Acts 6:8-15 Stephen Seized - For or Against the Holy Spirit
8 Now Stephen, a man full of God's grace and power, did great wonders and miraculous signs among the people.
There’s an old black and white British movie called “The Man Who could Work Miracles.” It’s based on a short story of the same name which was written by HG Wells, one of the greatest science fiction writers of the 20th century. The plot is a bit like Bruce Almighty because an ordinary man is given almighty powers to do anything he wants by two angels. They want to see what would happen to the world if a man who didn’t believe in miracles was given the power to do anything that he liked.
Through trial and error, the hero of the story begins to realize how much power he has, but instead of using it for the common good of humanity, he ends up satisfying his own needs. He gets everything that he wants and ends up becoming impatient with the whole world. When he has to wait a whole day for something he desires, he decides to stop the entire world; after all, if he has to wait, then the rest of humanity should wait along with him.
Unfortunately, he forgets that the world is revolving at 2000 miles per hour, so when he commands the whole planet to stop, it’s like pulling the brakes on a high speed train. Everything and everyone is shot into the sky and ends up in space. The whole world is destroyed and the angels’ experiment is an epic failure. They decide to go back in time and stop the man from receiving the gift of unlimited divine power.
I wonder what we would do if we were given the gifts of God’s grace and power? Would we perform great miracles and wonders that would bring glory to God, or would we use that power to enrich ourselves and embrace our desires? Would we work for ourselves and go against the work of the holy spirit, or would we remain humble enough to use those gifts for the advancement of Christ’s Kingdom by working with the Holy Spirit?
In today’s passage, we continue the gospel of the Holy Spirit and get to read about the man called Stephen. He has been chosen by the church’s leaders, the Apostles, as a deacon. But he has also been given great gifts by God which he doesn’t use for himself. Instead he performs great wonders and miraculous signs among his people, showing them that God is powerfully present with them through Jesus Christ His Only Son.
I wonder if Stephen was tempted to do otherwise. The people and authorities would have loved him to use those gifts to kick out their Roman oppressors and liberate the Jewish people forever. The mobs would have loved that and the religious clerics would have been ecstatic. If they could get rid of the Roman tyranny and emperor’s dictatorship, the Jewish people would all have been in seventh heaven. But Stephen didn’t use God’s gifts for himself or even for his people; he used them to advance God’s Kingdom and Christ’s ministry. He was not about to go against the Word, way, and work of the Holy Spirit in order to appease the people, his culture, or those who felt victimized. Stephen was chosen by God through the apostles to do Christ’s work. Nothing or no one would convince him to set that aside.
History follows some fairly predictable paths. Because Stephen, like Christ before him, would not use his God given powers for the people, he made enemies of the authorities. They even went so far as to begin rumors, spread misinformation, and openly confront Stephen. Traditional Jews grew hostile towards him and tried to diminish his ministry by attacking him and his message in public. Stephen became a target of the reactionary forces in Jerusalem, but no matter when, where or how they confronted him, they could not stand up against him because the wisdom of the Holy Spirit spoke through him.
A recent survey of church groups across America is showing a large decline in mainstream denominations. Even some large mega churches are beginning to feel the pinch of Christians leaving their humongous campuses. It seems that America is rejecting the old traditional religious comfort zones that we have built amongst us for the last one hundred years. As denominations like the PCUSA scramble to appease the culture and try to be relevant, there is one large group of churches that is still growing: the Pentecostals.
Is it just mere coincidence that those churches which place a higher emphasis on the presence and works of the Holy Spirit in worship, ministry, and mission are still growing? Has both the grace of God and His power been transferred from traditional church groups to those churches who honor Christ’s teachings and dynamically express their faith in the Living and active presence of the Holy Spirit?
If the current trends continue then by the end of this century mainstream denominations will be read about in the history books and not experienced in our present form. The Church will be missional and spiritual, dynamic and powerful in ways that we cannot even begin to comprehend. Our seminaries will become secular centers where people can research and study all manner of religions. And if you think that will never happen, let me tell you this: I graduated from the Divinity Faculty of Glasgow University in Scotland. The faculty had been in existence for more than seven hundred years. There is now no Divinity Faculty at Glasgow which was exclusively used to train people to become ministers; it is now the Department of Religious Studies which is part of the Faculty of Arts and the dean of the department is an Islamic woman.
It won’t happen here? Seven hundred years of history was cast aside in Scotland – most of our seminaries here are less than 200 years old.
But let’s get back to Stephen. When the forces against him couldn’t contradict his wisdom, they resorted to lies, deceit, and false accusations. They had, after all, managed to silence Jesus of Nazareth in this way, so why not try the same tactic with one of his pain-in-the-neck followers. They persuaded some people to turn up and say bad things about Stephen. I guess if those biblical events were happening today, they would have bussed them in from all over the country to shout and protest – it’s amazing how many loud voices can be bought even today with money. They accused Stephen of blasphemy which was a quick way of stirring up the people and bringing about a stoning or a lynching.
They accused him of going against the Law of Moses which was standard practice for setting up a show trial. If enough people took up the chant of blasphemer, then things would get out of control very quickly and Stephen would end up dead. It’s the oldest reactionary move in history: destroy the opposition by continually telling lies. If enough lies are told over and over again, then the people buy into it. The ring leaders are rounded up or slaughtered on the spot. History repeats this again and again and again. Sadly, we’re seeing it take place all over the world right now. Heaven knows what kind of state we’ll all be in by the end of this year.
So what if Stephen was brought up on trumped up charges of blasphemy almost 2000 years ago? What has that to do with us, our faith, and our world? Two words: Said Musa.
What? What’s a Said Musa? Said Musa is a Christian in Afghanistan who is being tried for blasphemy in an Islamic Court under the authority of the Afghan government which we are propping up with our own soldiers and service people.
Musa was one of about 25 Christians arrested on May 31, 2010, after a May 27 Noorin TV program showed video of a worship service held by indigenous Afghan Christians; he was arrested as he attempted to seek asylum at the German embassy. He converted to Christianity eight years ago, is the father of six young children, had a leg amputated after he stepped on a landmine while serving in the Afghan Army, and now has a prosthetic leg. His oldest child is eight and one is disabled (she cannot speak). He worked for the Red Cross/Red Crescent as an adviser to other amputees.
He was forced to appear before a judge without any legal counsel and without knowledge of the charges against him. “Nobody [wanted to be my] defender before the court. When I said ‘I am a Christian man,’ he [a potential lawyer] immediately spat on me and abused me and mocked me. . . . I am alone between 400 [people with] terrible values in the jail, like a sheep.” He has been beaten, mocked, and subjected to sleep deprivation and sexual abuse while in prison. No Afghan lawyer will defend him and authorities denied him access to a foreign lawyer.
Any and every human being who is imprisoned, abused, or tortured for the free and peaceful expression of their faith deserves our support, but Musa is also a remarkable person and Christian. In a letter smuggled to the West, he says, “The authority and prisoners in jail did many bad behaviour with me about my faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. For example, they did sexual things with me, beat me by wood, by hands, by legs, put some things on my head.”
He added a thing much more important to him, that they “mocked me ‘he’s Jesus Christ,’ spat on me, nobody let me for sleep night and day. . . . Please, please, for the sake of Lord Jesus Christ help me.
He has not, in fact, even appealed to be released, only to be transferred to another prison. He has also stated that he is willing to give his life for his faith. “Please, please you should transfer me from this jail to a jail that supervises the believers. . . . I also agree . . . to sacrifice my life in public [where] I will tell [about my] faith in Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, [so] other believers will take courage and be strong in their faith.”
That, my dear friends, is a real Christian. Like Stephen, Said Musa is field with the Holy Spirit and will not surrender to his peers, his surrounding culture, his Afghan society.
The questions that we should all be asking this morning are these: Are we dying to appease our culture or are we giving our lives to Christ? Are we Christians in the world or are we a church of the world? Are we for or against the Holy Spirit?
