Sunday Sermon Manuscript for May 3

Another Stephen

Acts 7:55–60  |  Sunday Worship, May 3, 2025

▸ Introduction — Does What I Do Even Matter?

1.   Have you ever found yourself thinking this — maybe in the middle of serving at church:

"Does what I do here even matter?"

Practicing an instrument week after week with the worship team, ladling rice in the kitchen, scrubbing the church bathroom...

What does any of that have to do with the Kingdom of God?

2.   I think Stephen's story today has an answer to that question.

3.   Stephen. It's a familiar name to us. One of the seven deacons of the early church. The man assigned to distribute food. The man who was martyred.

4.   That's what we know about Stephen. But today, I want to suggest that inside what we think we know, there is something we've been missing.

▸ Part 1 — Why Did the Man Who Served Food Die by Stoning?

5.   In Acts 6, as the early church grew, a problem arose. Tension broke out between the Hebrew-speaking Jews and the Greek-speaking Jews — specifically, the Greek-speaking widows were being overlooked in the daily distribution of food.

6.   The apostles responded by appointing seven men: the apostles would focus on the ministry of the Word and prayer, while the seven would handle the serving of tables. A division of roles. An efficient ministry structure.

7.   But then something strange happens. The man appointed just to serve food left behind the longest sermon in the entire book of Acts. The man appointed just to serve food stood before the Sanhedrin in Jerusalem. The man appointed just to serve food became the first martyr in Christian history.

8.   How did this happen? Acts 6:8 tells us: Stephen, full of grace and power, did great wonders and signs among the people.

9.   This is just two verses after his appointment as deacon. Stephen is already performing signs and wonders.

10. God does not leave us forever in the place where we first began. Stephen faithfully carried out the task he was given. But God used him in ways far beyond what anyone expected — with a weight and a responsibility no one could have foreseen.

That weight, in the end, was his life.

▸ Part 2 — What Stephen Left Behind in History

11. If we remember Stephen's martyrdom only as "a man of great faith who died," we lose the most important things he left behind.

First, Stephen reshaped the theological landscape.

12. The heart of that long sermon in Acts 7 — the longest in the entire book — is this: God is not confined to the Temple.

13. Standing before those who saw the Jerusalem Temple as the very center of Jewish faith, Stephen declared: "God does not dwell in houses made by human hands. He is everywhere." We can barely imagine how dangerous those words were in that moment.

14. That confession opened the door to the universal reach of the Christian faith. Stephen's sermon laid the theological foundation for the gospel to move beyond Jerusalem into all the world.

Second, Stephen's death left an indelible mark on the young man Saul.

15. Look at our text. When the crowd took off their cloaks to throw stones, there was a young man standing there holding them. His name was Saul.

16. He watched Stephen die from beginning to end. And he heard Stephen's final prayer:

Lord, do not hold this sin against them.

17. After Saul became Paul, the themes of grace and forgiveness run through his letters like a thread that never breaks. Perhaps that prayer — breathed out by a dying man — was planted like a seed deep inside Paul's chest.

One person's death changed another person's entire life.

Third, the persecution that began with Stephen's martyrdom actually pushed the gospel out into the world.

18. After Stephen died, a great persecution broke out against the Jerusalem church. Believers scattered in every direction. But Acts records this: wherever they went, they proclaimed the gospel.

19. The gospel that had been pooled in Jerusalem was carried on the wind of persecution to Samaria, to Asia Minor, to the ends of the earth.

Stephen's death was not the end. It was the beginning.

▸ Part 3 — The Weight of That Place

20. This is where I want to get to the heart of today's sermon.

21. Stephen was one of seven deacons. Not an apostle. Not one of the Twelve. He was the man in what might look like an administrative role — distributing food, managing relief.

22. And yet that man became the first martyr in Christian history.

Martyrdom was not for the exceptional. It was for the faithful.

23. Persecution and martyrdom may feel like distant concepts to us today. But think about it. Stephen simply did what he was given to do. He served food. And that became his martyrdom. What we are doing right now stands on that same continuum.

24. There is a story I want to share.

In 1962, President John F. Kennedy was visiting NASA headquarters. In the hallway, he came across a janitor carrying a broom. Kennedy asked him, "What do you do here?" The janitor looked up and answered, "I'm helping put a man on the moon."

25. He was a janitor. He was sweeping a floor. But he knew the weight of what he was doing. He knew where he was standing.

26. Do we know where we are standing? We are standing in the house of God. Do we know the weight of that?

27. Look around this space today. There are hands you can see — and hands you cannot.

28. There are hands that empty the church trash cans every week. No one notices. But those hands show up every single week.

29. There are hands that brew the coffee early in the morning. Before anyone else arrives, someone is here — preparing a cup for the people who will come. How many of us even know that?

30. There are hands that quietly clean the restrooms. Because of those hands, we can worship without inconvenience — though we rarely stop to think about it.

31. Today we closed the kitchen because it's Bento Day. But every other week, there are hands working in that kitchen so that we can share a meal together.

32. And there are hands doing things that weren't needed in years past — running cameras, managing sound, streaming worship online. There are hands playing instruments on the worship team, lifting voices in the choir, sitting beside children in Sunday school.

33. Some hands are seen. Some are unseen. Some roles feel weightier than others — at least from the outside.

34. But one thing is clear. In every one of those places, we are all doing what we do as another Stephen.

35. There is a discovery that has been getting a lot of attention in ecology recently.

  It turns out that trees in a forest are actually connected to one another. Beneath the soil, a network of fungal threads — mycelium — links the roots of trees together. Scientists call this the Wood Wide Web. Through this network, large trees send sugars and nutrients to younger trees that can't reach enough sunlight. What makes a forest look alive — what keeps it alive — is not what you see above ground. It is this invisible network running underneath it all.

36. Our church is like that. From the outside, you see the sermon, the worship, the service. But underneath all of that, there are countless hands holding the life of this church in places no one ever sees.

37. Those hands are our church's mycelium network. You cannot see it. But without it, the forest dies. Without those hands, this church cannot live.

▸ Part 4 — We Were Not Called to Martyrdom from the Start

38. At this point, someone might be thinking:

"I'm not planning on being martyred." "That's not really where I am."

39. That's completely fair. I feel the same way. Honestly, I did not become a pastor braced for martyrdom.

40. But here is something important to remember. Stephen was not called to martyrdom from the beginning either.

41. Stephen was simply a person who believed in Jesus. He started by serving food. And then, one step at a time, he followed where God was leading him — until he found himself standing exactly where he stood.

42. Viktor Frankl, the psychiatrist who survived the Nazi concentration camps, wrote this:

"There were people in the camps who would give their last piece of bread to someone else. They did not set out to be heroes. They simply decided to live that way. Everything can be taken from a person — but one thing cannot be taken: the freedom to choose one's own attitude in any given set of circumstances."

43. I think Stephen was like that. He did not one day decide to be a martyr. He simply chose, day after day, how he would live in the place he had been given. Those choices accumulated — and became his life.

44. Martyrdom is not a single decision. It is the accumulation of daily choices.

Showing up to your place every week. Not stopping even when no one notices. When those choices pile up, that is a martyr's life.

▸ Part 5 — In the Name "Steve"

45. Let me take a small detour for a moment.

46. The name Stephen — in English, Steve or Steven — is one of the most common names in the Western world. Steve Jobs, Steve Martin... there are countless Steves.

47. Why did people start naming their children Stephen? In the centuries when Christianity was spreading through Europe, parents would give their children the names of saints — as a prayer, as a memory, as a hope. Not just Stephen — many biblical names became ordinary names in Western culture for exactly this reason.

48. By giving the name, they were remembering a life. They were praying that their child might live like that. Stephen survived — as a name. A man who held onto Christ like it was his life, no matter what he was doing or where he was — parents remembered him across hundreds of years.

49. A single name tells you how deeply one person's life can echo.

What name will be left behind by us? And before that — what name are we living by today?

▸ Part 6 — Obvious, But Never Changing

50. As I've been working through this, I keep having a thought: isn't this all a bit obvious? Isn't this something everyone already knows?

Yes. It is obvious.

51. Proclaim the gospel boldly. Serve faithfully in whatever place you're given. We are another Stephen. Who doesn't know this?

52. And yet — I want to say it again today. Because the church is exactly the kind of place that does that. The church is not a place where we discover new truths.

53. The church is the place where we come together to confess and witness that the truths we already know are still alive and at work — right here, right now. Obvious but unchanging. Familiar but still true — that is the gospel.

54. The day Stephen died, the gospel was obvious. Jesus died and rose again. He is the Son of God. None of that was new. And yet Stephen gave his life for it.

55. If the gospel ever feels obvious to you, it's not because the gospel has become small. It's because you've grown too familiar with it. And that familiarity can make us numb.

56. Stephen's story calls us back. Back to that familiar gospel — to stand in front of it again, and feel its weight.

▸ Closing — Hands That Die Daily Are Building the Church

57. Where is the power of the church?

Not in what is visible on the surface. Not in impressive buildings. Not in polished programs.

The power of the church is in the countless unseen hands.

58. The hands that hold their place even when no one notices. The hands that serve without words. The hands that do the same thing in the same spot every single week. The life of the church lives inside those hands.

Those hands are Stephen.

59. Stephen did not begin distributing food steeled for death. He simply served faithfully in that place. And that faithfulness, layered day upon day, became a martyr's life.

60. The hands emptying the trash every week. The hands brewing the coffee. The hands cleaning the bathroom. The hands sitting at the sound board. All of it — accumulated, layered, piled up — that is a martyr's life. Giving a little life every day to build the church.

61. The devotion of countless people like Stephen has built this church. And even now, in places no one sees, hands breathing life into this church like daily martyrs are keeping it alive.

62. We will not be stoned today. We will not be dragged before a council like Stephen. But the call to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ boldly in this world has not changed. And the call for whatever we do in service to carry the gospel inside it — that has not changed either.

63. Remember today: you are the one doing that work. The place where you stand is Stephen's place. The hands you have are Stephen's hands. Carry that conviction with you into this coming week.

 Today, we are another Stephen.

"Lord Jesus, receive my spirit."

64. That was Stephen's last confession. And it is the confession our whole lives are meant to offer. My life, my service, my place — I give it all to you, Lord.