Point number 5 – God honored Stephen in verses 55-56.
Stephen conquers the world, the flesh and the Devil.
“But he, being full of the Holy Ghost, looked up stedfastly into heaven, and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing on the right hand of God, And said, Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of man standing on the right hand of God” (Acts 7:55-56).
Now the Devil-possessed helps him unto God. They thought they were destroying him, but they are just helping him on to God.
“Then they cried out with a loud voice, and stopped their ears, and ran upon him with one accord, And cast him out of the city, and stoned him: and the witnesses laid down their clothes at a young man’s feet, whose name was Saul. And they stoned Stephen, calling upon God, and saying, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit” (Acts 7:57-59).
I’m telling you, people, religious folks hate those with a relationship. Religious folks don’t have a “know-so religion.” They don’t. That’s why they need to get saved. They go back and say, “I said a prayer.” They never say they believed when they were younger, “I’m sticking with that prayer.” Are you sticking with the prayer, or why you said that prayer? It’s not semantics, really. It’s just a fact! You either believe or you didn’t believe. And if you believed, there ought to be someone at home. So, it ain’t the doubting of people’s salvation—the Devil will do that good enough for you, but if you don’t have assurance—my goodness, get assured! You need that presence of God.
You need that relationship with God, knowing Who God is in your life. You need to know God.
I’m telling you, these people with no relationship, and then us with the relationship—what do we long for? —we long for His presence in our life. We long for that, it is in us. We want to see God operating in our life. Even if you are a backslidden Christian. Your new nature, man, and the Holy Ghost—the voice has sort of been snuffed out—even when you are backslidden, there is something in you that is just crying out for your Father.
Now those that want God in their life seek out those things that please Him from the Word of God. You don’t make stuff up. Well, God I think is going to like this, or God is going to like that. The Word of God tells you what pleases Him, so you get your instruction from the Word of God. You got to have that and do them. Now, they don’t fear, but rather accept the accusations and persecutions of the religious world. Those that know God and have a relationship with Him do not fear what the world can do unto them. They don’t fear accusations or persecutions. I mean, we all have a little fear, but when you think about it—when you know God—this is part and parcel of our life down here, are the wrong accusations and persecutions.
If you are going to stand for the Lord, you have to understand that. This stuff will happen, and for a brief moment all of us get a little depressed over it, but when you think about it—if the accusations are false, quit trying to prove that the accusations are false. God will fight for you. Just keep going on. There are too many people that accuse us all the time. Accuse our motives, accuse everything. Just keep going for the Lord. That’s all. God will make things happen.
Now God rewards the honest child—that child that realizes the wickedness of his heart and body—and the necessity of the power of God to accomplish what God desires them to do. Remember, “I can do nothing of myself,” Remember, “in my flesh I can do no good thing.” What’s that? That’s Scripture declarations about your flesh. That’s the declaration about a Christian that wants to serve God, knowing that he does it by the power of God, because God gets the glory, the Christian does not. God will reward that Christian, for giving glory to Him.
Now maybe you are saved and have a desire to grow but you just fear the presence of God. Why? Because it might threaten your addiction, whatever that could be. It could be drugs, alcohol, pornography . . . it’ll threaten, that presence just threatens what you enjoy. It threatens your goals, and lifestyle. A lot of people don’t want the presence of God because they got it all figured out, and since they are doing a good thing and not a bad thing—I’m cool with God. You better know that you are cool with God. If you start your life out with your goals and your practices without considering your relationship with God, you started wrong—I don’t care how good it is. God owns you.
When you make your goals and stuff, you say, “Lord, in my heart and mind this seems like a good thing and you told me to be a laborer and to provide and so on, and this is the direction I am going in. But Lord, You direct. Close doors or open doors.”
So, it threatens our goals and lifestyle, it scares you. What does? To give everything to Him. Them baby Christians need a whole lot of security, we understand that. Carnal Christians, it scares them because that forces them to admit that they are carnal. But God wants us all, and in order to have that presence we have to die to self, we have to give God everything. You are going to have to purpose that, at the altar at church, at the altar at home, in the car, anywhere. You just need to remove everything from your mind and say, “God, I don’t understand a lot of things about Your will, but this is what I can do. I can right with a vow say that I’m giving You everything in my life.
I know, just looking at this story—Stephen could die right—Stephen ended right—conformed to the image of Jesus Christ. We saw that earlier in verse 60 . . .
“And he kneeled down, and cried with a loud voice, Lord, lay not this sin to their charge. And when he had said this, he fell asleep” (Acts 7:60).
“And he kneeled down, and cried with a loud voice, Lord, . . .”
Send lightning down and kill these people! No.
Send a plague on them, Lord! No.
Do this, do that, or the other thing! No.
“. . . lay not this sin to their charge. And when he had said this, he fell asleep.”
What a blessing. We read it, man, what a story. What a movie we could make. But that is supposed to be our attitude. You see, Stephen shined—we should shine for the Lord. Whatever it means. Either die naturally or whatever, but you want to shine for the Lord. You want to burn for the Lord. Stephen’s sacrifice though, what’s interesting is that he didn’t even know it.
You know, a lot of times we look at Jeremiah, he wrote Lamentations and was called the ‘weeping prophet.’ He saw his people go into captivity, just rejecting his message of deliverance. They put him through all sorts of hellish thing, throwing him into a pit. I mean, if you ever read Jeremiah, man, my goodness—what a prophet going through something. And guess what, to die thinking he had no fruit! He saw no visible fruit. But Lord have mercy, when he was up in glory God said, “watch this.”
And next thing you know, the prophecies of the end-time kingdoms and the Antichrist, and all these were prophesied by Daniel. And you know what Daniel said, he read them in the Book of Jeremiah. And not only that, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego—what about them? –where did they get that faith? Reading Scriptures. Well, who did they believe? Jeremiah. Somebody heard the preaching, he got fruit—my goodness what kind of fruit! Daniel even got put in charge of a heathen nation as a result of Jeremiah’s preaching. What a blessing!
So, Stephen went out doing what he was supposed to do. He didn’t know what was going to take place later.