What Now? (Acts) | When the Pressure is On

What comes out of you when the pressure is on? When you're backed into a corner, when the crowd turns hostile, when the cost of following Jesus becomes real, what surfaces?

In Acts 7, Stephen stands before the Sanhedrin facing false accusations and a hostile crowd. He could have softened his message, managed his image, bought himself some time. Instead, what comes out of him is a Spirit-filled retelling of Israel's entire story and an unflinching declaration that Jesus is Lord. The pressure didn't corrupt him. It revealed him.

This message from Pastor Cory explores what it looks like to be so formed by the Spirit of the risen Jesus that even opposition becomes an opportunity for witness. Stephen didn't perform courage. He had been shaped by something deeper than fear. And when the moment came, that's what showed up.

The question Acts 7 puts to each of us is simple and searching: when life squeezes you, what comes out?

Part of the ongoing series What Now? — walking through the book of Acts together at Summer Street Church.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

So today we're going to continue where we left off in the book of Acts. Over the past few weeks, we've been looking at this new community of Jesus followers, this new community of resurrection people. These people are in this process of trying to live out this new way of living. They're asking, they're learning, how do we live now? How do we function? How do we become the people that God is calling us to be in light of the resurrection? And today we're going to we're going to continue to look at this in the book of Acts, but we're going to highlight another specific moment in this community of believers while specifically focusing on a specific experience of someone by the name of Stephen and his experience in this moment of the early church. And we're going to, as we look at the community of believers and specifically Stephen this morning, we are going to uncover together some valuable life application truths, I believe. Something I believe that will be extremely formative for us all. But before we do that, I want to share a little bit about myself here. Something that I'm curious if you all, or if there's anyone here that would identify with a certain experience that I had. So when I was younger, as a kid, way back in the day, they had this toy. At least it was a toy to me. It looked like a stress ball. You'd hold it in your hand and you can squeeze it, and it had like a jelly or something inside of it. Doesn't that resonate with you? Like it was like a stress ball, you could squeeze the life out of. In fact, I think it's making a little comeback today. Those of you guys that kids, teenagers, it's like making a little comeback today. If you squeeze it, it kind of looks like there's like some kind of liquid, thick, liquid gelatin on it. Right? Am I am I you guys resonate with that? Yeah? Remember that as kids? Okay. So as a kid, I I I love those things. Not because it would help me with managing stress. I don't think I had much stress as a kid. But I love those things because I was fascinated with what was inside of it. Not just actually, you know, let me not just what was inside of it. I was fascinated and motivated by trying to get what was inside of it out of it. Okay. So I would squeeze that thing so hard. You know, when you squeeze it, a little bubble would pop out, right? And you're kind of like showing you that it's forming, that something is about to come out. And so what I realized as a kid, that if you squeezed it hard enough, if you put enough pressure on it, you would see more of what was inside of it. You put a little bit more pressure, you put you see a little bit more, you start to see like it's about to pop. And sure enough, boom. I'm getting yelled at by my mom. Boom, that thing is bursted. And now that you've applied enough pressure onto it, you've squeezed and squeezed, pressure, pressure, pressure, you're able to see what's inside of it. I brought that story up because I think life is a little bit like that. Right? I think life functions like that a lot. If we're honest, we usually find out what's inside of us when the pressure of life squeezes on us. Can I talk about it this morning? Okay? We usually find out what's inside of us when the marital issues start to, we start to feel the pressure of marriage life on us, right? We start to feel the pressure of aging fall on us, right? We start to feel the pressure of prolonged singleness. Somebody say, come on. Ain't somebody praying to get married out here? Okay, we start to feel the pressure of health complications squeezing on us, right? And if we're honest about this reality of the results of this pressure, we start to see what's inside of us. What comes outside of us when we feel the pressure of life? For many of us, the things that we see come out of us is anger, bitterness, resentment, fear, anxiety. Right? We feel the pressure of life squeezing on us, and we we see controllingness come out of us. Or maybe, or maybe for some of us in certain circumstances, what comes out of us is grace or mercy or forgiveness or patience. Today, we're gonna examine Acts chapters six and seven. And we're gonna, and as we focus on this specific passage and the story surrounding Stephen, what we're going to discover is that pressure reveals what we're filled with. I'll say that again. We're gonna look and we're gonna really we're gonna uncover today that pressure in life reveals to us what we're filled with. And we're gonna look at what God's design is for us when we experience pressure. So I'm gonna invite you guys to open up your Bibles to Acts chapter six. If you have a Bible app, you can open that up. If you do not have a Bible, we have Bibles here on the rolls. And feel free to take one and utilize it. If you don't own a Bible, you can take it. Just take it home. We'll buy more. All right. We're gonna look at Acts chapter six. I'm not gonna read the entire two chapters here. What I am gonna do is I'm gonna open us up with Acts six. So I'm gonna read through the first seven verses, and then we're gonna talk it through. We're gonna talk it through. So it reads this way, verse one of chapter six. In those days when the number of disciples was increasing, the Hellenistic Jews among them complained against the Hebraic Jews, because their widows were being overlooked in the day, the daily distribution of food. So the twelve gathered all the disciples together and said, It would not be right for us to neglect the ministry of the word of God in order to wait on tables. Brothers and sisters, choose seven men among you who are known to be full of the spirit and of wisdom. We will turn this responsibility over to them, and we'll give our attention to prayer and the ministry of the word. This proposal pleased the whole group. They chose Stephen, a man full of faith in the Holy Spirit, as well as Philip, Prochorus, Nicomor, Niconor, Timon, Primanius, and Nicholas from Antioch, a convert to Judaism. They presented these men to the apostles who prayed and laid their hands on them. So the word of God spread, the number of disciples in Jerusalem increased rapidly, and a large number of priests became obedient to the faith. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Alright, so here we have the situation. God is moving. It's a good season to be the people of God in the early church. The gospel is spreading. People are sharing with one another, taking care of one another, living as this new community of resurrection people. And the scripture tells us that the number of disciples were increasing. That's how good it was. There was growth within, but there was numerical growth amongst the numbers. But as the community grew, problems also grew with it. Okay? Tension emerges in the church. Okay, we've seen this a few times, but a new tension has emerged within the church. And we find that there are two groups of Jewish Christians or Jewish believers. You have the Hebraic Jews on one side and the Hellenistic Jews on the other. Both groups love Jesus, both are following Jesus, but essentially they come from different cultural backgrounds. Okay. You have the Hebraic Jews who were more closely connected to the traditional Jewish customs and culture, right? So they most likely worshiped in Hebrew or Aramaic. They had stronger attachments to some of the temple customs of the day. So they had a sort of more traditional Jewish culture that they would adhere to while also being followers of Jesus. But then you had the Hellenistic Jews on the other side who were more influenced by non-Jewish culture, uh non-Jewish tradition or Greek traditions. Okay, so they were a little bit more educated in Greek culture and Greek traditions. They would speak, sing, worship, and pray primarily in Greek, not in Hebrew or Aramaic. And they were also more culturally, I'd say, blended with Roman culture. And so you had two specific cultural expressions of people growing together in one body of Christ. Kind of like today how we have Christian Democrats and Republicans. Amen. If you like it, give me okay. One of the things that I love about the Bible, particularly the early church, is that you don't see the Apostle Paul planting Hebraic Christian churches, right? And Hellenistic Christian churches. I just love that. He just says, come on, let's get it, let's get it together. Understanding that there will be tension, there'll be conflict, there'll be some challenges, there'll be some debate, there'll be some social media tweets. But we're together, right? We're united as a community walking with Jesus together. So I just wanted to give that little tip. But that's not even really all the sermon. That was just that's a little gift for all of us there. What I find specific interesting, well, what I should say, what begins to happen in this moment with these two groups is that we have complaints against coming up from the Hellenistic Jews about the Hebraic Jews. They begin to notice that their widows are being overlooked when it comes to the daily food distribution. Okay? They felt that they weren't being cared for in the same way. And specifically in that time, um, widows were incredibly vulnerable people, an incredibly vulnerable community of people. And so the responsibility often fell to the faith community to help care for the vulnerable, specifically the widows, particularly when it comes to supporting them financially, practically, with food, or even uh relationally. And so this tension begins to rise, the conflict begins to emerge in the church of this growing movement. Now I know that I I just want to pause here. I I think it's fascinating and a little bit encouraging to me to know that even though they were a growing church community, that there was still conflict and tension. Because I think sometimes we think that growing things shouldn't have shouldn't be shouldn't be difficult, that it should just work out. And I think particularly with the early church, some of us we tend to romanticize the early church. They had conflict too. And I want to say this for everybody growing churches, growing communities have problems. Healthy churches still have issues. And I'll say this one good church communities still have church drama. I'm just saying, right? The presence of challenges and drama in a church is not a red flag, an indicator that there is a problem with the church community, that there's no growth. And quite the contrary, what we see is that this is just a part of bringing people together, broken people to try to fulfill a perfect plan. So I wanted to add that because though that is the reality, what matters is how we respond to the tension. And so, how does how do the the apostles respond to this conflict? They decide to appoint leaders to step into the mess. They decide to appoint leaders to step into the tension to help care for the situation and bring about unity. They appoint leaders to serve. And one of those people that was selected is Stephen. But what I want to focus on right now is the criteria that they were looking at, which made Stephen a good chur a good person to be chosen. So, Acts 6, verse 3, it says this choose men among you to be who are known to be full of the spirit and wisdom. Oh, yeah, I want to pause here. Full of the spirit. Maybe your translation says, filled with the spirit. Well, this is significant. What does this mean? Because at this point in Acts, the Holy Spirit had already descended, right? The Spirit was already dwelling among the believers. But there seems to be something unique about people who are filled with the Spirit. Something unique about Stephen, that he's one of these people that are chosen for the position. Something observable in him, something visible in him. And so the question that I think naturally should arise is what is this distinction? What is the difference between just the spirit dwelling with you and being filled with the spirit? And so the scripture seems to make the distinction. Meaning, every believer does have the Holy Spirit. The Spirit dwells in each and every one of us, but there is something different going on when it when we hear this idea of someone being filled with the Spirit. So you don't have to turn there, but if you would like to, it's Romans chapter 8, verse 9. I'm going to read this to you. Paul says this, just I want to give some context. Paul says, if anyone does not have the spirit of Christ, they do not belong to Christ. In other words, if you belong to Jesus, the Holy Spirit lives within you. I just want to pause there because I don't want there to be any doubt. I don't want anybody to walk around here questioning whether or not the spirit lives in you. The spirit lives within you. That's free. You ain't got to do anything for that. The spirit is living in you, helping you, forming you, guiding you. That's yours. But then the scripture gives us other language for this other scenario. Not just the spirit dwelling within us, but being filled with the spirit. And so let me unpack that a little bit for us. In Ephesians chapter 5, verse 18, the apostle Paul says this. He says, Do not get drunk on wine. Instead, be filled with the Spirit. Come on now. There's something here. See, what Paul's doing here is very intentional. It's smart. He says, When so because you we know when someone is drunk, they are under the influence, right? They almost lose their control, right? They're under the influence and their behavior changes. The way they think changes when they're under the influence. Their desires change, right? The way they respond to life changes. What Paul is saying is let the Holy Spirit be the thing inside of you that causes you to change. So much so that your behavior changes. So much so that the way you think changes. The way you desire things in life changes, and the way you respond to life changes. Come on. See, this matters a lot because the criteria for a person needed to step up and serve in this conflict, the quality that we see within Stephen and the quality that God is trying to develop in all of us, it isn't marked by skills, it isn't marked by talent, it isn't marked by what's in your bank account, nor is it marked by your knowledge. It's marked by how you are filled with the spirit, what's inside of you. That when conflict, when pressure is present, we see more of Jesus in them. We see more of Jesus in them. Well, the pressure was definitely present in this conflict of this community of believers here in this situation involving the widows. But notice how Stephen is introduced into this story. He doesn't first show up preaching. I love that. He doesn't show up doing miracles, he doesn't show up on a platform, he first shows up in a moment where care was needed. Period. That's it. Where support was needed. That's it. He shows up where leadership was needed, where people were needed to be seen. Where widows were being overlooked. He shows up into the story as the apostles are looking for someone to choose to help meet a need. He's just available. I don't know how many of you guys are sports fans here. I am. I was debating whether or not I was gonna share this, but I'm going to do it. I'm from New York. I'm on New York Knicks. Any Knicks fan here? Oh man. Rough crowd. Okay, I'm gonna get emails now. Okay. I love sports. There's a saying in sports culture. It says the greatest ability is availability. Right? Sometimes the greatest ability is just being available. And this is what spirit fe spirit-filled people do. They make themselves available to serve, to support, to care. That's what a spirit-filled person looks like. They make themselves available to meet needs. These people ask, how can I help? Who can I support? How can I care for people? Where can I serve? Come on. Stephen was available. And the question that should be stirring up is, am I available? Am I available to serve people in my job? Am I available to serve people at my school? Am I available to serve here in the church? There's so many areas and needs here in the church. I think about my seven-year-old son. He's in our kids' ministry. I say, yeah, man, we need people available to serve in the kids' ministry, to help raise up my son, to partner with me as I disciple my son. We need that here in Summer Street Church. We need people to help greet at the door and set up the coffee. Why? Because we want to make sure that as people walk into here, they can let their guard down a little bit. They can feel at home. We need people to come over here and jump on the tech team. I know that's a hard one, but we'll train you. We will train you. Come on. Okay, we need that. We do. But God needs you too. He needs you in a lot of areas. And spirit-filled people, they come and they say, I'm available. God, where do you need me? Show me. Show me where you need me today. Give me a desire for what you care about. Help me to become more available. I love this about Stephen. Because this is how he shows up. Before preaching, before performing miracles, before the spotlight, he was just a person available to serve. And that's all the apostles saw. He was available. Now, here's the thing about Stephen, and we're nearing the end here. As Stephen begins serving faithfully, the scripture tells us something about Stephen. Acts says that Stephen was full of grace and power, and that God was doing some incredible things to him. Come on. Stephen said yes to the call. He steps up, he's chosen, and the Lord is using him. He's full of grace and full of power. But instead of everybody celebrating, opposition begins to rise. People begin hating. False accusations begin to arise against Stephen. This man that only did was say yes. He was misunderstood, misrepresented, dragged before religious leaders to defend himself against these accusations being made at him. This is the same Stephen that we were praising a moment ago. He's now needing to defend himself. The man who simply stepped up to serve finds himself under intense pressure for doing nothing but saying yes to God. What we see here is that just because Stephen stepped up to serve didn't mean life was suddenly going to get easier. Actually, the the pressure of life kind of increased as Stephen faithfully stepped up. Did it not? I know sometimes we think, man, if I just obey the Lord, life will get easier. Sometimes we say, we think if we say yes to God, then life will get easier. But deep down inside, I Some of us are already saying, deep down inside, we know life doesn't really work like that. In fact, uh, what we see, especially looking at the life of Steven, is that spirit-filled people are not exempt from pressure. Sometimes they experience more of it. We're about to see an example of that in just a moment. In fact, I'm gonna ask the worship team. You guys could come up. I'm getting ready to close. You guys come up. In response to the opposition, we're not gonna read, I'm not gonna break it down. We're not gonna go through it because it's long, it's like 60 verses, but I will definitely, it's like 50 verses, encourage you to read it. But in response to the opposition, Stephen speaks up. And in Acts chapter 7, Stephen gives this long speech walking through Israel's history, right? So I'm gonna give you the scenario here. Stephen he steps up, he says yes, God's using him, miracles are happening, signs, these incredible things, and then in the midst of that, people see what he's doing and they grow against him, opposing him.

unknown 23:22

Right?

SPEAKER_00 23:22

And they get upset at him. Not only that, they start to, they conspire to come up with false accusations about him. He then is brought before religious leaders to defend himself against these accusations, but can't do it. Because he knows the truth, but these false accusations have been made against him. And so he is standing up there hearing this, and what he does is he responds back by this long, this long walkthrough of Israel's history. It's not a speech that's simply about history, though. He's pointing out a pattern in these church leaders. And he essentially is telling him generation after generation, God moves, and generation after generation, people resist what God is doing. He's pointing this out to them. He's setting the stage. He tells them Joseph, he was rejected by his own brothers. He's going through the story. He says, Moses, he uh he was resisted by the very people that he came to deliver. Right? He goes through prophet after prophet after prophet and talks about prophet after prophet after prophet, they were ignored, rejected, and persecuted. And eventually, Stephen turns the mirror towards them, and essentially he's saying, You guys are doing the exact same thing. And in chapter 7, verse 51. Listen to what he says, You always resist the Holy Spirit. This is the man that was full of the spirit. Okay, this guy knows a thing or two about being under the influence of the spirit. And in this circumstance, he's like, I'm poor, I see you guys doing the same thing that's been done generation after generation after generation. God moves and you resist. God moves, you ignore, God moves and you reject. God moves and you question. He says, What you're actually doing is you're resisting the Holy Spirit. Now, maybe you would have thought at this point they would have been like, Man, I'm convicted. All right, you know what, Stephen? Take the chains off, man. Welcome back, brother. But that's not what happens. That's not what happens. They get furious. The room explodes, erupts, they're enraged. What? How dare you call us out like this? Absolutely not. What happens next becomes one of the most powerful moments, I believe, in the book of Acts. I think it totally uh dictates the trajectory of the church. I'll read this for you. Chapter 7, verse 55 through 60. We're gonna read it through it. But Stephen, full of the Spirit, looked up to heaven. This is after they erupt, looked up to heaven and saw the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. He said, Look, he said, I see heaven open, and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God. He's pleading with them. God, guys, I see God. I know this is hard to hear, but I see God. I hear him. He's peace he's a part of this. And they respond, at this, they covered their ears, yelling at the top of their voices, and they rushed at him, dragged him out of the city, and began to stone him. Meanwhile, the witnesses they laid their coats at the feet of the young man named Saul. While they were stoning him, Stephen prayed, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit. Okay, and then he fell down and cried out, Lord, do not hold this sin against him. And when he said this, he fell. I got something I want to show you guys. I found this in my driveway this week. Didn't plan it. So right in the middle of my driveway. I was like, wow. I gotta move this. I pick it up and I was like, this is heavy. I said, this is what they threw at Steven. I want you to I want you to take a moment and and understand what happened here. This is a man of God that said yes, and he's feeling this over and over. He's dying. Okay, he's dying. Picture that. He's dying because this is hitting him over and over and over and over and over and over. Talk about pressure. It's killing him. And his response. Lord, do not hold this sin against him. His response is forgiveness. His response under pressure is literally the words of Jesus. That's what's coming out of Stephen under pressure. That's what's coming out of him filled with the spirit. I read this and I broke down because I had a really, really honest situation with myself. I was being real honest and said, Man, when I'm under pressure, what comes out is bitterness, anger. I'm asking God to hurt my enemies, to show them. God, you're a God of vengeance. That's what comes out of me. And maybe there's some here today. Just like that. Like, that's really what comes out of me. That's what's been coming out of me in my marriage. Yep. That's what's been coming out of me as I've been dealing with this cancer situation. That's what's been coming out of side of me. I've been angry, I've been frustrated, I've been bitter, I got resentment. And maybe you're a little like me. You say, man, that's real. And there's no condemnation for that. But I'm tired of being like that. I'm tired of that version of me coming out. I'm tired of that version of me showing up when I'm under pressure. I'm tired of that version of me showing up when the financial stuff gets hard. I'm tired of that version of me showing up every time I make a mistake. I'm tired of that. I want more from me because I know God, you want more from me. If there's anyone here like that, I'm wondering. Because today, the invitation is for you and me. You say, Well, Corey, how do I how? How do I get like that? How do I get to a Stephen version of myself? How do I get like that so that every time difficulty and pressure comes, I don't respond that way. How? Listen, I'm gonna I'm gonna set you free with this right now. There's nothing you have to do. Don't go out here thinking how many Bible verses you gotta memorize, how many songs you gotta start singing. No, no, no. It's simple. Holy Spirit, fill me. Holy Spirit, fill me. You see, because God already wants to do this thing inside of you. This is his design. You were never meant for you to sort of come out that way. God died on the cross so that there could be something new inside of you. And guess what? That's his gift for you this morning. Holy Spirit, come. It's probably the easiest prayer. Pastor Derek says this all the time. It's probably the easiest prayer you can make. Holy Spirit, come. Fill me with your presence and be surprised and watch what the Holy Spirit can do.