Three Lessons From the Life of Stephen 1

Pastor Mike will be speaking on Three Lessons From the Life of Stephen 1. He will be reading out of Acts 6:8-15.

You want to see things changed in America? Then get on your knees and seek God. Be a person of prayer because prayer is where the power is at. Prayer is where the anointing is at. Prayer is where God responds and the heart of God has moved in heaven when he sees the people of God pray.

Hello this is Pastor Mike Sanders from the Open Door Church and I’m excited to be able to broadcast, hope worth having, and we thank you for joining us today. We’re back in Acts chapter 6 today but this time we’re moving on to verse 8 through 15 and we’re going to learn about the life of Stephen and there are three lessons we learned from his life and we want to take time to study his life.

He was a great man of God and certainly one that we could emulate so let’s get our Bibles and let’s start studying together. Amen if you have your Bible I want you to join me in the book of Acts. Acts chapter 6 is where we’re going to continue our study in verse 8 through 15.

As we begin at Acts chapter 6 verse 8 we understand that through this chapter, chapter 6, and all the way the close of chapter 7, that Luke who personally and under the inspiration of the Spirit of God recorded the ministry of a man named Stephen.

When you study the book of Acts you first see a prominent figure his name is Peter. You know in the Gospels that Peter was a man who was very audacious and he was very outspoken, very committed, but yet he stumbled and he struggled and yet the Lord restored Him and told Him to feed my sheep.

And in Acts chapter 2 we see this man named Peter to be transformed by the power of God and standing before thousands and boldly telling people that Jesus Christ died for their sins. And that three days later he arose again.

When you pick up in Acts chapter 9 you’ll see another prominent figure. His name is Saul or it would later become Paul. And all throughout the rest of the book of Acts the Apostle Paul becomes a prominent figure who is crisscrossing the known world planting churches and he is preaching the gospel.

He is winning people to Christ and he is working very effectively for the kingdom of God. In chapter 6 and 7, a figure that is rarely ever mentioned by Christians and perhaps not even considered, but we are introduced to a man named Stephen.

Stephen was one of the seven men that were chosen to be some of the first deacons of the early church. We learned a little bit about that last week in verses 1 through 7. Stephen was a man who was used powerfully by God in the proclamation of the good news of the Lord Jesus Christ.

He is singled out by Luke as a figure in the life of the church and he was a leader in the life of the church. Stephen’s life tells us something very important, that the length of your life does not determine the impact of your life.

Though his ministry was brief and though his ministry ended up in that he was martyred for the cause of Christ and promoted to heaven, he was a man that greatly impacted the cause of Jesus Christ. It’s important for us to take time to focus on this early saint of God.

This man who was so profound in his impact on the early church. And this morning I want us to learn three lessons from the life of Stephen and it doesn’t matter who you are and it doesn’t matter where you come from or what you’re dealing with in your life, I want you to remember these lessons in your life.

They are applicable to your heart. They do not change. They do not fade away. You must continue to refer back. What the Bible does for us is to uphold godly men and godly women before us. because truth is always wrapped up in a person that’s why you being an example you being someone that you can look at your family and you can look at your grandchildren and your children and you can look at other people new believers in Christ and you can say as the Apostle said mimic me as I mimic Christ it is not arrogance it’s not pride it’s not overconfidence it’s just that we want to make an impact on people we understand that truth is wrapped up in a person Jesus said I am the truth the life Jesus is the way no man comes to the Father but through him God always wraps his truth in a person and certainly our Lord and Savior God always raises up a man he always raises up a woman we don’t know how long we have as we minister and serve for God but we need to be all in 100% fully devoted followers of the Lord Jesus Christ And Stephen was that man,

and what do we learn from his life? First, I want you to write down, if you’re taking notes, that you need to build your spiritual character. It wasn’t that Stephen was a handsome man, that’s not what’s brought out to us.

It wasn’t that he was somehow a figure that was physically strong or anything like that. What the Bible brings to our attention today that we’ll be looking at is who Stephen was within. You say, pastor, I want to be that person.

I want to be that person that influences others for the Lord Jesus Christ. Let me tell you where it begins. It begins within your heart. You must begin to build your spiritual character. Look at verse eight.

The Bible says that Stephen was full of faith and power, did great wonders and signs among the people. Stephen was an outstanding man of God. He was so revered and his character so reflected within the church of thousands of people.

You gotta understand that the early church, 15, 20 ,000 people, and when they needed a job done, they looked at Stephen and said, you’re one of these guys that can make things happen. You have influence, you’re doing something for God, and your character is reflecting God, and so we need you to help solve this problem, and you can read about that in the earlier verses, but I want you to see some things about his spiritual character.

First, we note his wisdom. Now, we jump back to verse three of chapter six. The Bible says, therefore, brethren, seek out from among you seven men of good reputation, full of the Holy Spirit, and what?

Now, I want you to jump down to verse 10 of chapter six. The Bible says that they were not, meaning those who did not believe in Christ, the religious leaders, the political leaders, they were not able to resist the what?

The wisdom. and the spirit by which he spoke. Wisdom from God is not found in education, it’s not found in the world’s philosophy, but the wisdom of God is found when you and I are saturating our life in the word of God.

What we need in this world are Christians who are filled with the wisdom of God, not the wisdom of the latest fads, and not the wisdom and philosophies of the world, but we need the wisdom of God to fill the minds and the hearts.

You say, how do I pray for my family? You pray that God will give them godly wisdom. You say, how do I bring my request to God? God, give me the wisdom. God doesn’t always get you out of the mess that you’re in, and he doesn’t always get you out of the suffering that you’re in and the struggle that you’re in, but I’ll tell you one thing he will do is he will fill you with his wisdom.

I want you to take your Bibles real quickly. And I want you to go to James chapter one, just real quickly go with there with me. I want you to get there, whether it’s on your device or in your Bible.

And if you don’t have a Bible, get one right there in your pew, you should have a Bible. But James chapter one, just turn over there real quickly. And if I didn’t think it was important, I wouldn’t bring this up.

But I want you to see what the Bible says in James chapter one. James chapter one, he is talking to Christians who are struggling. They are going through different trials. Look at verse two of James chapter one.

My brethren count it all joy when you fall into various trials. It’s not that you’re joyful of the trial, but that you are joyful of the outcome of God’s work in your heart as you are in the trial. And he says to us in verse five, if any of you lacks what?

Wisdom. Let a mask of God who gives to all liberally and without reproach and it will be given to him. You see friends, here’s the thing, is that he’s not talking about the wisdom of the world. If you’d get on your knees and you would open your Bible to this verse and you would come before an almighty holy God and you would say, Lord, I don’t know what to do.

I don’t know the next step, but here I am. I am seeking your wisdom and I am asking. You told me to come and you told me to ask and Lord, I’m asking for your wisdom. My friends, I promise you that God will not withhold.

He is a God who will not make a decision based on whether you’re this or that or what you do, but he is a God who generously, liberally will pour out his wisdom on you. The Bible says it will be given to him.

To who? To the person who asks. You have not because you ask not. You might be asking for gold and you might be asking for riches and you may be asking for a wife or a husband, but I tell you what you need more than any of that is that you need the wisdom of God.

You need the wisdom of God and this is the character that is built and this is what I want you to see is that wisdom comes as we saturate ourselves in the Word of God. Wisdom comes as we spend time in prayer asking God.

Where does this wisdom come from? It comes from the Word and it comes through prayer and you and I must be fully committed to that. Stephen was a man of wisdom but I want you to also know he was a man of faith.

The Bible says in verse 8 that Stephen was full of faith. He was full of faith. Every believer must exercise faith in Jesus Christ. We understand that there are different elements of faith. Sometimes we read about faith and we see what the Bible says about faith.

We hear about it from our teachers and our Bible study leaders and our Sunday school teachers but we kind of just put it all into one container and say there’s faith. But I want you to understand that there’s more than just faith, there is saving faith.

There is sustaining faith, there is serving faith, there is a faith that is available to you and that God is calling us if we’re gonna be these strong believers in these hostile times that it is essential that we be a people of faith.

So first of all, you need to be saved. For by grace are you saved through what? That not of yourselves, it is a gift of God, not of works lest any man should believe. The first thing is you must take a step of faith and believe in Jesus Christ.

Taking a step of faith is not a mental acknowledgement, but taking a step of faith is believing in your heart. With the heart, the Bible says, man believes unto righteousness. Many people miss heaven by 18 inches from their head to their heart.

They miss heaven because they got it up here, they got all the head knowledge. Watch out parents as you’re raising these children. Watch out grandparents as you’re working in the hearts of your grandchildren that they don’t just grow up and become religious pagans who have the knowledge, they don’t have a heart that is fully surrendered to God.

And so I must come to Jesus Christ. I must believe that he died for my sins. I must confess that I am a sinner and that he is my savior and I must ask him to save me and forgive me of my sins. But I tell you, there’s more church to faith.

Jesus said this in Matthew chapter eight verse 10, when Jesus heard it, he marveled and said to them that followed verily I say unto you, I’ve not found so great faith. No, not in Israel. One time Jesus rebuked his own disciples and said that they were men of little faith.

And I wonder where you might find yourself as someone who has great faith or someone who has little faith. The Bible tells us that we’re to live by faith, not by explanation. of you, the only way you’ll step out, the only way that you’ll trust, the only way that you’ll believe is if everything’s explained to you, if everything’s figured out, but this is not what God has called us to do.

Sometimes things come into our lives that we did not anticipate, but we are called to live by faith. You live by faith, church. Now how is it that I can help my faith? I gotta feed my faith. The difference between having little faith and great faith is whether you’re nurturing your faith.

And you say, well, pastor, how do I do that? Well, I mean, again, it’s not so profound as you might think. The Bible says that faith comes by hearing the word. You understand that? The one thing that builds your faith is God’s word.

you must avail yourself to hearing it taught, you must avail yourself to reading the word, to learning the word, to studying the word, and you must continue to inundate yourself with the word of God.

Because as you saturate your life with the word of God, then you will have the mind of Christ. The Apostle Paul said to the Corinthians, you have the mind of Christ. It’s available. You want to know the mind of Christ?

It’s the word of God. If you want to know what God is thinking, if you want to know what Jesus is thinking, then open your Bible, my friends, and you will find out what Jesus is thinking. You don’t have to go to social media, you don’t have to go to the paper, you don’t have to go to the radio or television because you can know what Jesus is thinking by opening your Bible.

The mind of Christ is available to you, and you must seek out the word of God. You must learn the Bible, you must saturate your life, and the Bible says faith comes by hearing and hearing the word of God.

So if I want that sustaining, growing, serving, sufficient faith, it is essential that I be connected to the word of God. Important. I want you to note a third characteristic of Stephen’s spiritual life, his spiritual character.

It is power. Look again at verse five. We see, we back up again, and the Bible says that the saying, please, I’m in chapter six, the whole multitude, and they chose Stephen, a man full of faith and the Holy Spirit.

We jump down to verse eight, and it says he was full of faith and power. He did great wonders and signs among the people. We don’t talk about it a lot, but you know that God is calling us to build our spiritual character, and he’s calling us to be a powerful people of God.

You want to know the distinction of the early church. It wasn’t their methods. It wasn’t how fancy or relevant. It wasn’t even their music. that made them different and made them so powerful that they turned the known world upside down, that they filled their community with the doctrine of Christ as we learned in Acts chapter five, in Acts chapter four, what is it that made them so profound in their ability to influence so many is that they were people who had the power of God.

Stephen was a man who became very active in spreading the gospel. What was the source of his power? It’s what Jesus said in Acts one verse eight, you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you and you shall be witnesses to me in Jerusalem and all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth.

Stephen was a man of immense spiritual power in his life and the source of that power was the Holy Spirit. So how can we be clothed in the power of God? What God needs today in the 21st century is men and women who are operating in the power of God.

When I use that word, power, I’m not speaking of something that is mystical or magical. I’m talking about the energy of God. I’m talking about the anointing of God. I’m talking about the power of God that is resting upon his people and he is using them everywhere that they go.

How can you be clothed in the power of God? I don’t want to be redundant. I don’t want to be a person who seems to be belittling this, but I want you to know that it is very simplistic and that it begins with prayer.

The church moves forward on its knees, not its feet. You want to see your family changed. You want to see things changed in America. Then get on your knees and seek God. Be a person of prayer because prayer is where the power is at.

Prayer is where the energy is at. Prayer is where the anointing is at. Prayer is where God responds and the heart of God is moved in heaven when he sees the people of God praying. How can we be clothed in power?

It is God’s word. There is nothing that empowers you more. There is nothing that grants you more enablement to be all that God wants you to be than God’s word. And that’s why you can’t be this kind of Christian that says, I’m going to pop in every once in a while.

I’m going to get a little bit of Jesus enough to get me into heaven and I’m just going to kind of skate in. But I’m going to live my life however I want to. Certainly not going to listen to the pastor or the preacher.

I’m certainly not going to obey God because I don’t want any of that. Listen, you wonder why God’s people are impotent and they cannot effectively make a difference for the Lord Jesus Christ. It is because they lack the power of God on their life.

And the reason that they… do is that they are so casual in their Christianity. They’re so vague in their their commitment to the Lord. There is no devotion into their heart. They just want a little bit of Jesus.

But I tell you friends I want all of Jesus amen. I want to be all in for Christ. I do not want to be a fence -sitter. I do not want to be a person who’s hopping back and forth and trying to live like the world and trying to live like a Christian and just going back and forth.

I want to be all in for the Lord Jesus Christ. As we already mentioned the third aspect of how to be clothed with the power of God is through the Holy Spirit. Have you asked the Holy Spirit to fill you?

Have you prayed to the Spirit of God? Some people say can I pray to the Spirit? Absolutely. You could pray to the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. The Bible teaches us that they are three distinct persons of the Godhead.

Three, but one, you say, Mike, explain that. I can’t, people been trying. I just believe what the word of God says, okay? The Spirit of God, you can ask the Spirit of God to fill you, you can ask the Spirit of God to manifest his power in you and through you.

You can ask the Spirit of God to work in your heart and to help you to be a bold Christian for him. You can ask the Spirit of God to work in your life. You just have to come to him and be willing to do that.

The third spiritual character that we see in the life of Stephen, the Bible says in verse eight that he did great wonders and signs among the people. I want to just help you again, church, because I know that so often there are things we read in the book of Acts that our goal is to duplicate and that we want to sometimes see it happen over and over again and we get off track theologically trying to replicate all that took place.

The point is not that God is wanting you to go out there and smack people upside the head and do some amazing miracle or that your shadow would cross over somebody and they would be instantaneously healed.

That’s not the point. The miracles had a message and the miracles always, we read in the Bible, especially in the book of Acts, they always manifested the glory of God, not the glory of a person, not the glory of an individual, but the glory of God.

Remember Jesus said, when he was asked the question, who sinned when they looked at a crippled man who was suffering, who sinned? Was it him, Jesus, or his parents? First of all, where does that question come from?

A false teaching that permeated among Judaism in the days of Christ when he walked on this earth, a belief that if you were physically suffering, that God was judging you. But that’s not true. It’s not true.

Jesus responded in John 9 -3, neither this man nor his parents sinned, but that the works of God should be revealed in Him. I don’t have all the answers for your suffering, and I don’t have all the explanations for your questions, but overarching of what is going on in your life, and either what God has caused or allowed in your life, that He longs for God and His glory to be revealed in your suffering.

And you may ask the question, why? I don’t have the details, and I could never give you a sufficient answer, but let it rest your heart and let it fill your heart with peace, knowing that even in the midst of this, that God wants to be glorified.

And may it be your heart that in your suffering, in your struggle, that God would be glorified and how you respond to Him. These miracles not only manifested the glory of God, these wonders and signs that the Apostle did, but the miracles confirmed the gospel.

They confirmed the gospel. Remember that I taught you earlier church, that the gifts of the Spirit that are given to all who believe in Christ, that they came in three categories. There was the serving gifts, the speaking gifts, and the sign gifts.

The sign gifts were a time for a season. What was the purpose that the gospel was being transitioned from the Old Covenant to the New Covenant, that now Jesus Christ has come. He has fulfilled all that is required of the law, and now we walk in grace in the New Covenant.

And Jesus Christ confirmed His message, and Jesus confirmed His messengers through wonders and signs. So the miracles confirmed, the gospel. Remember what Mark taught us in Mark 16 verse 20, that they went out, meaning the disciples, they preached everywhere, the Lord working with them, and confirming the Word through the accompanying sign.

And I know some people want to manifest these sign gifts today, and they got to do them. That’s all right. But all I’m trying to tell you is that the sign gifts came to an end. They came to a completion at the completion of the Word of God, and that the sign gifts were unnecessary, because the sign gifts were specifically targeted towards the Jewish people, so that they would understand that what was prophesied in Joel,

what was prophesied in Isaiah, what was prophesied by those prophets in the Old Testament, that it has now come to fruition in the manifestation on the day of Pentecost, and through this. particular age and season as God was establishing his church on the earth.

The people of God were now not just limited to a nation that was politically designed in the Middle East, but the people of God would now be from every nation and every people group and every ethnicity and every race and now all could come to Christ and all could believe in Jesus Christ and the signs would manifest that the message is true and the messengers are true and the miracles always pointed to the Lord Jesus Christ.

Now you might want to disagree with me and I tell people it’s America. You have the freedom to be wrong. Isn’t that wonderful? I mean you have the freedom to be wrong. How great is that? But yet I want you to understand that as you come to the word of God, we understand the seasons, the context of Acts chapter 6 and Acts chapter 7 and what is distinct about Stephen’s life.

was not that his wonders and signs that God used at a particular time and a particular season to accomplish a particular purpose, but that he was a man full of the Spirit and the power of God was on him.

And so even today that though you may not have the sign gifts, you do have speaking gifts and you do have serving gifts and whatever those gifts are, the way that you manifest God’s character in your life is to exercise those gifts and to use those gifts.

Don’t be the kind of person who just comes in and plops yourself down on a seat and a pew and says, I shall not be moved. But rather, you be the person who soaks up the word of God and you get out and serve God, you find your place, you get involved and then you become a sweet Christian that God can use.

You say, well, I’m not sure where I can be used. Well, you kick and scream until you get my attention. We’ll get you plugged in. We’ll get you in the right place. We’ll get you serving God. I’m telling you, there’s so many needs.

You can’t even imagine it. And people say, why isn’t this going on, Pastor Mike? Why isn’t that? Because during COVID, we lost over 150 volunteers in our church. Not that they left the church, some of you are still here.

It’s just they quit serving in the church. They’re done. But I tell you, for as I told the church on Wednesday night, I hope my last breath is serving the Lord Jesus Christ. And I just wanna be more specific.

I hold my last breath, not right now, God. I hope you can hold off right now. But I hope my last breath is while I’m preaching and teaching the Bible to you and then bam, I’m gone. Now don’t you cry for me because I’ll be having the greatest time in heaven ever known to mankind.

And I know it’s hard for you to believe, but I’ll be having a better time than you and I’ll be better off than you, okay? Because my king is King Jesus. Stephen was used powerfully by God in the proclamation of the Good News of Jesus, so much that the religious leaders couldn’t stand him because God was using him effectively to touch so many lives with the power of the gospel.

But in Stephen’s life, we learn how you and I can be faithful even when there’s opposition or there is pushback in our life. And I hope that these lessons are integrated into your life and that you can continue to model your life by one of the great men of the Bible.

Hey, I want to encourage you to let us know your prayer requests. If you’ll go to HopeworthHaving .com, hit that contact button and let us know how we can pray for you. We want this ministry to be more than just proclaiming the gospel.

we certainly wanna partner with you in prayer. So if you have a special need and you’d like us to join with you in praying for that matter, send us that information and we’ll be glad to pray with you.

This is Pastor Mike Sanders reminding you that in Christ there is hope worth having.