This is Living Waters of Grace, the teaching ministry of Clark
Wofford, senior pastor of Calvary Chapel of Westmoreland,
County of Greensburg, PA. Now here's Pastor Clark as he
continues teaching through God's Word.
In times of persecution and church history, that's when the
church gets hot. That's when it separates the
chaff from the wheat, the true from the false.
China has been under persecution forever, it seems, and they're
one of the most on fire nations in the world in regard to
underground Christianity. And many of them are put in
prison forever once they're caught sharing the Gospel of
Christ. But it doesn't stop the people.
So whenever Stephen was martyred, they were dispersed,
and then the word began to go out into the rest of the world.
There are dozens of times in the Bible where God takes an evil
action and turns it around for good.
In today's message, Pastor Clark teaches us about the story of
Stephen, the first person to be martyred because of their faith
in Jesus. While Stephen didn't know what
was going to happen after his death, he knew that something
great awaited him as he met Jesus face to face in heaven.
And it was Stephen's death that helped ignite the gospel fire as
it spread from Jerusalem out into the entire world.
Now here's Pastor Clark in Acts Chapter 7 as he begins his
message. Jewish history began with
Abraham. Let's get into the word.
We are in the book of the Acts, Acts Chapter 7 today.
And I just wanted to give a little background on this guy by
the name of Steven who were studying about the day.
Steven, if you remember, was one of the men who were chosen to
help serve the widow's ministry and provide food for people in
the early church that needed help, sort of like the welfare
thing at the beginning of the church age.
He was a man who is full of the Holy Spirit.
He was chosen by the Lord to not any serve physically, but also
spiritually. I want to read starting with
verse 8 of chapter 6, leading into what we're going to talk
about the day in Chapter 7. And Steven, full of faith and
power, did great wonders and signs among the people.
Then there arose some from what is called the synagogue of the
Freedmen, Cyrenians, Alexandrians, and those from
Celestia and Asia disputing with Stephen, and they were not able
to resist the wisdom and the spirit by which he spoke.
So in other words, this man had an anointing on him.
He spoke by the power of the Spirit of God.
And even if they didn't like what he said or didn't agree
with what he said, they were all open to understanding that he
was giving them something that they had never really probably
thought too much about. And so then they secretly
induced men to say, We have heard him speak blasphemous
words against Moses and God, and they stirred up the people and
the elders and the scribes, and they came upon him, seized him,
and brought him to the council. They also set up false witnesses
who said, this man does not cease to speak blasphemous words
against this holy place in the law.
For we have heard him say that Jesus of Nazareth will destroy
this place and change the customs which Moses delivered to
us. And all who sat in the council
look steadfastly at him, saw his face as a face of an Angel.
So there's this lie going around that he's teaching things that
aren't true from the Bible. The Old Testament, at that time,
the New Testament wasn't written.
They were saying that Jesus was going to destroy the temple
versus understanding that Jesus was talking about himself being
the true temple of the living God and that his body would be
crucified, he would be buried, and he were raised again the
third day. That's what Jesus was meant when
he said this temple will be destroyed in three days.
It will be raised up again. Also, the law that Moses
brought, we're in a transition. When the church started and the
gospel came, it wasn't that the 10 commandments and the law
weren't significant anymore, but God never intended anybody to
try to be justified by obedience to the 10 commandments.
If you had to present yourself before God based upon perfectly
following the 10 commandments, and because you did that, you
would be accepted into heaven, none of us would be able to get
into heaven because all of us have broken the law, the 10
commandments. And so all these things are
manipulated by these people that were basically raised up to stir
up contention amidst the early church.
And so Stephen is accused of these various untruths.
Nonetheless, he continues and what it is God's called him to
do. Now this guy had a very short
term ministry. He will be, as we study this
chapter, the first martyr of the New Testament church.
He's blood was shed because of his faith in Jesus Christ.
Since that time, millions of people have been martyred all
across the planet. And to this day, people are
still being martyred for their faith and hassled because
they're just sharing the good news of the gospel.
Steven also was from a Greek culture, Greek background.
He wasn't the Hebrew of Hebrew, so to speak.
He was Jewish, but he was impacted by more the the Greek
culture than he was the Hebrew culture.
So he was sort of seen as maybe an outsider to those who led in
the synagogues and, and, you know, were responsible for
leading the nation of Israel and Judeo values.
We're also in a transition in the sense that we're going from
the emphasis of law to grace. Now, grace is in the old
covenant. Grace is in the Old Testament.
Again, God never said that anybody would be justified by
the works of the law, but the law was given so that man would
know that he is a Sinner. And so when we're presented with
the commandments and the and the law, it all it does is show us
that we're in need of a Savior, that we're sinners and that we
can't get to heaven by trying to obey the law, even though we
want to live and, and follow obviously the truths of the 10
commandments. They're all true and good and
they're righteous and they're holy, but none of us can
unfortunately do it perfectly right.
Only one could fulfill the law, and that was Jesus Christ.
And so Stephen also is the bridge between the ministry of
Peter and Paul because we'll find out as we study this and
later on, Paul is one of the people that are accusing Stephen
of blasphemy at this particular time.
Saul of Tarsus, who became eventually the apostle Paul.
Fascinating how Stephen was the God that the Lord God used to
begin to develop this new movement of Christianity.
When the persecution came in the early church, it was necessary
because they were hanging out in Jerusalem and they had done a
great job getting the gospel out in Jerusalem.
A matter of fact, they were accused of filling the city with
the word of Christ, the gospel of Christ.
And so now the Lord knows that it has to go into not any
Jerusalem, but Judea, Samaria, and the uttermost parts of the
earth in times of persecution and church history.
That's when the church gets hot. That's when it separates the
chaff from the wheat, the true from the false.
China has been under persecution forever, it seems, and they're
one of the most on fire nations in the world in regard to
underground Christianity. And many of them are put in
prison forever once they're caught sharing the gospel of
Christ. But it doesn't stop the people.
So whenever Stephen was martyred, they were dispersed
and then the word began to go out to the rest of the world.
So everything that happens in this sermon today that Stephen
is going to give us in Chapter 7 is all about the sovereignty of
God and how he has everything under control, even when maybe
we don't think things are under control.
And that everything that happens in history, in biblical history
was always for a purpose, never a mistake made.
No one missing the point. God had a directive, He put it
in place. It was us that refused to accept
the direction of God and we formed our own opinions and not
wanting to hear from the truth of the word of God as the Jewish
people didn't want to hear really the truth.
And so we're going to read about the history here.
It starts out and verse one, the high priest said to him, are
these things. So basically, Stephen, are you
stirring up all these problems? Are you blaspheming our temple
and blaspheming Moses? And he said this is an
opportunity now for him to speak up.
He said, brethren and fathers, listen, the God of glory
appeared to our father Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia
before he dwelt in Haran and said to him, get out of your
country and from your relatives and come to a land that I will
show you. What's interesting here is that
Abraham and I don't know how much you've thought about these
things. I was on vacation back in April
and I was, I was going to get breakfast and I heard a, a short
message by a messianic Christian guy, Jewish guy, And he was
explaining that in the beginning there wasn't this division of
Jew and Gentile. Basically, when God created the
world, we're all his creation and we all fell.
And Paul talks about later on in the in the New Testament that
there's neither Jew nor Gentile bond or free or male or female.
In other words, like it isn't like people groups or skin color
or ethnic origin or being born a man or a woman is insignificant.
These are all part of God's beautiful creation, right?
But he never holds up one higher than the other.
He never says that the man's more important than the woman or
this nation is better than that nation.
I mean, we're all fallen and we need a savior.
So he has this incredible plan. And so the guys talking, he says
Abraham was a Gentile and that that blew my mind because I
never like even conceived that that he was a Gentile.
He was chosen by God to start this nation, Israel, to begin to
develop his plan with the chosen people group, to have the law
and the prophets to bring the Messianic sea to fruition
through the bloodline of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
And so then he instituted the covenant between him and God.
Abraham, first he said, through you all the nations of the earth
will be blessed. And then God designed this
procedure called circumcision. And that's a whole another
subject for another time. But all these things were
ordained by God to put in a people group to send the message
of the gospel to humanity. Fascinating.
So Abraham, he's this guy, this normal guy.
And God favored him and, and chose him to be this one who
would be the first Jewish, this person basically to start this
nation called Israel didn't exist prior to this calling out
of God to Abraham, but it was in the plan of God before the
foundation of the earth. So whenever the we, we talk
about God's chosen people, it wasn't that they were better
than the Gentile, but God had to choose a people group to get us
to where we are today in regard to the gospel and Christianity.
And so he tells Abraham what to do.
Get out from your relatives. Come to the land and I'll show
you. So he comes out of the land of
the Chaldeans and dwelt in Haran.
And from there, when his father was dead, he moved him to this
land in which you now dwelt, which is the promised land.
He's talking to all these people in Jerusalem right now.
What's also interesting, God starts when he calls us in a
very basic way. It's it's it's somewhat not
totally clear when we're called by God to do some kind of
ministry or some kind of calling.
We just step up in faith and we be obedient to what God's put on
our heart. So this is what Abraham did, but
it's interesting. God had a plan for him, you
know, beyond waiting to his dad died, but he waited.
His father died and there was no problem with that.
God honored that, but it wasn't like immediately everything came
into clarity for him. And so he goes from there.
After his dad dies, he moves him to this land in which you now
dwell. And God gave him no inheritance
in it, not even enough to set his foot on.
What's interesting is that Abraham was the father of all
this blessing that would come to Israel and to us as New Covenant
believers. The seed of Abraham impacted us
too. It's it's the remnant, it's the
people of God from the beginning of time until the end of time
when the world is no more as we know it.
And so he's speaking to Abraham about this big plan of this
promised land. Now, Abraham never was given
anything personally. The only ground he had was hit
with the burial plot he bought to bury Sarah in.
It's probably, you know, 6 by 6 feet or something.
That was all that he had entitlement to.
But everything was futuristic here and what God was promising
to Abraham, So and God gave him no inheritance in it, not even
enough to set his foot on. But even when Abraham had no
child and Abraham waited a long time right before his son was
born Isaac remember Sarah and him they she was not fertile and
they got impatient and so Hagar came along and then Ishmael was
born and then you had that Pagan race.
It was developed that pretty much a symbolic of Islam in the
in the Mideast that came out of the seat of a Vishnail.
But Abraham and Sarah, just like you and I at times aren't
patient with God. We get ahead of God.
We want to take matters in our own hands.
We want to I think I got a better way.
I got a better idea, Lord. And so we end up messing things
up, right? Because, you know, he, he was
faithful to, to his promise. And eventually he told them that
they were going to have a child. They thought it was ridiculous
because they were too old to to be able to do this anymore.
But the Lord, you know, whenever he says he's going to do
something, he's going to do it regardless of the the
limitations of human ability, medical science.
And so God promises to do something here.
Even when Abraham didn't have a child yet, he promised to give
it to him for a possession and to his descendants after him.
But God spoke in this way that his descendants would dwell in a
foreign land and that they would bring them into bondage and
oppress them for 400 years. So not any was he given that the
picture of this promise in his covenant, but also the reality
that because of Israel's disobedience to what it was, a
goddess established that they would go into captivity for 400
years, very difficult. They wouldn't have freedom to
move about like you and I have in this country.
They were isolated and treated as slaves for many years and
abused and taken advantage of. Nonetheless, this was again the
part of the plan. So this bondage lasted all this
time, and the nation to whom they will be in bondage, God
says, I will judge, says God. And after that they shall come
out and serve me in this place. So then God had this plan for
Moses, which we'll look at here in a minute.
So he's giving all this history of what God has done since the
beginning of time to bring the reality to the world that Jesus
Christ truly is the Messiah. So he gave him the covenant of
circumcision. And so Abraham begot Isaac and
circumcised him on the 8th day. And Isaac begot Jacob and Jacob
begot the 12 patriarchs. So this is like the history of
this nation now beginning to develop and how God's going to
work through the the Jewish people.
The 8th day is significant too, because that's when it's safe
medically to do circumcision because the blood's able to be
clotted. Everything was according to the
to the plan of God. And so the patriarchs now we're
looking at next in Egypt, verse 9, and the patriarchs becoming
envious sold Joseph into Egypt so that we hear that the fathers
are the patriarchs of the nation of Israel.
These guys were scoundrels. They were jealous of their
brother Joseph and they had him arrested.
They basically didn't care if he got killed or not.
They threw him into a pit and he was taken to be a slave and in
Egypt's place and he went through a lot of adversity and
difficulty because of his so-called godly brothers.
But God was with him. No matter what happened in life,
what happens in your life, what happens in biblical history, we
have to understand if we belong to God, God is always with us,
right? He'll never leave us or forsake
us. Sometimes we feel feel like
we're alone. Sometimes we feel like he, he
doesn't care. He's not with us or he's not
watching out for us. God is always watching out for
us, always caring, always listening to our cries.
But God was with him, and he delivered him out of all his
troubles. It doesn't say he delivered him
out of some of his troubles. He delivered him out of all his
troubles, and gave him favor and wisdom in the presence of
Pharaoh, king of Egypt, And he made him governor over Egypt and
all his house. Now a famine in a great trouble
came over all the land of Egypt and Canaan, and our fathers
found those substance. There was nothing to eat.
And when Jacob heard that there was grain in Egypt, he sent out
our fathers. That's the brothers of, of
Joseph 1st. And the second time Joseph was
made known to his brothers, the first time they went down, they
didn't know that their brother was the one second in command to
Pharaoh, but they'd sure found out the second time.
And when Jacob heard that there was no grain in Egypt, he sent
the father's first. And the second time Joseph was
made known to his brothers and Joseph's family became known to
the Pharaoh. So Pharaoh said, hey, bring your
whole family down. I want to meet them and bless
them and take care of them. So Joseph sent and called his
father Jacob and all his relatives to him, 75 people.
So Jacob went down to Egypt and he died, he and our fathers, and
they were carried back to Shechem and laid in in the tomb
that Abraham bought for the sum of money from the sons of Hamor,
the father of Shechem. So here we are in this beautiful
arrangement of Joseph being in this place at this time to take
care of the the Jewish people during the famine.
Well, what happened was eventually Joseph passed on, the
new Pharaoh came on the scene, had no connection with the
people, the nation of Israel. And so the persecution then
began to occur again. The difficulty, the enslavement.
You remember the children of Israel in bondage.
You watch the movie, I'm sure 10 Commandments and saw Moses open
up the water and all that. Well, you saw the Red Sea, but
you saw how the people were being beaten and slaughtered
because they weren't working hard enough for fast enough.
And and this is a wicked, wicked leadership at the time.
And so God delivers Israel by Moses.
We'll we'll study this little section now.
And this is all building up to Steven really clearly helping
these Jewish people that think they're so religious that
they're missing the whole point when they rejected Christ and
had him crucified. But when the time of the promise
drew near which God had sworn to Abraham, the people grew and
multiplied in Egypt. I mean, this people group is
growing and growing, multiplying, growing, truly
being fruitful and multiplying till another king arose who did
not know Joseph. This man dealt treacherously
with our people and oppressed our forefathers, making them
expose their babies. Remember they they were told
they were going to kill the the first born males.
All that kind of stuff, making them expose.
Babies so they might not live. At this time Moses was born and
was well pleasing to God, and he was brought up in his father's
house for three months. But when he was set out,
Pharaoh's daughter took him away and brought him up as our own
son. And Moses was learned in all the
wisdom of the Egyptians, and was mighty in the words of deeds.
So God spared Moses like his mother, put him in that little
basket in the bull rushes, and put him in the water.
Thereafter the Pharaoh's daughter saw the baby and took
the baby as her own and raised this baby in the palace there.
And so Moses knew all about Egyptian Pagan idolatry.
He knew about all their false religion and all the stuff.
Yet he was called by God in the very beginning before he was
even born. The Bible says that God's favor
was on Moses when he was a baby. Now when he was 40 years old and
Moses lived to be 120. So Moses life is separated into
3 segments of 40 years and then when he was 40 years old it came
into his heart to visit his brother and the children of
Israel. Wasn't that interesting?
One day he gets up and all of a sudden he's got a burden for his
own people. Up until that point, he was
probably just living his life, doing his thing.
And all of a sudden the Holy Spirit puts his passion in his
heart to visit the children of Israel.
And he saw one of them suffer wrong.
He defended and avenged him who was oppressed and struck down
the Egyptians. So this Egyptians being brutal
to this Jewish slave, taking advantage of them, beating them.
Moses sees it, goes over and intervenes.
And in pushing down this Egyptian, this guy ended up
dying. He basically was murdered.
For he supposed that this brother would have understood
that God would deliver them by his hand, but they did not
understand. So Moses, whenever he had this
burden, he already understood that somehow he was responsible
to be the one who would deliver the children of Israel out of
Egypt. What a what a calling all these
people, millions of people and one man.
And he senses this burden that they got to be helped, they got
to someone's got to do something to get these people out of this
horrible place and under this terrible bondage.
So he supposed that his brother would have understood that God
would deliver them by his hand, but they didn't understand.
So the next day he appears to two of them as they're fighting.
So 2 Jewish guys, they're fighting about who knows what.
And he tries to reconcile them saying, men, you are brethren,
you belong to each other, your family.
Why do you wrong one another that he who did his neighbor
wrong pushed him away, saying, who made you a ruler and a judge
over us? Do you want to kill me as you
did the Egyptian yesterday. Then as this saying, Moses fled
and became a dweller in the land of Midian where he had two sons.
So Moses hears us. He's probably looking around.
I hope no one heard this. I'm getting out of here because
they catch me for this. I'm I'm in trouble.
So so he took off. It's interesting that any
messenger that God has sent and you can study throughout the Old
Testament. Isaiah was a prophet.
He was son into Jeremiah was sown in a prison.
I mean, all the people that God had sent to bring the message
was always somehow either martyred, rejected, or just
betrayed. This is just the the history of
of the nation of Israel. Thanks for joining us on this
journey through Acts. On today's edition of Living
Waters of Grace, Pastor Clark shares that one of the most
remarkable things about the book of Acts is how it shows the
disciples transformation. The followers of Jesus we meet
here are very different from the often confused and fearful
disciples in the Gospels. After Jesus's death and
resurrection, and especially through the power of the Holy
Spirit, the apostles experienced a profound change in their
hearts and boldness. Their faith became unwavering,
and they moved forward with courage to spread the gospel
despite opposition and hardship. Acts reminds us that the same
Spirit who empowered them is at work in US today, shaping our
hearts and giving us strength to live boldly for Christ.
Living Waters of Grace is a ministry of Calvary Chapel
Westmoreland. If you're in the Greensburg, PA
area, we invite you to join us this Sunday at 10:30 AM at 400 E
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