it in the life of the apostle Paul, who picked up that torch and really probably had a double portion of Stephen's spirit upon him. And so, Father, we pray that you please just help us to be modern-day Stevens and modern-day apostle Pauls. Help us not to trim the message. Help us to preach not the 99% or the 95% that's popular today, but the 100% of your word. And help us, dear God, give us the grace to love our enemies and those that hurt us physically or stab us in the back. Help us to love them and have a Christian attitude. And in Jesus' name we pray. Amen.