Acts 7:55–56
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In the famous World War II film, Hacksaw Ridge, Desmond Doss is headed off to boot camp when Dorothy, who is Desmond's hope-to-be wife, hands him a Bible with a picture of her through the bus window. As he's riding away, he opens the Bible. He looks at the picture of her and then flips it over. And what it says on the back, Come home to me, Desmond Doss.
I love you. Before Desmond left for Okinawa, Japan, he married Dorothy. And I can assure you that even though Desmond was focused on saving lives as a medic, he was also focused on getting home to be with Dorothy once again, growing old together, living in peace. In a real sense, Desmond was fighting to save lives.
And in another sense, he was fighting just to go home to be with his wife. Isn't this how it is for us as Christians? Through difficulty in this world, we keep pressing on in the faith with the hopeful expectation that one day we will be with Jesus. For Stephen, in Acts, he pressed on in hopeful expectation that he would see Jesus one day.
And right before he got that opportunity, he had a vision in Acts 7. He got to see Christ. We are going to be in Acts 7, 55 through 56, this evening. You can find the two verses in your bulletin, or you can open to page 916 in your pew Bible. Acts 7, 55 through 56. Word says, But he, Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit, gave in the heaven, and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. And he said, behold, I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God. The main idea for these two verses this evening, set your eyes on Jesus as you boldly
share the gospel by grace and truth. Set your eyes on Jesus as you boldly share the gospel in grace and truth. Point one, set your eyes on Jesus. And point two, share the gospel in grace and truth. So let's look at point one, set your eyes on Jesus. We get to this scene in Acts 6 with this guy named Stephen who was one of the first deacons of the early church. It says he's a man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit. And there were people who belonged to the synagogue that were persecuting Stephen simply because he was a man who was believed in Christ and he was living his life like a Christian. He was speaking the word. They called him a liar for it. Stephen testifies of God's redemptive plan and the coming of Christ before the high priest
and these religious elites. And he proclaims to them in verse 51, You stiff-necked people, uncircumcised in heart and ears, you always resist the Holy Spirit. Quite an indictment, isn't it? I mean, as far as we know from the text, Stephen doesn't even have the opportunity to call these religious elites to repentance because they got so angry at him that they threw him out of the city and then they stoned him to death.
We look at Stephen and we can't help but ask, where does this kind of boldness come from? I think if we were all honest with ourselves and with God that we would hope to be more bold in our evangelism. Less timid, less focused on man's approval of us, More concerned with pleasing God? Less afraid to suffer loss in this life for being a witness for Jesus?
More trusting in God's care for us as we witness about Jesus? I'm sure we can all think of someone in our life. A family member, a friend, maybe a co-worker, maybe a neighbor. Maybe a stranger that God put in your path that day. That we would have hoped to share the gospel with, but we became timid. We started thinking about something else that we had to do, so we just moved along.
I'm thankful personally that God is gracious with us as he uses us as his ambassadors for the gospel. Aren't you? But we want to grow in this, don't we, church? We want to grow in boldness. Where does this kind of boldness come from, though? For Stephen, it came from a deep assurance that Christ loved him and stood with him in the midst of him witnessing the gospel. It surely didn't come from him mustering up the faith or the ability or the strength to preach the gospel.
It only came from God. It only came from the work of the Spirit in him. And it's the same way for us. This only comes by the work of the Spirit in us as we step out in faith, believing that God will be faithful in the midst of what he has called us to do. So church, how do we grow in boldness? Well, we grow in boldness by looking to Jesus and remembering what Christ has done for us and where he's bringing us to, which is eternal life with him.
The reason we gather as the local church is to remember Christ through song and the preaching of the word and the encouragement of the saints through fellowship. So in a real sense, when we gather as the local church, we grow in boldness, looking to Jesus, This looking to Jesus, Alex talked about it this morning. See Jesus, look to Jesus. This looking to Jesus is also recognizing that God really is with us by his Holy Spirit, giving us peace and guidance as we communicate the gospel.
A boldness that is accompanied by peace and joy doesn't come from us. It can only come from God, and it only comes by prayer. Asking God to well up in us this reality that after this life, we really do have eternal life. So we pray and we ask for boldness and courage and peace. We need peace when we share the gospel. And when God answers, we share about Jesus in grace and truth.
And that is our second point this evening. Share the gospel in grace and truth. This goes for me. All of us in this room struggle at times to speak both gracefully and truthfully in our speech. Some of us have a tendency to speak truth, but not gracefully. If this is you, you might have strong convictions, a firm confidence of knowledge. but what can tend to come out of your mouth ends up being rigid and not compassionate.
For others, there might be a tendency to be very graceful in how you go about speaking the gospel while shying away from speaking what is sometimes difficult to hear. You might have a tendency to tolerate more than what should be tolerated, or you nuance things that are really just black and white. If we only look at Acts 7, verse 51, we might conclude that Stephen was haphazard, quick to speak, even harsh in what he said to these religious people. But when we look at how Stephen demonstrated the gospel through his life, and then we look at how he contextualized the gospel to the very people that he was speaking to, we see that this rebuke to them was actually appropriate.
Stephen spoke the truth, caring for the salvation of these religious people. Look at verse 60 with me. How grace-filled Stephen was at the end of his life. He asked God to forgive them, to forgive his enemies, to forgive the people who were literally in real time stoning him to death. He says, Lord, do you not hold this sin against them?
It reminds me of Jesus when he's being crucified before the Father. He asked that the Father would forgive the people that were in real time crucifying him. And then we are reminded that we are no better off than these religious people. We were all hard-hearted, stubborn, but God saved us by his grace. Maybe you are sitting here this evening and you are coming to the realization that you are this religious person, that you are a sinner in need of forgiveness. And the good news, the good news this evening is that Jesus offers it to you. And what Jesus wants to do with your life, He wants to walk with you in your life, but he also wants to use you as his ambassador to proclaim the gospel to sinners.
Desmond Doss left Okinawa in May of 1945. He was injured multiple times and beat up. He saved some 75 men from the hilltops of that island. He was the first conscientious objector who was awarded the Medal of Honor, which is the highest military award in the United States. But that wasn't even the best part. He got to go home to be with his wife. He raised a family on a small farm in Georgia.
What Desmond hoped to see motivated him to do his job well so that he could go home to be with the one he loved. Stephen lived his last minutes of his life being stoned by his enemies. But right before he got to see his Savior's face face to face, he asked God to forgive them. To some, Stephen was a sweet-smelling aroma that led to eternal life.
For others, for those religious people, he smelled like death. He died for it. As Alex talked about this morning, in the world standards, Stephen failed at his task. But to God, he didn't. Because Stephen had his eyes on Jesus up to the very moments that he died. Brothers and sisters, if your eyes are set on Jesus, you will speak the truth with grace.
So let us pray that we would first see and look to Jesus. And then let us pray that we would see those who need Jesus. And then finally, when we see them, that we would have the boldness by the Spirit to speak the truth to them. In all our circumstances. Let's pray. Lord Jesus, would you make us bold like Stephen?
Would you help us to speak the truth through grace? Would you allow us to be a sweet-smelling aroma to a washing world? And we pray this in your name. Amen.