Sermon: Marks of the Church (Acts 1-8): A Faithful People Marks of the Church (Acts 1-8): A Faithful People Acts 6:1-15 In those days when the number of disciples was increasing, the Hellenistic Jews[a] among them complained against the Hebraic Jews because their widows were being overlooked in the daily distribution of food. 2 So the Twelve gathered all the disciples together and said, It would not be right for us to neglect the ministry of the word of God in order to wait on tables. 3 Brothers and sisters, choose seven men from among you who are known to be full of the Spirit and wisdom. We will turn this responsibility over to them 4 and will give our attention to prayer and the ministry of the word. 5 This proposal pleased the whole group. They chose Stephen, a
man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit; also Philip, Procorus, Nicanor, Timon, Parmenas, and Nicolas from Antioch, a convert to Judaism. 6 They presented these men to the apostles, who prayed and laid their hands on them. 7 So the word of God spread. The number of disciples in Jerusalem increased rapidly, and a large number of priests became obedient to the faith. 8 Now Stephen, a man full of God s grace and power, performed great wonders and signs among the people. 9 Opposition arose, however, from members of the Synagogue of the Freedmen (as it was called) Jews of Cyrene and Alexandria as well as the provinces of Cilicia and Asia who began to argue with Stephen. 10 But they could not stand up against the wisdom the Spirit gave him as he spoke. 11 Then they secretly persuaded some men to say, We have heard Stephen speak blasphemous words against Moses and against God. 12 So they stirred up the people and the elders and the teachers of the law. They seized Stephen and brought him before the Sanhedrin. 13 They produced false witnesses, who testified, This fellow never stops speaking against this holy place and against the law. 14 For we have heard him say that this Jesus of Nazareth will destroy this place and change the customs Moses handed down to us. 15 All who were sitting in the Sanhedrin looked intently at Stephen, and they saw that his face was like the face of an angel. I. Introduction Over the last three weeks, we have taken a brief look at some of the characteristics that marked the church in the early
chapters of the book of Acts. We discovered that they were first, and foremost, a gathered people. Beginning with Jesus command to the Apostles in Acts 1, the church gathered together in prayer to seek God and to wait upon the coming of the Holy Spirit. Following the outpouring of the Spirit at Pentecost, the church continued to meet together regularly for prayer, fellowship, and to learn from the Apostles teaching. Through their dedication to prayer and patience in waiting on the Lord, the church became fully dependent upon God for their strength and purpose. They sough to act where God gave them opportunity and direction, and in the fullness of God s power. As a result, Jerusalem bore witness to many miracles at the hands of the Apostles, and received the good new of salvation through Jesus Christ. Last week we learned that the church was a generous people, who each gave out of their abundant blessings, until there were no more needy among them. We learned that extravagant generosity is a reflection of the divine nature, and a powerful witness to the world of God s grace and mercy. Through the story of Ananias and Sapphira, we learned that there are serious consequences for greed and lying to the Holy Spirit, and that these can damage the witness of the church. But we also learned that generosity builds our trust in God (and likewise his trust in us); it demonstrates that the kingdom of God is a present reality, as well as a future hope; and true generosity is an outpouring of God s love, shed abroad in our hearts. All of these things their patient waiting upon God as a gathered people, their complete dependence upon him for their strength and purpose, and their extravagant generosity worked together in the life of the church to mold them into a people who would be known, above all, for their faithfulness. II. Stephen s Story
We know nothing about Stephen before Acts, chapter 6, when a small crisis had arisen in the church. It seems that some of the Gentile Christians had complained to the Apostles that their widows were being overlooked by the Jewish Christians during the daily distribution of food. The Apostles sensed that personally dealing with this issue would take them away from the important work of prayer and teaching the Word, so they gathered all of the disciples together and instructed them to choose seven men from among themselves to oversee the daily food distribution. Their only requirements were for these men to be full of wisdom and the Holy Spirit; characteristics that should mark any mature believer. We are then introduced to Stephen, who is described as a man full of faith and the Holy Spirit, and who was chosen as one of the seven overseers. Stephen was an ordinary Christian living in Jerusalem, but his faith made him appear extraordinary, and the Bible tells us that he was full of God s grace and power, and that he performed great wonders and signs among the people. There are a couple of noteworthy observations we can make about the story of Stephen s selection to service. 1. Stephen was easily identifiable as someone who exhibited great faith, and who was filled with the Holy Spirit. We have no indication that finding Stephen and the other men who would serve was a difficult proposition. Apparently, it was easy to recognize people in the church who were filled with the Holy Spirit and wisdom. Just like the marks of the church are easily discernable when we look for them, so too is the fruit of the Spirit. Galatians 5:22-23 tells us the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. The presence of the Holy Spirit can be found where these are apparent in the lives of believers.
These characteristics were common enough, that the disciples had no difficulty finding them, which begs a question: shouldn t we still be able to identify these things in others when they are present? Shouldn t these still be a common sighting in the church? And shouldn t all those who are leaders in the church be looking for signs of maturity and encouraging those in whom we see wisdom, faith, and the fullness of the Spirit to service in the church? I believe the answer to all of these questions is yes, but they require us to follow the example of the early church in some specific ways. If we want to be able to readily identify those who are maturing in faith, we first need to be spending lots of time together. Now, this is something we, as a local church, do very well. We love to spend time together, and our calendar gives testimony to that fact. But, like the early church, we need to be regularly meeting together for more than pitch-in meals and work days. We need to be regularly gathering together in prayer as the body of Christ, seeking God s grace and will for us. And we should also be gathering together regularly to study God s Word and learn from the teaching of the Apostles. Over the next year, we will be looking at ways that we, as a church family, can begin spending more deliberate time together for these purposes outside of Sunday worship and our whole church gatherings. We will be talking about what it looks like to be involved in small group discipleship, and discuss models for developing patterns of serious prayer and Bible study in our lives. I hope you will be open to these conversations and not consider them just one more thing to put on your busy calendar. When we attend to the things of God first, we set the groundwork for success in every other endeavor. I know that many of you already engage in regular rhythms of personal prayer and study. But we can learn so much more when we also do these things together, seeking God s grace and will jointly as one body, just as the church has
done since it s beginning. By doing this, perhaps we will become more attuned to the presence of the Spirit operating in each of our lives, and able to better identify gifts for service in the church. This leads us to a second observation about Stephen s selection to service. 2. He immediately committed himself to the task he was assigned, while continuing to operate within his gifts at the same time. He didn t have any special skill set for delivering food, or as the Apostles put it waiting tables. He didn t consider the work beneath him. Stephen was charged with a task, and he immediately engaged it to the best of his abilities, without compromising his God-given gifts. I sense that Church leaders are sometimes caught between the desire to see people living into their specific gifts and abilities and the practical need for believers to just step up and do the work of the Gospel. For a long time I thought we would be better of if we sought out people with abilities that specifically match each ministry task, ensuring that everyone is operating within their gifts. But that way of thinking is simply not sustainable. For one thing, sometimes people need a break. What if you are the only person in the church with a comprehensive understanding of electrical systems? Does that mean that you are destined to serve as a trustee for the rest of your life? Or what if you happen to be a schoolteacher? Does your effectiveness in your job mean that you have to also be a Sunday School teacher until you retire? Many times people do want to serve in areas of ministry that are familiar to them, but sometimes God has placed the desire to serve in a completely new area on people s hearts. How can we encourage folks to follow their calling, when we are burying them in work they just happen to be good at? This way of thinking also has a way of letting people off the
hook. We think that, since so-and-so is an expert on finance and accounting, we should just let them handle the budget and not get involved ourselves, when a fresh, untrained perspective might be just what is needed to bring balance to the work of ministry. It is truly a wonderful thing to be given the opportunity to serve in areas where we sense God s gifting. I am beyond blessed that I have been given the opportunity to serve in my area of calling as a pastor. But how often do we pass up an opportunity to serve God where he wants to use us, because we are waiting for him to provide us with a place that we think suits us better? Sometimes, we just need to roll up our sleeves and be willing to dig in wherever we are asked to serve. Stephen set this example for us. Though he was clearly gifted by God for a specific work (Acts 6:8 says he performed great wonders and signs among the people, by God s power), when tasked with what we might consider a menial chore, he responded quickly to serve with intentionality. But get this, we are told about the signs and wonders he did after the fact. His choice to serve over the distribution of food didn t keep him from using his God-given gifts. If anything, his work among the people likely gave him more of those opportunities than he would have otherwise had. Have you been challenged by God to step out and lead a new ministry in our community? Has your heart been broken for an unmet need in Brazil? Have you seen a need for workers, where there are few to be had? Or do you sense that God is leading you to do something new within our church walls? I have watched as several of you have recently stepped into roles that you might not have previously considered, but for which God has given you a passion and his strength to succeed. Some of you did so because you saw the need and responded; others have stepped up where I or someone else has asked you directly to do so.
Many of you have found places to commit your talents and abilities to the church s ministries and mission, but some of us here today are hesitating to commit fully to the call for gospel workers. And some of us here have become so comfortable in our service, that we have stopped letting God stretch us and call us out into new areas of ministry and mission, where he can work even greater things in and through us than we ever dreamed. I believe God is challenging our church this morning through his Word to re-evaluate what we are doing to serve him, and how we are doing it. I believe he is calling us to step out of our comfortable surroundings and begin seeking his will for us as a church family. I believe God wants to stretch us and lead us into new mission fields in our own community and into new ways of showing his love to one another through our service. But for this to happen for us to be ready for the work that God is even now preparing for our church I believe we must first raise up an army of Stephens in our midst. III. What Does it Take to Be Like Stephen? What does it take to be like Stephen? First, let s consider what Stephen was not. Stephen was not an Apostle. This means that he was not one of those tasked with the ordering and leadership of the early church. He had no special ministry training. He was a regular guy, who likely had a regular job where he provided a service to his community. Yet, while he was not called specifically to a vocation in ministry, he met all of the prerequisites needed for the role in which he was asked by the disciples to serve. Stephen was full of faith and the Holy Spirit. These two characteristics are interdependent, and they are the essence of Christian maturity. Indeed, I don t see how the one can exist without the other. It is impossible for us to be
faithful under our own power, so faithful living must mean living dependently upon the power of the Spirit in our lives, like we discussed a couple of weeks ago. Likewise, it is impossible to truly live in the power of the Spirit without being faithful. When we rely on God for our strength and purpose, the Spirit sanctifies us, transforming us into the very image of Christ, the faithful Son. So, what does it take to be like Stephen? I believe it requires the spiritual maturity that comes from seeking to live faithful lives in the power of the Spirit. IV. To What Are We Called to Be Faithful? Now, I ve tossed around the word faithful quite a bit this morning, and I think it is time for us to define what that really means. It is one thing to say that we have faith; it is another thing entirely to live as though we are full of faith. The one requires an orientation of the heart, and the other requires us to act according to that orientation. If we are to become like Stephen, I believe we must be faithful in at least five key ways. 1. We must be faithful to God s commandments. If we are to grow in spiritual maturity and become faithful disciples of Jesus, we have to start by transforming our behavior. And this begins by following God s commandments. In Matthew 5:17-20 Jesus said: Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. Therefore anyone who sets aside one of the least of these commands and teaches others accordingly will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices
and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven. We are commanded to remember and obey the heart of God s law, which is summarized by the Ten Commandments in the Old Testament, and even more succinctly by Jesus in the New Testament, when he said that the greatest commandment is to love the Lord with all of our heart and soul and mind, and the second is to love our neighbor as ourselves. All of the law and prophets hangs on these commands. If we would be a faithful people, we must begin with faithful adherence to God s commands. 2. We must be faithful in our witness to the death and resurrection of Christ. By our actions and our words, each and every day, we either bear witness to the truth of the gospel, or we deny it. If you remember, a few weeks ago we saw that both Peter and Paul issued challenges to the church to live in such a way that their lives would stand as testimony to the truth that God had called them out of darkness and into his wonderful life. They were challenged to do this by seeking unity among themselves and by maintaining purity among the nations. We do this by following step one above and obeying God s commands. But we are also called to bear witness to the good new of Jesus death and resurrection with our words. When Peter healed the beggar outside the temple gates in Acts chapter 3, he immediately used that miracle as an opportunity to point to God and his mighty work in Jesus as the source of his miraculous power and the foundation of our hope. If we want to be a faithful people, we must become comfortable with acting as we know Jesus would act, and with verbally bearing witness
to his death and resurrection at every possible opportunity. 3. We must be faithful to the presence of the Holy Spirit dwelling in us. I know we have talked about this over and over again, but this is a burden that God has laid on my heart for our church. I believe that he wants lead us into even greater opportunities to serve him in our homes and community, if we will just learn to lean daily into the presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives. When we begin to trust fully in him for our strength and purpose, he is able to do so much more through us than what we can accomplish on our own. I am convinced that God is already moving in our midst, stirring our hearts to hear his vision for our future. But until we begin operating as a people fully dependent upon him, we won t be ready to receive his vision or act upon it in the way that he would have us. 4. We must be faithful to the Great Commission. In order to become spiritually mature disciples of the King, we must become faithful to his kingdom work. Jesus gave a final charge to his disciples in the Gospel of Matthew. He said, All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age. The Great Commission is God s plan for building his kingdom on earth. It is a work founded upon his grace and mercy, established and confirmed through the death and resurrection of Jesus, and fulfilled through his Spirit acting in the lives of his people. But like all of God s good gifts, he won t
force us to buy into his kingdom vision. He leaves that choice up to us, by inviting us to participate in his ongoing labor of love in the world. 5. We must be faithful to the church and her mission. If we are going to be faithful to God s kingdom work, we must also be faithful to the way in which he has chosen to implement that kingdom on earth. God has chosen to work in the world through Christ s church. When we are faithful to commit our prayers, presence, gifts, service, and witness to the church, we become active participants in God s mission and bearers of his grace to the world. V. Application There is another chapter to Stephen s story in the book of Acts, and it is not an easy one to hear. Stephen s ministry to needy Christians and the miracles he worked by the Spirit s power eventually led him into conflict with the Jewish religious leaders, just like it did for Peter and John. We learn in Acts, chapter 7 that he was taken before the Sanhedrin, where false witnesses were produced to testify against him. But rather than swerve from his faith in the face of threats, Stephen chose to live faithfully, as he had done all along. He pointed out the hypocrisy and evil of the religious leaders, how they had rejected God s law in their hearts, even while pretending to uphold it with their actions. He testified to God s greatest act of love in Jesus Christ, and then condemned his accusers for sending Jesus to the cross. One can imagine that none of this sat well with them. But it pushed them over the edge of a conflict that had been building for some time and sent them into a rage. Stephen was dragged
from the assembly and he was stoned to death for his witness to the gospel. But by God s grace alone, he remained faithful in his final moments, and he called out for God to forgive his murderers, testifying with his life to the grace of God. What are you prepared to risk in order to be a faithful follower of Jesus? Are you willing to commit yourself to keeping all of his commandments, even when they stretch you and convict you sin? Are you willing to bear witness to the death and resurrection of Christ through both your actions and your words? Are you ready to become fully dependent upon the Spirit working in your life? Are you prepared to fulfill the Great Commission to step outside these walls and seek out the lost and broken, so that they might be brought into relationship with our loving God? Are you committed to giving yourself fully to the church and her mission? Will you sacrifice your money, your security, your pride, your rights, and your way of life in order to live faithfully to the way of the cross? Are you willing to give your very life, as Stephen did, so that one more lost sheep might be brought back into the heavenly fold? Because I am here to testify this morning with all the saints who have gone before us that nothing less will do! God does not want or need half-hearted followers. He desires a faithful people. VI. Closing Prayer Our Heavenly Father, we come before you seeking your will for us. Lord God, we desire to be your faithful people. We desire to surrender ourselves to you, to be shaped and molded into the people you would have us be. Would you send your Spirit upon us and make us faithful by your grace. Help us to become captive to your kingdom vision, willing to go wherever you lead us. Would you break our hearts for the lost and broken,
give us courage to seek out those who are far from you. And would you give us the resolve to remain your faithful people, until Christ returns, and we sit at your heavenly banquet. Benediction Now go from this place seeking to live as faithful followers of Jesus Christ, who being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death even death on a cross! Amen.