for the rest of us. Verse 54. If you've never
read Acts chapter 7, that's good homework for
you today. I say we don't have time. I got time.
I would be glad to go through the whole chapter
and we could just sit up camp and stay till tonight.
But I suspect y 'all probably don't want to do
that. And so we won't. We'll just cover the end
of it. But if you want a good summation, a real
brief summation of the Old Testament, From Abraham,
kind of up until the time of Jesus and things
that transpired and the importance of them. There's
a guy by the name of Stephen that's preaching
here in Acts chapter 7. And he preaches a beautiful,
beautiful sermon, kind of really getting on to
some of these Jewish people. They should have
been looking for the Messiah. They should have
understood the Old Testament prophecies. They
should have known that Jesus had fulfilled those
things that the Old Testament said. But they
had missed it. And they were really focused on
the ways of the Old Testament and in particularly
the ways of Moses and the law. And Stephen, he
just kind of cuts to it. And he starts from the
very beginning. He says, hey, here's where it
started. And here's how God worked through these
people. And here's how things happened. And he
preached this great sermon. We saw earlier in
the text that it had said he was a man who was
full of grace and he was preaching, but the people
did not want to hear what he was preaching. He
was preaching the truth. He was preaching the
gospel of Jesus Christ. And it says in the scriptures
that they really couldn't debate with him. They
couldn't make an argument against what he was
saying. There was no argument against it. He
was speaking the truth of the gospel. There was
no good response. There was no good rebuttal
to the truth that he was speaking. And he spoke
that truth and he preached that truth in all
boldness. And what we're going to look at today
is the response of the people that he preached
to. So in Acts chapter 7, verse 54, Acts chapter
7, verse 54, we'll read through the end of the
chapter. And then we'll pray and we'll talk for
a minute. Acts chapter 7, verse 54. This is after
Stephen finishes up his sermon. When they heard
these things, they were enraged in their hearts
and gnashed their teeth at him. But Stephen,
filled by the Holy Spirit, gazed into heaven.
He saw God's glory with Jesus standing at the
right hand of God and he said, Look, I see the
heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at
the right hand of God. Then they screamed at
the top of their voices, covered their ears,
and together rushed him. They threw him out of
the city and began to stone him. And the witnesses
laid their robes at the feet of a young man named
Saul. They were stoning Stephen as he called
out, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit. Then he knelt
down and cried out with a loud voice, Lord, do
not charge them with this sin. And saying this,
he fell asleep. Let's pray. God, we come to you
today. We thank you for these good words. And
I pray that your Holy Spirit would help us to
be focused today, that you'd free us of the worries
and distractions and the thoughts of this world.
I pray, God, that you would reveal to us in your
word, through your word, the things that you
want us to hear today. That as we look at the
life that Stephen lived and the opposition that
he faced, dear Lord, that there may be something
in this word, God, that would be what we need
to hear. God, maybe there are some here today
or some online, God, and they're the crowd that's
not wanting to hear the truth. I pray, God, that
you would open their ears, that perhaps they
have closed, that they would... Hear the truth
of the gospel of Jesus Christ today. God, maybe
there are some of us here that are like Stephen,
trying to do the work and face opposition. God,
whatever it may be that's in your word, I pray
that your Holy Spirit would speak to us this
morning. I pray that you'd hide me behind the
cross, that I'd be able to preach and teach in
a way that brings glory and honor to you. Take
away any fear or any pride that's in me, dear
Lord, and recall to my mind the words that you
would desire for me to say today. Now, we're
going to get into this text in a little more
detail here in just a second, but I wanted to
talk about something else for a second, and that
is when we go out into a crowd, when we go to
a hospital, when we go just about anywhere these
days, we wash our hands pretty frequently. Everybody
does that, especially after COVID. Man, we got
all kind of disinfectant and antibacterial and
stuff all over the place these days. And we're
always washing our hands and scrubbing our hands
and cleaning our hands. It only takes about 20
seconds to wash your hands. That's what the CDC
recommends, at least. The Center for Disease
Control says, hey, take about 20 seconds, scrub
your hands real good, work up a good lather,
rub them off real good, wash them off, and that's
enough to kill the germs. But it wasn't always
that way. Now, you may have heard of people like...
Florence Nightingale, perhaps you've heard of
her, have some knowledge of history. She was
a nurse that became quite famous during the Crimea
War. Perhaps you've heard the name Louis Pasteur,
or maybe you've heard the name Joseph Lister.
Maybe you don't know those people, but I suspect
you know of the things that they did, whether
you know their names or not. Perhaps you've heard
of the process of pasteurization. That was invented
by Louis Pasteur. He discovered that if you warm
up certain things to a certain temperature, it'll
kill the germs and make it last longer. You see
that a lot with milk, pasteurized milk. Almost
all the milk that you're going to get these days
is going to be pasteurized. Perhaps you've never
heard of Joseph Lister, but maybe you've heard
of Listerine before. an antiseptic. And while
Joseph Lister didn't invent the product that
we call Listerine, he did a lot of work and he
did make an antiseptic because he realized the
importance of killing germs along with Louis
Pasteur, along with Florence Nightingale. These
were all people that were crucial in the process
of killing germs and protecting people and saving
lives. But there was one man to really think
for the whole process of washing hands. Now,
you would think that humanity for many years
would have realized the importance of washing
hands, but that simply was not the case. There
was a man by the name of Ignaz Semmelweis. He
was a foreigner, and he was a doctor, and he
discovered something that was quite interesting
one day when he was in his hospital. He realized
that the mortality rate of mothers who were giving
birth was really outrageous. Over 18 % of the
mothers who were giving birth would die after
their childbirth from some sort of infection.
Now, this was all taking place in the 1800s.
Around 1847 is when all this took place. But
Dr. Samuel Wise began to investigate, and he
discovered something interesting. In the hospital
in which he worked, there was a couple of different
groups of people. There was one group of people
that delivered babies, and that group was doctors.
And there was another group that delivered babies,
and that group were midwives in different parts
of the hospital. And what he realized was is
that the women who were giving birth by the midwives
didn't have this death rate. Less than 2 % of
them were dying. There are very few of these
mothers who would die as a result of their childbirth.
And so he decided to investigate and figure out
what is the difference between the doctors who
were delivering these babies and the midwives.
What's going on here? And so he quickly discovered
the problem. He realized that the doctors who
were so often delivering these children were
coming from the morgue. They were doing work
on dead bodies and they were doing all these
different things and they would leave straight
from working on these corpses and go straight
in and deliver a baby with no steps in between.
And he began to ponder and he began to think
if there was something that was being spread,
germs, from the corpses of these dead bodies
that was being spread to these women who were
getting pregnant. Now this was a remarkable discovery.
Because up until this point, everybody just thought
that germs were spread through the air, which
they certainly are sometimes. But generally speaking,
the medical field believed that bad air was the
result of sickness and germs that were being
spread. And Dr. Semmelweis realized that there
were germs that could be spread from one person
to another by touch. And so he began to institute
a new policy in the hospital. that everyone in
the hospital, before delivering a child, washed
their hands. And guess what happened? The death
rate among mothers giving birth dropped drastically.
In the whole hospital, less than 2 % of mothers
that gave birth died. This was a remarkable discovery.
It took until 1847 to discover this. And so Dr.
Semmelweis excited... about what he had discovered,
he began to tell all the other doctors around,
all the other doctors in the area, he began to
tell them that he had come up with this great
discovery that, hey, we can spread germs from
one person to another. So before we go from one
patient to the next, we need to wash our hands.
And I have proof. I have the evidence that this
is true. This is a life -saving thing right here.
We can save lives. And do you know what the other
doctors that he told this to did? They all laughed
at him. They said that he was crazy. They wrote
him off. They didn't pay any attention to what
he said. They continued to practice medicine
without washing their hands. And guess what happened?
Germs continued to be spread. People began to
die needlessly from simple things that they didn't
have to die from. And so he began to write papers,
and he began to try to get the word out everywhere
we could. Look, this is true. I'm not crazy.
I'm telling you the truth here. Look at what
I have discovered. This is life -changing. This
will save your life if you'll just do this thing.
And for years and years and years, Dr. Semmelweis
tried to convince people of that simple truth.
That if they would just be washed, if their hands
would just be washed, it would save their lives.
It would save the lives of others. And by the
mid -1860s, very few people had listened to him.
He was so aggravated. He was so passionate about
it. He was so angry that people wouldn't do this
simple thing. And he tried and he tried and he
just, oh, it just got off with him so bad that
by the 1860s, he had literally gone insane because
nobody would listen to what he had to say. His
doctor friends made fun of him, they wrote him
off, they said he was a lunatic, and eventually
he was tricked into going to an insane asylum
to visit someone else. Little did he know that
he himself would be locked up there. And ironically,
only a couple of weeks after being placed in
the insane asylum, he died due to an infection
that probably would have been avoided if those
treating him... would have washed their hands.
Now you would think that at the end of that part
of the story, that within the next few years,
that it would have been mandatory and it would
have been a standard that everyone in the medical
field would wash their hands. But do you know
when it became a medical standard from the CDC
that you wash your hands in a medical facility?
Anybody want to take a guess? 1985. 1985. Before
the CDC published a standard that required people
in the medical field to wash their hands. And
here this man knew the truth all along. And he
was ridiculed and he died trying to get the truth
across to people. Well, now it's second nature.
We all know that we should wash our hands. Hopefully
we all do wash our hands. But I share that story
because I think that maybe in some way that's
not so unlike what it is for us to be a Christian.
Stephen knew a wonderful truth. He had discovered
the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ. It changed
his life and he realized the importance of that
truth. He said, Jesus Christ can save lives.
Jesus Christ can save your soul. And so he discovered
this great truth. He had experienced this great
truth. He had the evidence for it. And so he
goes out into the world and he begins to preach
and to teach and to show people, look at what
I've discovered. It's Jesus. He is the Messiah.
He can save your soul. He can save your life.
You're doomed without him, but he can cleanse
you and make you as white as snow. And he went
and he preached that gospel, and his result was
not so unlike that of Dr. Semmelweis. Because
as we see from this scripture, the crowd that
heard the truth of the word that he spoke told
him he was crazy, essentially. They wrote him
off. They said, we don't want to hear what you
got to say. And he preached all the more with
all the boldness. And when he had finished preaching
and presenting the word of God to them in the
most beautiful and precise way, and he says,
look, y 'all need to pay attention. You're still
missing it. You're still hard -hearted. You're
still stiff -necked. And after presenting to
them the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ,
what did it say they did? It's said that they
begin to holler at the top of their lungs and
they close their ears. The more he began to speak
the truth, I don't want to hear it. I don't want
to hear it. And as a result of him speaking the
truth, they killed him. They took his life. Maybe
our experiences are similar in some way. Because
I want to tell you something, the world has not
changed. The people of Stephen's day are not
so unlike the people of our day. There are a
lot of people that don't want to hear the truth
of the gospel of Jesus Christ. There are a lot
of people that if you try to share with them
scripture, if you try to share with them the
love of Jesus, they will tell you that you are
insane. They'll tell you that... They don't want
to hear any of that. But when you've lived the
truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ and experienced
the grace of Jesus Christ and know that your
sins have been forgiven, when you've discovered
such a truth, you have to speak it. You have
to share it. There are many Christians in this
world. They do that regularly. Hopefully we are
some of them. And there are still some Christians
in this world that are no different than Stephen.
That they discovered the truth and no matter
where they are and who they encounter, no matter
how crazy they may tell them they may be, they
say, but this is the truth. This is the life
changing truth. Would you just listen to what
I have to say? And they continue to promote the
truth even though it costs them their lives.
What about you and I? Are we ready to promote
the truth in that way? Yeah, we may face opposition
sometimes. Maybe we're quick to turn when opposition
comes. Maybe we speak the truth to someone and
they come back at us a little bit or they attack
us in some way and maybe we back off and go on
our way. Maybe we need boldness to be more like
Stephen, to say, I've discovered the truth in
Jesus Christ, and I want to make sure that you
know that truth. And even when we speak the truth
to those who don't want to hear it, you never
know. You never know how it may change their
life. Isn't it interesting that in this story,
That in the middle of the crowd of those who
were stoning Stephen were introduced to a character
just in one brief little line here. That there
was a man there before them who held their coats
as they stoned Stephen and his name was Saul.
Later to be called on by God who would be at
the forefront of the church and spreading this
same news. God would rename him Paul and he would
use him in a mighty way. So sometimes the very
people that we're ministering to, sometimes the
very people that don't want to hear the message
are the very people that God is going to let
that message begin to eat away at them, let that
message begin to speak to them. And sometimes
it may be the very ones who attack us, the very
ones who kill us, that God uses in a mighty way.
We wash our hands today all the time. We don't
think anything of it. It seems like common sense.
But sometimes common sense isn't so common. Sometimes
the things that are obvious to us as true and
good may not be as obvious to others as being
as true and as good. But as Christians, God calls
us, those who have trusted in Jesus Christ, to
take the good news. To take what we know is true
and to share it with a lost and dying world.
We understand the importance of washing our hands
and killing those germs. But how much more so
do we need to have our souls cleansed? How much
more so do we need to get all the gook and the
gunk and the nastiness that the Bible would call
sin? All that sinfulness that was in our heart.
Boy, that anger we have, that bitterness we have,
that lust that we have, that greed that we have,
the things that we say that we shouldn't say
and the things that we do that we shouldn't do,
the way that we open our mouth that we should
shut our mouth, all of these things that lead
to sin in our life, the list goes on and on and
on. These things make us as dirty as can be.
Even our righteous acts are like, Filthy rags
before the Lord, the scripture says. Nastiness.
Nastiness. Praise the Lord, the scripture says
that if Jesus washes us, we are as white as snow.
Jesus tells his disciples as he washes their
feet, soon afterwards he says, once I have washed
you, you are clean. Have you been made clean
today? Maybe you've heard the truth of the gospel
and you've been covering your ears and resisting
it for many years. Maybe today the Lord wants
to speak to you. Maybe today the Lord's already
convicting you. Maybe today the Lord wants you
to take your fingers out of your ears and listen
to his word and seek his son, Jesus Christ. It
doesn't take long. The truth of the gospel is
this, is that we are sinners in need of a Savior.
Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is that Savior.
That He was crucified, that He was buried, that
He was resurrected. That He gave His life, that
He shed His blood to cover our sins so that we
could be forgiven. Have you put your trust in
Jesus today? Do you have faith in Jesus Christ
today? Have you repented of your sins today?
Does it take long? Maybe about 20 seconds. Maybe
it'll only take you about 20 seconds today to
say, Lord Jesus, I know I need you. Lord Jesus,
I know I'm a sinner in need of a Savior. I have
sinned in so many ways. And God, I know I can't
earn your favor, but I know you died on the cross
for me so that I could be forgiven. Jesus, would
you forgive my sins today and be my Savior? It
only takes about 20 seconds to seek God, to call
out to him, to know the truth, to live in the
truth, and to be washed as white as snow. Let's
pray. God, we come to you today. We thank you
for these good words, and I pray, dear Lord,
that you would help us to have a boldness like
Stephen. God, I pray that you would help any
that are here today and any that are online that
are not. followers of Jesus Christ, that today
that they would be followers of Jesus Christ,
that they would put their faith and their trust
in Jesus Christ and that they would follow him.
God, maybe there are some here today and they
are already yours. They are already your followers,
dear Lord. Pray that you'd give us all the boldness
to share the truth of the gospel. Pray that we
all have experienced the truth of Jesus Christ.
And I pray, God, That we would be at the forefront
of sharing this truth with others. But God we
have to know. We have to be ready through your
strength. To know that. God when we share the
truth. It's not always celebrated. It's not always
accepted. And so God even in our lives. As we
share the truth of the gospel. We may be ridiculed.
We may be mocked. And God. As is the case. Still
in our world today. There are Christians. Whose
lives are taken for sharing the truth. But God
let us never give up. Give us the strength and
the ability to stand strong. And to be able to
speak truth. Give us wisdom dear Lord. To share
your word and to not back down. God I pray that
there are any today that do not know the truth
of Jesus Christ. Have not accepted that truth
that they would do so this morning. God it only
takes a few seconds. To come before you. To repent
of our sins. To ask you to forgive us dear Lord.
And we will be clean. But that only comes through
Jesus Christ. So I pray God that if there are
any that do not know him. That they would know
him today. God whatever uncleanliness is in our
heart. Even those who are yours. I pray God that.
Maybe we would just take a few moments dear Lord.
To have a spiritual cleansing this morning. That
we wouldn't allow these sinful things. that wear
us down to continue to spread in our body, but
God, that we just would seek you today to kill
those spiritual germs. And I ask these things
in Jesus' name. Amen.