Summary
Pastor Safrit walks through Acts chapter 6, highlighting the early church's growth and the introduction of deacons to address emerging challenges. He emphasizes that growth brings both blessings and burdens, urging the congregation to embrace opportunities for service and unity. Using the example of Stephen, he illustrates the importance of being empowered by the Holy Spirit and standing firm in faith, even amidst persecution. The sermon calls for church members to step up and serve one another, reflecting Christ's love and grace in their actions.
Welcome and Church Information
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And if you have your Bibles, we'll be in Acts chapter 6 as we continue to go through the book of Acts and go through this study this year of the book of Acts and what that looks like.
I have thoroughly enjoyed looking through the book of Acts and today lines out perfectly with those first deacons and we'll be looking at that today. Acts chapter 6, we'll look at the entire chapter 1 through 15 today.
If you have your Bibles there and you would be willing to stand with us, we'll stand out of the reading of God's Word. We'll also have the words on the screen as well. The Bible says in Acts chapter 6, verse 1 through 15,
And in those days, as the disciples were increasing in number, there arose a complaint by the Hellenistic Jews against the Arabian Jews, and their widows were being overlooked in the daily distribution.
Twelve summoned the whole company of the disciples and said, It would not be right for us to give up preaching the Word of God to wait on tables. Brothers and sisters, select from among you seven men of good reputation,
full of the Spirit and wisdom, who we can appoint to this duty. But we will devote ourselves to prayer and the ministry of the Word. This proposal pleased the whole company, so they chose Stephen, a man full of faith in the Holy Spirit, and Philip, Pacurius, Nicanor, Timon, Parmedians, and Nicholas,
a convert from Antioch. And they had to stand before the apostles who prayed and laid hands over them. So the Word of God spread, and the disciples in Jerusalem increased greatly in number. And a large group of priests also became obedient to the faith.
Now Stephen, full of grace and power, was performing great wonders and signs among the people.
Verse 9, Lord, we love you. We thank you for your blessings. We thank you for your Word.
We thank you for the encouragement that we get, even when we struggle, even when we don't know what's going on. God, we know you're there for us.
We know you're there with us, as we looked at this morning in Sunday school, how you're there even in the storm, even in the times of life where we don't understand. And I pray, God, that you'd have your blessing upon your Word this morning. And in your name we pray. Amen. Amen.
We've been, the whole book of Acts is leading up to this point of leading into other men, other women leading in the church.
And as we begin to get to this point, we begin to see a lot of integral things happen this week and again next week as we look, Lord willing, at what chapter 7 brings.
And you can more than willing read ahead. We want you to read ahead and be prepared for that. But as I was thinking through this, I came across a story that I thought was fitting, a guy named Paul who had always dreamed of opening a family restaurant.
After years of saving and years of planning, he finally decided to open this restaurant.
The first few months were tough, but soon the word spread about his amazing food and the place was packed every single night. Business was booming. But then the problems began to start.
Orders were coming in faster than the kitchen could handle. Customers began complaining about the slow service. His staff was overworked and frustrated.
And instead of celebrating the growth, Paul found himself overwhelmed by the stress of life. One night, as he sat exhausted in his office, his manager knocked on his door and said, Paul,
you can't do this alone. We need more help. You need to let go of some responsibilities and some things to help us continue to grow. At first, Paul was resistant. This was his restaurant.
He thought he was going to do it his way. And he didn't need any help. And then he began to realize that the manager was right. He hired more staff. He trained more leaders.
And the focus on what he could do best, he began to focus on. Before long, the restaurant was running more than they had ever ran. They were doing better than they had ever thought possible. And the growth was continuing greater than they ever saw fit.
You see, the early church was just like this restaurant. They faced similar challenges. The gospel was spreading. People were being saved. People were being baptized. The lives of these people all around them were growing, which was a great thing.
But burdens came along with those growths. The apostles realized very quickly that they could not do this alone. And so they understood that if the church was going to succeed, they must raise up new leaders. They must raise up these men that they called deacons to serve the people and to serve one another.
And one of those men's name is Stephen. And we're going to look at his example of faithfulness this morning, his service and his boldness, even in the face of suffering and persecution and attacks.
Today, church, we're going to look at how growth happens and how it brings challenges and opportunities.
But ultimately, in how we can step up and we can serve one another and we can love one another in a way that brings glory to God by standing up for boldness, even when it costs us more than we ever would imagine.
Celebrating Church Growth
And so today, as we get started, as we get into this, I want to look at the very first thing. We should celebrate church growth. The very first verse here says, and in those, the disciples were increasing in numbers. Growth is usually a sign of a healthy church. Right?
And you have a newborn baby. Stephen and Michaela just had a new baby. And I got to go and see baby Clara this week. And I got to, I didn't get to hold her because she was sleeping. And you don't wake a sleeping baby. But they showed me pictures.
And I was showing someone pictures this week of how little she was when I held her that very first time. And they showed me the picture. And she's like,
I mean, it looked like she was double her size. And you go to the doctor and the doctor's going to say, this is a healthy baby.
It's growing. Things are doing well. But when a baby doesn't gain the weight they're supposed to gain.
And when they don't grow the way they're supposed to go, it's a sign that there's something wrong. The same thing is in the church.
When we begin to go together and think of things and measure some things, we've got to ask ourselves, is there growth? And are we growing in a way that is acceptable to the Lord?
And I'm going to go to the Lord, also in the breadth, but also in the depth of our ministry. As I was thinking through this, I was, I'm a sports guy. I like sports.
I like watching everything. And right now we're in March Madness. And we've got crazy things going on. Arkansas lost this week and messed my bracket up. And everything was horrible. But my mind went back to three years ago.
Three years ago, there was a team by the name of NC State Basketball. Anybody know NC State Basketball? Well, NC State Basketball, three years ago, had the worst record in the conference. In 2022 and 2023, they won nine games. They missed the tournament. They missed everything.
And they realized that changes had to happen, course had to happen, because the record isn't just there for the fun of it. They actually wanted to put some metrics to it. And so they began to make some changes. And last year, in the 2023-2024 season, they won their division.
They went to the ACC tournament. And they beat God's team that year. And they beat North Carolina in the ACC tournament. And they went all the way through the NCAA championship. And they went well. They played well. They played good. They fell a little short.
But the growth from one year to another year is looked at as something happened.
Something changed. Something was revolutionary in the state of this organization.
Now, we're not going to talk about this year. But the last two years, we look at them, and we begin to see that there's a losing season and a winning season. And we begin to see that there's some things that come along with this.
The same is true with the church and the way the church operates and the way the church begins to go through some things. And so I wrote down just three things the Lord gave me of when we begin to see growth. The first thing we see is growth brings blessings.
When a family grows, when a church grows, when a community grows, there's blessings that come along with that. There is this understanding that more souls are coming to Christ.
That lives are being changed through the gospel. That the gospel has been preached and the baptism waters are stirred.
And there's new life that comes with that through birth of new life. And begin to see blessings upon blessings of wonderful things that come. Now, blessings are not always easy.
A farmer goes out and he plants a field and he begins to get more than what he planted. And he had planned out so much time to harvest all of the grain or the corn or whatever it was. And then he realizes there's more here than what I had planned.
I'm going to have to hire more people to help me. I'm going to have to work extra hours.
I'm going to have to do more in order for this blessing that I have to take care of it. The same is with the church. When the Lord begins to bless, we must be prepared to raise up men, prepared to raise up leaders that come along with this.
Growth Brings Blessings and Burdens
Growth brings blessings, but growth also brings burdens. More people means more needs. Right?
If you are in a family. I come from a family of five kids. My mom and dad and five kids. And the more kids that sit down at the dinner table, there's more food that has to be distributed. Right? Food doesn't go as long.
I tell my kids often. I don't remember ever telling my mom, no, I'm not going to eat that. Because if I told my mom, no, I'm not going to eat that, one of my brothers and sisters would eat that plate. And then I would go home. I would go to bed starving.
And so as I began to grow, whatever was in front of me, I ate. And so this mindset, I still do that to this day. This mindset, as you can tell, this mindset of burdens that come upon us.
There are more needs. There are more challenges. As your family grows and you begin to see your budget and you begin to see things, there's burdens that come along with growth. And the same thing happens with the church. There are burdens and conflicts that happen as we begin to grow.
The question we have to ask ourselves is if we are going to be an Acts New Testament church that is growing and we receive the blessings of the Lord, are we prepared and ready for the challenges that come with that growth? The Lord said there's going to be challenges.
There's going to be things that you're not going to understand how to get through it. As we looked at our Sunday school lesson this morning, when Peter stood there on the boat and he said, Lord, let me come onto the water. Was he prepared for the challenges that were about to come?
We understand he wasn't. He began to get his eyes off of Jesus and he began to sink. But yet he was willing to take that step of faith.
Or are we going to resist the change and resist the blessings that the Lord has for us? Growth also brings not only blessings and burdens, but the growth happens and it brings opportunities. The apostles saw this as not an issue, not as a crisis.
They didn't say, what are we going to do? How are we going to handle this? Maybe we just need to start telling people not to come. Maybe we just need to step back and reevaluate the ministry.
What they did was they saw this as an opportunity to begin to expand the ministry that the Lord had for them. And they stood back and they said, this is what's going on. We've got to reevaluate and relook at what we're doing and say, how can we do it?
Maybe a little more effective or a little bit better. And how can we begin to take care of the ones that are in need?
And oftentimes I begin to ask myself and I think it's good for us to ask us this question. Do we view the problems that happen in the church as obstacles or as opportunities for the church to begin to expand?
For the church to begin to grow in the work of the Lord and the church to be able to step out and say, you know, it's not just something that's happened and it's something that we can take control of.
We can take over and we can work for the glory of God. We can do these things so that it's an opportunity for God's word to be spread. God's word to be going forth and for lives to be changed.
So the disciples, they could have looked at this and they could have said, these guys, they're struggling.
They're coming at us with these complaints and they're coming at us with maybe favoritism. And we just don't want to do this anymore. They could have stepped back and just said, I'm done with these things.
But instead they had the wisdom of the Lord and they stepped up and they said, we're going to take care of these things. We're going to allow the work of the Lord to continue to expand through these blessings that God gives us.
So not only should we celebrate church growth, but we begin to see for the very first time in scripture, the role of a deacon. Deacons being introduced and deacons beginning to make their way on the scene and what this looks like.
There's sort of three things that I saw here as we're going to look at some later. But three things that I sort of wrote down as I began to think of deacons.
They were good men. The Bible says that they looked upon themselves and they found good men of good reputation that were godly men.
They were good men that loved the Lord, that had a good stand in their community, had a good reputation.
But these were godly men that loved the Lord, that loved the word, that loved God's word, that loved God's preaching of the word, that loved the life of church and the life of what was going on. But they were also men who were gifted men,
men who had wisdom, men who had the ability to discern things.
My mind goes back to when Moses was distributing all the different needs and all the different things of the children of Israel.
And he would sit there from, the Bible says, from sunup to sundown. And he had everyone come to him and everyone tell him all of his needs and all of their problems.
And Moses was the one that had to take care of all these problems. His father-in-law came and he said, Moses, what are you doing? You're going to kill yourself.
You're sitting here and you're listening to all these things and you're not leading the people. You're just taking care of all these little things. You need to set a time, some time for yourself, but give people the power to take care of these things. Find men that are gifted,
find men that have the ability to have the wisdom of the Lord, that are going to be godly men. They're going to be good men. They're going to be able to handle these situations.
And as Moses did that, it said that the children of Israel began to grow and blossom in ways they never saw fit.
And we see the same thing here in the very first chapter of Acts, or the very first mention of deacons in Acts, where it said that the word was spread more than it had done before.
Role of Deacons in the Church
They were devoting themselves to the prayer and the ministry and the word was going out so much that even other priests were coming to know Christ. So what do deacons do? What is the role of a deacon? There's three things I wrote down. The deacons relieve the burden.
In verses 2 and 3 and 4, we begin to see that they begin to free up the time for the pastor to give himself to two things, prayer and preaching.
The Bible says very clearly here that the role of the deacons is to take care of the necessities of the church so that the preaching of the ministry can go forth, so that the prayer of the ministry of the pastor can go forth. I don't take this lightly.
I covet the time that I have to pray. I covet the time I have for my study where I look at what God has for us.
I look at the scripture that God has laid on my heart, and I begin to pray through and I begin to say, God, what is it that you want me to give the people?
I'm not saying I'm not there to take care of the issues and the problems of the church, but am I allowing the preaching and the prayer to be the main thing that I do? This past week, you would know this guy. His name is John.
He came here and he preached. And the church where he's at, they're seeing some wonderful growth. He's a bivocational pastor, which means he works part-time for the church, and he works part-time at another church, I'm sorry, at a car lot.
And he said, James, some things are working out and I may be able to come full-time here soon. He said, can you give me sort of your schedule?
What does it look like to you to be a pastor? So I'm going to sort of go deep inside of what happens here.
And I went through, I do a daily ministry log where I go through and I just put down some little things that I do just to keep my mind on track. And I told him, I said, it's going to look sort of vague.
I said, but I try to covet the mornings that I have. I want my mornings to be in the word and praying and going through our church directory that hopefully Lord will and we're going to get updated here soon. So we've got an updated picture so I can see your beautiful faces.
Some are a little more gray or some are a little more people in the family, which is a beautiful thing. But we're going to be able to pray through those things and to pray for people and to send out notes of encouragement to say, hey, I care about you.
And the Lord laid you on my heart and to give that time of study and prayer in the mornings.
And then I allow the afternoons to be time where I can go and minister to families and be at the hospital and be at different places where you're at, ballgames and things that are going on.
And allowing the schedule to sort of be flexible and say, how can I minister in a way to allow our men, our deacons to serve in a way to relieve the burden for me? Oftentimes I'll text the deacon, hey, I can't be here.
Can you go and see this person? Can you go and take care of this? That's what the role of a deacon is. They're there to relieve the burden. Imagine you get in a plane.
You decide to take off. And as you're taking off, the pilot says, we're leaving Charlotte Airport.
We're heading to Tel Aviv, Israel. And it's going to be a 14-hour drive. And I'm going to be your captain. And I'm also going to be your hostess today. In a moment, I'm going to put the plane on autopilot.
And I'm going to step out of the cockpit. There's not going to be anyone up here taking care of the plane. And I'm just going to come back and serve you some drinks and serve you some meals. And I'm just going to spend a couple hours hanging out with you.
Most of you would say, pilot, can we land at the next airport because I'm getting off this plane? I want someone in the cockpit. I want someone taking control. I want someone delivering what's going on. Not necessarily what I need.
I need to get to my destination in one place, in one piece. And if the cockpit were to be abandoned,
the primary task of what needed, the plane would eventually go down.
The same thing must happen in the preaching of the word. There must be someone that is handling scripture well and taking care of those things. And so the deacons relieve the burden so the pastor can do that. But the deacons reflect servanthood.
Deacons reflect servanthood in verses 5 and 6. The Bible says that these whole company pleased the company.
And it says that they went out and they laid hands on them and they began to serve those that were around them. You see, a deacon is someone who's called to be a chief servant. Someone who is called to be someone who is going to lay down his needs for someone else.
They're not going to be someone who is just simply a power seeker, but someone who is leading in a way that is willing to be as Jesus did.
To humble himself down and take off his outer robe and say, I want to wash your feet. I want to, how can I serve you today? How can I help you today?
How can I be the person that you need me to be today? And I have to ask ourselves, do we see the church leadership as a position of power or a position of service?
You see, we must get to the point, church, where we are here to serve one another. We are here to grow together by serving one another.
And when we begin to ask ourselves, what am I doing and what is the reason for this? We will look at ourselves and it says here in verse 5 that this proposal pleased the whole company.
So that they would be choosing these men who are going to love the people that are there and serve the people that are around them.
Deacons should reflect servanthood. They should be reflecting the ones who serve the most. And also we see here in verse 7, deacons reinforce unity.
Verse 7 says, and they had them stand before the apostles. They prayed and laid hands on them. That was verse 6. So the word of God spread, the disciples of Jerusalem increased greatly, and a large number of people, the priests, were obedient. Obedient in the form of unity.
You see, when we address the needs, the church begins to grow. When we address the struggles of the church, it leads to more gospel conversations.
It leads to more people coming to know Christ because we're able to see that God is working in and through us. And we're able to see that God is using us to promote unity in the church. You've been there. I've been there. I was raised in a church.
And if you've been raised in a church, you've heard of the story of the church down the road that had a bad business meeting. And all of a sudden, as the word began to spread, that so-and-so church down the road is a church that's disunified. They bicker.
They complain. They argue. That's all they ever do. Yet, oftentimes, that's the story of the narrative.
When what should be the story is, how are so many people getting together and in one accord and loving and serving Jesus? And oftentimes, that is not what's spread because unity oftentimes isn't there.
How can we use our gifts of service to promote unity and promote the body of Christ? Now, I'm thankful.
I'm not saying we're not unified in here, church, but deacons help promote that unity. Deacons help promote the unity of the church.
Deacons help reflect what God would have for us because, again, they're godly men who are good men of good reputation, who are gifted men, who are helping us be unified in what we have.
Stephen's Ministry and Impact
And so we have to ask ourselves, are we doing this as the role of deacons?
And then we begin to see here in verses 8 through 15, we begin to see Stephen's ministry. And what Stephen has done and what Stephen will do, he stands up and he begins to preach and he begins to be full of grace and full of power.
It says that great wonders and great signs were among them.
And again, I want to go back because I haven't really left this thought of a couple weeks ago. When God's people are praying and filled with the Holy Spirit, it says that great grace and great power is shown to them.
And we must ask ourselves, are we people full of great grace and full of great power because we are serving a great God who has given us a great ministry?
And we have to ask ourselves, are we so in tune with the Lord that he is there to give us the great grace that we need?
I don't know about you this morning, I need God's grace every single day of my life. I mess up in my family, I mess up in my kids, I mess up with my wife, I say things I shouldn't say, I do things I shouldn't do. I'm a sinful human being.
Even though I'm your pastor, I still do things that are wrong. And I need the great grace of the Lord. And I'm thankful that I can go to my kids after I've done something that was wrong and say, will you forgive me? Can you show me the grace that I need?
Can you show me the grace that I need so that I can be a better dad, so that I can be a better husband, so that I can be a better pastor?
And we begin to ask ourselves, are we so consumed with the Lord that we are so stricken to our heart when we've done things that are wrong that the great grace comes in?
And we begin to see great wonders happen and great signs happen as the Lord works in our midst. As we see Stephen's ministry, we see three specific things that Stephen was like Jesus.
The first one is this, Stephen was empowered like Jesus. Verse 8, it says that he was full of grace and full of power. He was empowered just like Jesus was. Jesus was the source of his strength.
He knew that when he woke up in the morning, he had to go to Jesus.
He knew that when he went to bed at night, he had to go to Jesus.
He knew that all throughout his day, as he was traveling the cities, as he was taking care of the needs of the widows, as he was taking care of the needs of the saints, he was going to Jesus and loving Jesus. You see, he was full of faith.
Being Full of Faith
He was full of power. And ultimately, we see that Stephen was full of the word. You see, church, we must also be a church that is full of faith.
We must be a church that is so centered in our faith that when things come, when an earthquake comes, when a storm comes, we are so standing on the word of the Lord that our faith is so strong that it's not going to be wavered.
You see, power always comes after prayer, as we mentioned earlier.
And we must say that we must look at ourselves and say, are we so in love with Jesus that we begin to see the power of Jesus overflowing in our life?
And then I love what it says here that he was so full of the word that he got up and he preached Christ crucified from the Old Testament prophecies all the way to the New Testament.
And this New Testament covenant was set up because he knew his word.
You see, oftentimes we're going to go through struggles. We're going to go through challenges. We're going to go through hard times. Do we know God's word?
Is God's word so in depth into our life that that's the first thing we run to? We run to do not fear. We run to a favorite verse that God has laid on our heart. Mine is Psalm 73, 26.
My heart and my flesh, they're going to fail. But the Lord is my strength and my portion forever.
Is that what we're running to when problems happen or are we running to ourselves? Are we running to the things of this world?
What is it that we're running to and are we knowing the word? You see, if I were to pull a lamp up here, put a lamp up here and turn the switch on, but it not be connected to the power, it would just be a decorated ornament that had no use
or value. But when I take that lamp and I plug it into its power source and I turn it on, it illuminates the entire room because it is hooked up to the source of power.
And church this morning, if we're not plugged into God's grace, if we're not plugged into what he has for us, then we will be useless and ineffective because we're not connected to the source of the power. We're not connected to the source of the spirit.
We're not connected to what God has for us. Not only was he empowered like Jesus, but he spoke with the wisdom of Jesus. Oh, man, this is one of those thoughts here in verses 9 and 10. He said an opposition arose from some members of another synagogue and a couple of different people here.
And it says they began to argue with Stephen. Now, my mind goes to me and my middle name is Stephen,
a redhead, fiery little guy who likes arguments sometimes. I like the source of debating some things.
And my mind is, man, he's about to let her rip, right? He's going to go into them. But what does it say? But they were unable to stand up against his wisdom and the spirit of whom he was speaking. He allowed the wisdom of Jesus.
He allowed the words of Jesus to be his source of strength.
And when we stand and we speak the truth of God in God's power, it doesn't matter what face of opposition we come across. We are standing up in the word of the Lord and we're allowing God's word to work through us. The wisdom was just like Jesus.
Stephen's words were left his opponents speechless. Jesus in Luke chapter 20, verse 40, Jesus stood up and he gave wisdom and he preached. And it says that they left everyone there speechless by what they had just heard.
Is this not a man from Galilee? Is this not the son of a carpenter? He's an uneducated, unlearned man.
How is he speaking with authority? How is he speaking with boldness? And Stephen was that same way. He left his opponents speechless in what they were going through.
See, when we grow in the godliness of God and we grow in his wisdom and we begin to defend the faith and we defend the things that God has given us with grace and truth, people are astounded because of the wisdom that we have.
And then we begin to see Stephen endure a trial just like Jesus. Verse 11 through 15, they begin to bring false accusations. They begin to bring people who were beginning to falsely accuse Stephen of what he was doing. And Stephen responded with a fearless faith.
So the Bible says that Stephen stood up with the face of an angel.
This is to be that he was showing peace and confidence of the Lord. He was standing up and he was just allowing the ridicule to come. And I'm imagining Jesus in this moment.
Jesus is standing there in the Pilate's palace and he is getting persecuted for his faith. And he's getting persecuted for being the son of God. And what does he do? He doesn't say a word.
He stands there and he takes it as they beat him, as they mock him, as they eventually crucify him to die. And yet he stood there in his faith. He had grace under pressure.
And Stephen also had this grace under pressure. He had so full of the spirit. He was so full of the word that it did not matter what came upon him. Because everything that was going to go and all the source of everything that was coming out of him was Jesus.
Responding to Trials with Faith
You see, when we go to get married, we go to the store and we invest some money into a diamond ring that had to go through tons and tons of pressure.
That coal had to go through an immense amount of pressure and trial in order to come through as a diamond that we spend thousands and thousands of dollars on. When Stephen's life was brought under pressure, the glory of the Lord shone through so much greater.
Even in the darkest moment, even when the moment didn't seem like it was going to mean anything, even when his life was under pressure and he didn't understand what was going on, he allowed the Lord to work through in the darkest moments.
As I began to think through that, I began to think through the oppositions that we go through. The problems that we go through, the difficulties that we go through.
And I have to ask myself, are we responding with fear or are we responding with faith? It would have been really easy for Stephen to step back and say, I just can't do this, Lord. It's too much. I didn't sign up to be this.
I didn't sign up to go through the lies that are coming after me. I didn't sign up to go through the attacks that were coming after me.
But instead, he stood up and he said, by faith, I'm going to trust the Lord. By faith, I'm going to endure the trials just like Jesus did. And I'm going to trust in the Lord in everything that I go through.
As Terry comes and we go into our time of invitation, I want to go back to a sports illustration that the Lord brought to my mind. Sports illustration of, for years, the University of South Carolina USC Trojan football team was a powerhouse under a guy named Pete Carroll.
In the early 2000s, they dominated college football. They were winning national championships. And they were producing more NFL talent than any other college team to the time. They were looking unstoppable.
But beneath the surface, cracks began to form. Behind the scenes, there were NCAA violations that were piling up. Players were receiving illegal benefits. And the program was cutting corners to maintain its dominance.
And for a while, it seemed like they were going to get away with it. For a while, it seemed like they were going to pass through all these things and everything was going to be okay. But in 2010, it all came crashing down.
The NCAA handed over the hardest punishment known to mankind to the penalty of the college football team history.
Scholarships were reduced. Post seasons were banned. And they even revoked championship games that they had won. The once mighty Trojans fell into mediocrity and struggled to even rebuild for years and years and years.
USC looked strong on the outside. But because they were ignoring rules and the success, everything collapsed. Their foundation wasn't built on integrity. And the storms came in and they crumbled. In Acts chapter 6, we see the contrast.
Stephen, a man full of grace, a man full of power, stood firm because his life was built on the truth of Christ. Meanwhile, the religious leaders were opposing him.
They were coming at him. Maybe they were trying to cut corners by bringing someone in to have false accusations, to lie against him. And they were rejecting the truth. And ultimately, they were destroying themselves.
So as we look at Stephen, standing firm on the word, we have to ask ourselves, are we ignoring God's design for our life? Are we facing division? Are we facing failure? Are we refusing to serve? The greatest blessing of my life has been just a servant of Jesus.
Someone who gets to go to a hospital bed and pray with someone. Someone who just gets to go and sit with someone and encourage someone. As I look back, yeah, it's time consuming. Yes, it's hard. Yes, it's a mental and emotional struggle as a pastor.
But I tell my friends all the time, I wouldn't trade it for anything. Pastor, are you busy?
Yeah, but I wouldn't trade it for anything. I wouldn't do anything other than what I'm doing right now. Because I'm doing the work of the Lord. See, if we compromise when pressures comes in, our faith will not hold up.
This morning, church, we must be a people built on a faith foundation, a solid foundation of Jesus Christ. Standing firm, standing faithful and trusting him in everything we do.
There's three things that I wrote down. The church needs servants like Stephen. We need people who are faithful,
Responsibilities of Growth
spirit-filled and unshaken in trials and temptations. Also, growth brings responsibilities.
As times go and as the Lord blesses and we see growth, we need people to step up. We need people to say, I'm willing to serve. I'm willing to do the hard things now to allow the Lord to bless later. We need people to bear the responsibility of the ministry.
And ultimately, when this happens, persecution is inevitable. Right? I said it. Power. The prayer happens. And then there's power. And then there's preaching. And then persecution happens.
After the preacher of the word, persecution happens. I don't know how many people, pastors I talk to, that say Monday is their hardest day of the week. Because they preach. And they serve.
And they give of their time. And then the devil steps in on Monday and says, everything you did was worthless. And they begin to step back and just say, what am I doing?
And I like to call those men on Mondays. And I like to encourage them. I like to say, I'm an upbeat guy. Things like that don't bother me as much. I have other days of the week that do. But I like to say, hey, how was your Sunday? How was the Lord blessed?
I just want to remind them of what God is and how he's good to us and how he's merciful to us. Because persecution will happen. And what are we standing on when it comes?
We go into our invitation in just a minute. Respond as you see fit. But we've got some young people here from one of our young classes that's going to, Lord's laid on their heart to go around and pray with some of our older people that are struggling. Maybe you've had surgery.
Maybe you've had a physical ailment lately.
And they just want to come and they want to be a blessing to you. So if some very young people start moving, it's okay. Okay, they're not going to run around doing anything crazy.
I just want you to be aware of that. But I'm going to pray as they leave and they move and they do these things. I want you to respond as you see fit. Lord, we love you.
We thank you for what you've done. God, I pray that you would have your will and the way in the service today. Help us to honor you in everything we do. And it's in your name we pray. Amen.
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