INTRODUCTION
• Apostle Paul Video Clip
• SLIDE #1
• Why me? Have you ever had a day, a week, a month, or a year where you asked yourself this question?
• There are a variety of reasons we can feel this way.
• We see loved ones develop a fatal disease. We lose a job we have help for many years.
• Your spouse decided the grass was greener on the other side of the fence.
• You lose a child, or as we will see today, you get persecuted for the doing the right thing with the right spirit for the right reason.
• I mean, Jerry shared the story of Jonah last week. When you look at the story of Jonah, I think we can all safely say that Jonah kind of had it coming to him.
• God asked him to do something, and he did not want to do it at first.
• After he became fish bait, he has a change of action, not so much a change of heart.
• So, really, Jonah in good conscience could not really ask WHY ME, he knew something was coming.
• Today, we will look at a situation that almost defies logic.
• In Stephen, we have a man who was filled with the Holy Spirit, full of power and grace. Stephen was selected by the church to be one of the original Deacons.
• Stephen was performing signs and wonders and was doing great works for the Lord.
• Stephen was so good at preaching the Gospel that the Jewish leaders were mad at him because they could not stand against his wisdom and spirit.
• So, these guys did what you do when you cannot win an argument, you smear the person and make up accusations against them.
• Glad we have grown past that on our time. ?
• Stephen gets dragged before the Sanhedrin, he is falsely accused of blasphemy (the act of speaking sacrilegiously about God or sacred things).
• He was accused of speaking against Moses and God.
• So, what does Stephen do?
• He does something that every Jew loves to hear. Stephen takes the crowd to a trip down memory lane as he shares the history of the nation with the crowd.
• What could go wrong, he has the crowd eating out of his hand. Here is a man who has God on his side, he is doing the work God called him to do.
• If anyone has the right to ask WHY ME, it is Stephen.
• Let's begin with verse 54. Well, I will start with verse 51 for context and because it humors me.
• SLIDE #2
• Acts 7:51–54 (CSB) — 51 “You stiff-necked people with uncircumcised hearts and ears! You are always resisting the Holy Spirit. As your ancestors did, you do also. 52 Which of the prophets did your ancestors not persecute? They even killed those who foretold the coming of the Righteous One, whose betrayers and murderers you have now become. 53 You received the law under the direction of angels and yet have not kept it.” 54 When they heard these things, they were enraged and gnashed their teeth at him.
• SLIDE #3
SERMON
I. Why me? Remember that God doesn’t always keep bad things from happening.
• Honestly, I do not know what happened for sure, or how Stephen went from re-telling the history of the nation to You stiff-necked people with uncircumcised hearts and ears?
• Suffice to say, the group got really mad at Stephen.
• I would imagine as he was preaching the false accusers were working on swaying the crowd, I think Stephen was watching his audience and finally realized he was getting nowhere with them.
• The crowd was so mad that they were gnashing their teeth, which means they were grinding their teeth together.
• Imagine if I was preaching and then all the sudden, I busted that line of thought on you, I am sure it would not be received very well. ?
• Stephen is a man who is doing God’s will, he is a man that God has blessed with the ability to perform miracles as well as being able to confound his critics.
• God blessed this man with wisdom that his opponents could not match.
• Yet here he is, the crowd is about to turn into a mob.
• This situation is going to go from bad to worse in a hurry.
• Does Stephen have anything to fear? He is a servant of the God Most High, carrying out God’s will.
• SLIDE #4
• Romans 8:31 (CSB) What then are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us?
• Have you ever gotten into trouble for doing the right thing? Have you ever been mistreated for carrying out God’s will?
• If that has happened, have you ever asked the question WHY ME?
• Now, I am sure none of us have endured what Stephen is about to face.
• SLIDE #5
• Acts 7:57–58 (CSB) — 57 They yelled at the top of their voices, covered their ears, and together rushed against him. 58 They dragged him out of the city and began to stone him…
• While this was taking place, one would think that Stephen had to wonder WHY ME?
• When we belong to Jesus, and when tragedy or other complicated things happen to us, we probably ask the question, WHY ME?
• Lord, do I not belong to you, Lord am I not one of your children?
• How could you let one of your children suffer from this cancer or how could you allow a loved one to die before I thought it was time?
• I have known some beautiful servants of the Lord go through some tough times.
• I would ask WHY THEM when I see others who are not so great people living to ripe old ages.
• When bad things happen, we have a tendency to think that God has left us, that we are being punished for something.
• Even we Jesus was on the cross HE cried out MY GOD MY GOD WHY HAVE YOU FORSAKEN ME (MATTHEW 27:46)
• When things start to fall apart, we think God has left the building. We believe because something terrible has happened that God does not care, or He does not love us.
• We have to remember that we live in a fallen world and this is not the only life we get.
• We also need to remember that even though God does not always keep bad things from happening…
• SLIDE #6
II. Why me? Remember God is still there.
• God is still there, God is with you even when you are walking through the valley of the shadow of death.
• God was with Jesus when He was suffering on the cross for our salvation.
• When you are going through difficult times, He is with you.
• When Stephen was about to suffer a horrific death at the hands of the folks, God was with him also.
• SLIDE #7
• Acts 7:55–56 (CSB) — 55 Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit, gazed into heaven. He saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. 56 He said, “Look, I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God!”
• Stephen speaks as if the skies had parted and his eyes penetrated beyond what we can see to where God resides.
• Only Stephen saw this vision which made the Sanhedrin even angrier!
• As a side note.
• This event takes place before the writing of the Gospels. Why does this matter?
• Jesus, being referred to as the Son of Man (a Messianic title Jesus used of Himself throughout the Gospels) is interesting.
• This passage is only one of three outside of the Gospels were this title is used of Jesus.
• Stephens use of this title is one of those little confirmations of the truth of the Gospel record since Stephen delivered his defense before the Gospels were written.
• When Jesus used the title to speak of Himself, the leaders considered it blasphemy as was the case with Stephen.
• It was so offensive to the crowd that they covered their ears in verse 57 and yelled at the top of their voices to drown Stephen out.
• Stephen was about to face a painful death, yet God was still with him.
• Stoning as a form of execution involved throwing the victim over a small cliff. The first witness then rolled a heavy stone down the precipice, intending that the weight of the stone should crush the victim to death.
• The witnesses against the accused were to cast the first stones if the accused was found guilty.
• If the first stone did not accomplish this task, the second witness rolled down a second stone until the objective was achieved. (College Press Commentary Series: Acts)
• In Stephens case, the Sanhedrin members resorted to more of a mob than the organized procedure called for by Jewish Law.
• It should be noted that the Romans took away the Jews right to execute people except in the case of Temple violations.
• What we need to know when we are enduring hardship is that God is with us.
• In Stephens case, God allowed him to see Jesus standing at the Right Hand of the Father!
• When you realize that God is with you, the trying times are easier to endure because we know we are not alone!
• This was the case for Stephen because as he was being executed look at what He does and says.
• SLIDE #8
• Acts 7:59–60 (CSB) — 59 While they were stoning Stephen, he called out: “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit!” 60 He knelt down and cried out with a loud voice, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them!” And after saying this, he died.
• SLIDE #9
III. Why me? Remember what is important to God.
• While this was happening to Stephen, he did not shake a fist at God, nor did he call on God to reign fire upon those persecuting him.
• Instead, he called out to Jesus asking Him to receive his spirit. Jesus was on his mind during the whole ordeal.
• He did not fear death because he knew where he was going, and he knew who was by his side.
• Concerning those who were killing him, he knew that those lost souls were important to God.
• His dying request was for God to forgive them, this is the same thing that Jesus asked of God while they were killing Him.
• People are essential to God.
• When we are suffering, when we are spending our time asking WHY ME, we tend to take our focus off what is important to God.
• What is important to God is seeing people be saved.
• The grace and dignity in which we endure can be a testimony to those watching.
• I left out an essential part of verse 58. Let’s look at the whole verse.
• SLIDE #10
• Acts 7:58 (CSB) They dragged him out of the city and began to stone him. And the witnesses laid their garments at the feet of a young man named Saul.
• Saul. Guess who was that the stoning of the first Christian martyr, Saul, the man who would later change his name to Paul.
• When you look at Acts 8, this is when Saul started going after Christians, this is when the church was scattered out from Jerusalem.
• God had wanted the church to go out into all the world, but it was not until this event that the church started to go into all of the world.
• In the video clip on Paul Apostle of Christ, we see Paul reflecting on the stoning of Stephen.
• I cannot believe that the way Stephen handled the tragic death he was handed did not have an effect on Paul.
• We never know who is watching, God used Paul wrote most of the New Testament Scriptures.
• The way we handle those WHY ME moments life tends to deal us could have an impact on someone coming to salvation in Christ, or somehow someway furthering the cause of Christ.
CONCLUSION
• Why Me? That is a question we all probably ask at some point in time.
• With Jonah, we could see why him, with Stephen, it seems to defy logic.
• The question of WHY Me can cause us to forget that bad things happen in this world and we not always shielded from those things.
• IF this were the only existence we have, then we can complain and focus on how unfair it is; however, this life is only the beginning.
• Instead of focusing all of our energy on WHY ME, we would be better served by focusing on the fact that Jesus is with us all the way and HE will be waiting for us on the other side in the worst-case scenarios.
• We also would be wise to always focus on what is important to God.
