Learning How To Die

Acts chapter 7, as we wind down in the 7th chapter of the book of Acts, I mentioned first service. It's been several years since we've taught through the book of Acts here, and it's always good to come back through this section because it gives us a good history of our background as Christians, where the church started, how the believers came together, got anointed and blessed, and began to grow the church throughout the world. We're at the end of chapter 7. It's been an exciting chapter, a chapter that most commentators breeze over in their commentaries because they say it's just history, and you can pick that up in the Old Testament, and they go on to chapter 8, but we've spent some time in chapter 7, and pick up on the tape

from last week if you want to see this initial section, but basically Stephen has confronted

By faith Abraham embraced God's grace even though he didn't know how in the world God was going to accomplish what he was going to accomplish. By faith Joseph embraced God's grace when it seemed like all the circumstances were nothing but loss and everything was stacked against him, and finally Moses learned of God's grace, and he spent 40 years in Pharaoh's courts thinking that he was something and going to be the deliverer, and God then sent him to the backside of the wilderness for 40 years to show him that he was actually nothing, and then God spent 40 years with

Meanwhile, the witnesses laid their clothes at the feet of a young man named Saul. And while they were stoning him, Stephen prayed, Lord, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit. And then he fell on his knees and cried out, Lord, do not hold this sin against them. And when he said this, he fell asleep. This may seem funny to start this off, but several years ago, actually several decades

ago, there was a program on television hosted by Art Linkletter called Kids Say the Darnedest Things. And some of you are old enough to remember that program in its original form, not in syndicated reruns, but it was a unique program and enjoyed even today, so much so Bill Cosby has kind of picked up on what Art Linkletter started, and together they're kind of recreating the show again, Kids Say the Darnedest Things, and it was basically they would just sit down with kids and interview them, just ask them questions, and kids are so honest and open and just off the top of their heads they would answer these questions, and they were not only humorous but some things you would never hear anywhere else other than when those kids are saying.

Well, something similar has been done in Sunday school, because at first service Tim was mentioning that in sharing with the different girls that come in and the birth fathers as well, it's amazing how in a society that presumes to be Christian, we are a post-Christian society, we're living in a post-Christian age, and there's a lot of people who have never heard,

with Christianese, were asked similar questions as Art Linkletter's group, and here's just a sampling of them. You know, I mentioned that as far as not being familiar with what all the Christian lingo in the Lord's Prayer, you know, it's very simple, our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, it's very simple but I can't say it, hallowed be thy name, and one of the kids said that as he prayed, he prayed, our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, so he knows the name of God, you know, it's Howard. Another kid said that he knew Noah's wife was named Joan of Arc. Another child said that the fifth commandment is humor thy father and mother, a lot of kids probably don't do that today.

Another one said Lot's wife was a pillar of salt by day and a ball of fire at night. You know, in Luke's gospel when Mary is confronted by Gabriel and told that she's going to be the mother of the Redeemer, she sings a song and we have it written out in Luke and it's in your Bibles, it's the header of it is the Magnificat, what Mary literally sang in praise to God and this one little kid said, when Mary heard she was going to be the mother of Jesus, she went and sang the Magna Carta. Another one said holy acrimony is another name for marriage. Another one said that he heard that the Pope lives at the vacuum and the paraffin is next in order after the seraphim.

Another one said the patron saint of travelers is Saint Francis of the Seasick. And finally, another one said that a Republican is a sinner mentioned in the Bible. It's probably true, probably true. Kids say the strangest things, darndest things, some things you'll never hear anywhere else and what I'm going to share with you this morning, even though it's founded and based upon the sanctity of human life, is something that you may not have heard in a church or

also those that we have labeled physically challenged or mentally challenged are part of the sanctity of human life. But the direction that we're heading is a direction that Francis Schaeffer and many warned us about 30 years ago, that if we stand still and allow the area of abortion to become commonplace, it won't stop there, but it will touch every area of human life. And so today we understand that scientists can now determine in the womb if a child is going to be physically or mentally challenged, mentally handicapped or physically handicapped. And now you are presented with the option of aborting that child, not only keeping you from having to go through a lot of work raising the child, but him or her from a lot of needless suffering, they say.

And that's accepted. It's accepted today. So the sanctity of human life is not just the preborn. It's those already born.

And they literally believe they can extend life now for an extended period of time, which is exciting on the one hand, but on the other hand, we see the elderly coming to the point of whatever age it's getting and affected by the different diseases and all, and we're looking at it now as finding a humane way to deal with the elderly in their final stages of life. And as we were warned again some 30 years ago, eventually that will be euthanasia, mercy killing. And not only does the sanctity of human life involve the elderly, but it's also involving those who have been diagnosed with terminal diseases. Because nowadays we are hearing bantered about this area of right to die or the death with dignity.

And we're going to talk about that as we go through that today. You see, somehow when certain parameters are defined for us, and a doctor tells you that you have two years or a year or six months left to live before your system shuts down, we think it sets us apart from everyone else, when in actuality we are all terminally ill. We're all dying. You and I are all in the process of dying.

At the point of birth, the minute you came out of the womb, you started to die. And we are moving toward death.

David said in Psalm 139, Acknowledge that God, you knew my days and the number of them before there was ever one. In other words, David acknowledged, my life is sacred to you, for you knit me together in my mother's womb and you ordained how many days I would live and at what point I would die. It's sacred. It's sacred unto you. My life and my death are sacred unto God.

And so we have names today that are being heralded as God given with the right to die. We have the right to choose how to die and to die with dignity so that we don't have to go through those things. We can take our own life and we look at those things as if they are a God given right. But I don't see that in scripture. I look at God's word and I don't see anywhere that it's mentioned that I have a right to

determine my existence or to shorten it. I don't have that right. My life is sacred unto the Lord.

As more and more physicians are becoming sympathetic to his cause and of course he says that he's doing it out of compassion for those to help end their needless suffering. But I want to remind you of an article that we shared with you back in October that mentions that he wrote back in 1991 of his goals. He has three main goals, Dr. Kevorkian does. Number one, he said, is to help people end their needless suffering, end their lives

That's what he has in mind. So we talk about death with dignity, we talk about the right to die, and really what we're talking about is a money-making affair. And now I'm sure it truly is for the science of it all that this last couple weeks we're talking about cloning of humans, and surely, purely for the science of it all, purely to understand the area of cloning, purely. No money involved in that, I'm sure.

Have you just committed 399 abortions for the sake of one cloned human individual, if life indeed is given at conception? And are we taking the place of God when we bring about this conception, and will this individual that's cloned have a soul, will he be born with a soul? Sanctity of human life. Are we moving closer to Babel and God's need to come and judge the world because man is placing himself in the position of God?

I think so. I think so. And if life is sacred, if we're talking about the sanctity of human life, then life is sacred from the beginning to the end of it. Its ending is just as sacred and God-directed as its beginning. Now, we have a lot of discipleship in the church. We have a lot of discipleship on how to walk with the Lord, on how to live the life in Christ, but as far as I can see, we have very little discipleship on how to die in Christ.

Really, we as humans want to ignore death at all costs. We don't want to really even think about death at all costs. The reason young people do some of the things that they do, some of the stunts that they do, some of the things that they do that are as daring as they are is because they don't consider death an option. There's this idea of an immortality, that I'm not going to die.

That happens to other people. That happens in movies. That happens on TV. But I'm not going to die. And so we tend to ignore the reality of death, and yet the Bible does not ignore it. And in looking at Acts chapter 7, most of the commentaries brush over chapter 7, as I mentioned. They just kind of highlight it that, yeah, this is history from the Old Testament.

You can really pick this up better in the Old Testament books. And Stephen died a martyr's death. And they go on into chapter 8. They just kind of mention, but they don't really focus in on. Now, hopefully, after last week, and if you spend any time with us here at Calvary as we go through the Word at all, you'll understand that we like to take time to look at the Word

because God's Word, there's no part that's insignificant. There's no part like we can just brush over chapter 7 and go on to chapter 8 because everything that he's written here is important. It's something to be considered, and especially as we look at this last part of chapter 7, on the death of Stephen. Now most everything that we learn, if you think about it, is learned by example.

We have a computer at home, and of course we have a computer here at the office. And two years ago, I was computer illiterate. I was scared to death of computers. I thought, well, however much time I have left in life, Lord, I can get through it without having to worry about a computer, can't I? But I am not one to take, if you give me a program, a new program, and say, and here's

the manual on the new program, I don't care. I'm not going to sit down and read that manual on the program because I won't. Pull file A down, go to thing A, and then in field A, do formula sum equals whatever plus whatever. I can't do that. I'll go in there with my little mouse clicker and click down and pull down and get to, oh, look at that. That's what that, oh, look at that.

And then freeze it up and reboot it because it froze up, and then do it again. And that's how I learn. And if somebody who knows how to run the program will come and sit down and I'll watch him. I'll watch, oh, that's how you do that. That's the sum plus, that's what you're talking about there. And then I'll do it while they watch me. That's how I learn. I learn by example.

Musically, that's how I learn. I went through school, through college even, taking all the music courses. I took music theory and composition. I took all of those things. Wrote songs. Know how to read music. Know how to write it. But I learn a piece of music. I mean, I could sit down and count, those are eighth notes, and they receive this much of a beat. And this is, it's in this time frame, this meter, and I know that, and I can do that.

But I'd rather sit and listen to it played and get the idea of the style and the feel of it and then play it before just sitting there and reading. We learn by example. Statistics have indicated that single parent homes have problems because of the absentee parent. Because children learn by example. You can tell a child what they need to do, but inevitably, you parents know they will

do what you do and how you do it. Remember the story of the ham? Cut the ends off the ham, because that's the way she'd always done it. So little girls need a mama figure to see how they're supposed to be as a girl, and little boys need the father figure to see how they're to be as little boys and young men.

We learn by example. I believe the same is true with dying. We will learn how to die in Christ by the examples that we see. Now is it morbid or unchristian to think that we should be concerned with how to die? I don't think so. I don't think so. because the Bible shows us, in places just like this last part of chapter 7, how godly people die. Let me encourage you to pick up a book if you do not have it in your library.

If you have it in your library, let me encourage you to periodically read portions of it, and that's Foxe's Book of Martyrs. We have it in the bookstore, we have it in the library. It gives you some history of, we call them the fathers of the church, they're just the older people, you know, the people from ages past that were believers in the early church and how they died. And you can't really sit down and read that at one sitting because you'll be mush on the floor. But just read a portion of it at a time and read about what they faced, and

there's brutal detail about how they died, being tied between two horses and sent off and pulled apart, or their heads cut off or thrown off a wall and mashed on the ground. They come down, they chop their heads off. There's brutal detail about that, but what you'll glean from it is their reaction, their attitude in the midst of that, how they died, how they faced death. And the church needs to see godly examples of how to die in Christ that we may learn from it.

You see, because I believe that learning how to die is part of understanding the sanctity of human life. Let's look at verses 54 through 60. Stephen had told these leaders about God's grace. He had told them about the faith of the patriarchs, specifically here Abraham, Joseph, and Moses, who trusted in God's grace. And now God is calling Stephen to live it, to live the grace that he spoke

of. And I know some people who have taught studies before or who may be well aware are thinking, well, you know that you experience what you teach. I believe that, absolutely. And I'm teaching about death and dying and dying with true dignity and dying in the grace of God, but I'm emphasizing God's grace. That's what I want to experience. If it involves dying, that's fine. See, if I

didn't teach it, I'd be superstitious and I'd be worse off. Stephen has talked to them about faith in God's grace and that they have blown it and that they have crucified the very one that God sent to redeem them. And they are livid. Verse 54, when they heard this, they were furious and they gnashed their teeth at him. These guys were upset. Now, let me say at the get-go here that I don't believe that

Stephen even gave it a thought that today he's gonna die. I don't think he even gave it a second thought that he was gonna probably face death that day. But he knew that things were not good here. He'd been brought before them for trial and one of the last people been brought before them for trial was his Savior and he was killed, so he probably figured it probably in the offing sometime, but he probably didn't think about it being that very day. But even in

the midst of their anger, he did not respond in anger and he did not dilute the Word of God just to save himself, just for his own safety. So in the midst of your time of facing death, let's glean some things from Stephen here. His focus is on the Lord. He's gonna experience the grace he's been talking about and he didn't dilute God's Word for his own safety. It says they gnashed their teeth

at him. They gnashed their teeth at him for what he just said to them in the first 53 verses. Now, what does that mean, they gnashed their teeth at him? Did it mean they jumped on him and chewed on him like a dog? No, they didn't do that. If you look up the Word in your Strongs or your Youngs or your Lexicons or whatever, the Word itself means to grit your teeth and growl and

to literally even grind your teeth. Now, there's a commercial that's on today that I really like. It shows the commercials are getting really good. I mean, it's almost worth watching TV just to watch the commercials. Forget the shows, the commercials are really good. There's this guy laying on his couch at night and he's covered with a blanket and the storm's raging outside and he can't

get to sleep and the announcer says, you shouldn't ever forget your anniversary. And the guy's rolling around and looking and lightning splashing and he looks over the top of the couch like he's looking back towards the bedroom and he screams, I'm sorry. And then the next shot is of their little poodle standing there and he's going, you know, I didn't like that. I love the commercial. That little

poodle going, is gnashing your teeth. The gnashing, it's the being so angry that you're gritting your teeth and you know what that means, you know. You see the guys on WWF, you know, the wrestlers. Professional wrestling's real, isn't it? You know, that's gnashing of teeth. That's gnashing your teeth. And so these, this whole group of priests, just when he said that, they just went, you know, they're

just so angry that their anger was visibly vented towards Stephen. Now, an interesting thing about that too is that in the Gospels, Jesus talks more about hell than he does about heaven and he mentions that hell is a place, he describes it, hell is descriptive in about four ways. It's a place of outer darkness where the fire never dies and the worm, the fire doesn't cease and the worm never dies. It's a place of weeping and a place of gnashing of teeth.

Now, if you think about all those, if you ever stop to think about all those, literally what that means, it's not a nice place to go. Where the fire's never quenched and outer darkness, being in a fire in total darkness is impossible other than with hell. Burning, where worm never dies. Now, where are them suckers gonna be? Yeah, all over. And where there's weeping, so there's a sadness, a

sorrow for what you've missed, for what you realize you're gonna face forever in eternity, and then there's this gnashing of teeth. An anger, an anger probably at yourself for missing it, an anger at God for allowing you to miss it, but also that grinding because of the pain of the fire and the darkness and the worms. And the thing that's indicated there is, you know, if you're burned here, oh, grinding teeth, but the pain goes away. Or if you're mad, but the, you know, you finally subsides, but there it's never gonna go away, never any peace, never any relief, never any easing of the torment.

But Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit, looked up to heaven and saw the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. He was not focusing on their anger. He didn't dilute the Word of God, and when they started responding with anger in their situation, he didn't focus on that. He was full of the Holy Spirit, it says, and looked up to heaven. Now, right here before we go on to talk

about what he saw, let me just say that when it says he was full of the Holy Spirit, that wasn't something that was just peculiar to Stephen, but it's something that's available to all of us as believers. As a matter of fact, Paul tells us in Ephesians that we are to be being filled with the Spirit. It's something we are to be doing regularly. It indicates not only daily, not only that you do it at the beginning of the day, and then, you know, the tank drains throughout the day, it's something that we do throughout the day. We're regularly filled with the

Spirit, regularly, and we see that that comes as you go through Paul's studies in Ephesians, or as you watch Jesus' example in the Gospels, it's by that regular communion with the Father, that regular time with the Lord, that getting my will in line with yours, Lord, getting my heart in line with your heart, Lord, getting my thoughts in line with your thoughts, Lord, my direction of life in line with yours, the reality that I'm not in control, you are lined up with the Lord. That's being filled with the Spirit, and that takes some effort on our parts. It's not, well, let's see, gotta be filled with the Spirit, let's find the filled with the Spirit button. Oh, I'm full of the Spirit now. It doesn't happen that way. It

takes some conscious effort, some activity on our part. That's what the book of James is all about. He was full of the Holy Spirit, he'd been in communion with the Lord, regular, just a part of his life, and we'll talk about that more as we go on. But here in the midst of this situation, here in the midst of these guys, you can imagine, there's probably a hundred and some of them growling at him all at once, you know, I mean, he didn't look at that, he didn't focus on that, he focused at that time instantly on the Lord. He purposed to set

his mind, to set his thoughts, not on the current situation, but on the Lord. And heaven opened, and he saw the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God. Now let me say that as we go to these times of death, that God's grace often responds, often pours out to us in this way, and those who have shared their experiences as they're going through this death process often talk about the fact that, you know, they're seeing the Lord, if you've been with a loved one as they die, and they love the Lord, and they tell you that they see Jesus, you know, they can see heaven, they can see God's glory, they feel the angels, they can know that presence of God, it's God's grace that he's

pouring out at those particular times of death, and heaven is opened, and they are able to gaze in and see, as it says here, the glory of God. Now we see that example in Scripture, those seemingly facing death. Remember Jacob, and you say, well, Jacob didn't see God when he was facing death, he saw him when he was going to Laban's and coming from Laban's. Okay, remember the circumstances. He just

deceived his father and took his brother's birthright. As far as he was concerned, he was facing death if his brother caught him, and God showed him his grace. In reverse, he was fleeing Laban, and Esau was coming in front of him. He was facing death as far as he was concerned, and God revealed his grace to him. Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane, before he goes to the cross, before the

Lord, praying, and God pours out his grace, and angels come and minister to him, and you say, well, he was the Son of God. He was also the Son of Man, seeking the Father at the time of death, and God opened up his glory, and I believe that that is a regular occurrence from what I see in the Word, and from what I've talked, seen as talking to individuals at this time of death, that is a natural outpouring of God's grace. He opens up to them, their understanding, their picture of heaven, and as it says here, and Stephen saw Jesus standing at the right hand of God. That's exciting to me. If you read a commentary, the commentaries

will say, well, yes, as you know in Romans, it says that Jesus is now sitting at the right hand of God, interceding for us, and the fact that he's sitting means that he has completed his task of redemption, and so he's seated. There's no longer any work to be done as far as redemption is concerned, and he intercedes for us, and that picture you often hear preachers use is that, you know, God's in heaven, and Satan comes before God, before the throne of God, and says, hey, that Mark down there, you know, Mark's been doing this, and Mark's been doing that, and Jesus kind of leans over and says, Dad, he loves me, he's under my blood, and God goes, you know, get out of here, Satan. And those are good

illustrations, but if you think that that's all that Jesus does in the process of interceding, then we are far short of what he is doing as God interceding. I mean, if we think that all the work that he did was to come here and die on a cross for us and be raised from the dead, now he's going up in heaven, and he's sitting in a lazy boy going, Daddy's okay, you know. We miss out what intercession is all about, what the intercession of the Lord for us is all about. He's promised never to leave us nor forsake us. He's given us his Holy

Spirit, we understand that, but we know the Holy Spirit is part of the Godhead, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and somehow there's a communion there where Jesus is with you right now, in the person of the Holy Spirit, but right now he's actively working in your life, and evidently at this time of death, I don't think this is just peculiar unto Stephen. It's like he sees the heavens open, and there's Jesus standing. Now, artists have rendered paintings of this, and I think they're wonderful, because it shows Stephen looking up, and Jesus is standing there with his hand out, like he's ready for Stephen to just reach up and take his hand, and he's going to pull him up a stair, like he's stepping

up off, you know, going to step up onto the stage here, and Jesus is going to help him up. And I want you to have that idea in mind, because that's exactly what I think he's seeing. That's exactly what the purpose is here, is Jesus is our intercessor. He intercedes with us between us and the Father in every area, including death. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of

death, I will not fear. Why? Thou art with me. You're with me. See, we do not fear death, and that's going to become evident as we get through the rest of this little section, as those who have no hope. And you watch Stephen, and God's grace is being poured out to Stephen, and he sees heaven open, and Jesus is right there affirming the fact that I'm with you. I'm not just cheering you on. Go Stephen, go.

You know, go Stephen, go. Die Stephen, die. Be there after you get to the last rock. He's right there, helping him, helping him through that particular sequence of events that are going to usher him into the presence of God. Grace is given for every occurrence that you and I will face as believers, including and especially at the time that we face death, and he is receiving us into his

presence. He is affirming his promises to us at that time. I took several courses on psychology when I was in college, and one of them that I took was on neuropsychology, and that's a whole thing in itself. It deals more with the physical aspects of our brain rather than the emotional and non-physical parts, but it talks about how in the process of dying, that as the brain is shutting down its function, that the neurons and the neurotransmitters begin to die and shut down, and so different pathways are established as the neurotransmitters continue to seek to fire as others are dying, and so they'll establish patterns and paths that go different from the normal patterns, and so a lot of times that'll spark thoughts and memories and things

from other parts of the brain that come across our mind's eye or come across our consciousness as we're dying, and so people say that they're seeing these things like heaven open, and well, that's just, you know, the brain is shutting down, it's dying, and lack of oxygen and the neurotransmitters are ceasing to fire, and so it's finding different pathways. It's simply memories and things. They're not really seeing this. It's just the part of the brain shutting down at the point of death. Well, that's fine and all, but Stephen's still perfectly healthy

here. He hadn't been stoned yet. He's still standing before the Sanhedrin, healthy as anyone else there, and the brain is functioning fine, and God opened this up because it's God's grace. Just as Stephen had said, God gave grace to Abraham, grace to Joseph, grace to Moses. God's saying, I'm giving grace to you at this particular time of need that you have in your life. Now, I want you to

notice also here in verse 56 that this outpouring of God's grace to Stephen at this time allows Stephen an opportunity for further testimony, allows him another opportunity to share about the love of God, to share about God's grace. Verse 56, look, he said, he sees the heavens open, sees Jesus standing at the right hand of God. Verse 56, look, he said, I see heaven open. He tells him what he sees, and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God. They hear this. He's standing there.

Remember back in chapter 6, the very end of chapter 6, it said they beheld his face and it was the faces of an angel because the glory of God was there. He was looking at the Lord, not at the circumstances, and now he says, look. It's like, why can't you guys see it? God's right there, and there's Jesus standing right there. He's given an opportunity again to testify of God's grace right at the time of his

death. John Hus, Jan Hus, an early church father, burned at the stake. You need to see his video or read his book. The night before he died, he was in his cell and fearful because of the fire, fearful because he didn't want to yell out. He didn't want to, he didn't want to be scared in the midst of that. He wanted to die with dignity. He wanted to die as unto the Lord, and he placed his hand

over the flame of the candle that's sitting there, and it kind of burns his hand in the movie, you know, Liberties, I'm sure, but you kind of picture that, and I'm thinking, yeah, that's how I'd be. Then as they took him out and put him on the stake, he just embraced the stake, and he just began to sing praises to the Lord, and he sang praise to God until the flames overtook him and took finally his voice away so that he couldn't praise God anymore, God's grace, and he gave testimony right there at the end. Chuck Fromm is the editor of a magazine called Worship that I get, and his brother Bob Fromm is a Calvary Chapel pastor down in Arizona, and earlier this year I shared a little bit about it one Sunday morning. They shared about their father dying

this past year, and both of them, one, Bob sent it over the internet, and Chuck wrote about it in the magazine, that the doctors had called the family, and the family gathered around because they said there wasn't much time left, and they were at the hospital, and all the family was gathered around their father's bed, and he said they were all holding hands and praying together for their dad, and he said one of the members of the family just started to sing Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me, and when they got down to the last verse, when we've been there 10,000 years, bright shining as the sun, they said their dad raised his arm from the bed in praise. We've no less days to

sing God's praise than when we'd first begun, and they finished that verse, and he lowered his arm, and he breathed his last here, and stepped into into the presence of Jesus. That's the way I want to go. I want to be a testimony. We need to see godly people, how they die. We need to see that. It needs to be discipled to us. Let's talk about this death with dignity. Death with dignity. Look at verse 57.

Stephen said this, they covered their ears now, and yelling at the top of their voices, they all rushed at him, and dragged him out of the city, and began to stone him. Meanwhile the witnesses laid their clothes at the feet of a young man named Saul. While they were stoning him, Stephen prayed, Lord Jesus receive my spirit, and then he fell on his knees and cried out, Lord do not hold this sin against them. And when he had said this, he fell asleep. Let me say to

you, death with dignity has nothing to do with the manner of death. It has everything to do with the heart focus at death. Death with dignity has nothing to do with the manner of death. Kevorkian et al. want us to believe that death with dignity means rather than having to go through these periods of suffering and pain, that I can die at my own hand right now when I want to die in a dignified

way. I guess it means without the people around you seeing the suffering, or you going through some kind of suffering. Listen, I personally do not relish suffering. I have a real low pain tolerance, real low. I don't relish suffering at all, but neither did Jesus. Jesus spent evidently hours in the garden of Gethsemane praying so intently that he sweat drops of blood, the

capillaries burst in his forehead, and he just literally bled because he was praying so intensely. Father, if it's possible, let this cup be taken from me. He knew what was ahead. He knew the suffering of the cross, the pain, the brokenness. He knew it. If it's possible, take it. Nevertheless, not what I want, but literally whatever glorifies you, whatever will glorify you, whatever your

will is. Death with dignity is not the manner in which we die. It's the heart focus at the time of death. If we're surrendered into the hands of a gracious, loving God, and we trust him to do with us as he pleases, that's death with dignity. Now, with Stephen, as I mentioned before, his death to him was unplanned. Didn't think about it today before the day started, but in some sense it was

immediate. Now, there are those of you who will die probably in a car wreck sometime, if the Lord doesn't come first, and maybe you'll just, you know, you drive down and smash, and you're gone, and those are very humane, you know, it's a very humane thing. Main way to go, quick, no suffering. Some of you will die in your sleep, very possibly. And that's okay, too.

If I'm not there and don't have to know about it, that's okay, I'm not awake. But Stephen, even though this was immediate, he had some time to think about it because they yelled all with one voice and they jumped on him and they started dragging him out of the city. Now they'd been growling at him, now they're yelling at him, dragging him out of the city. He knows something's coming down.

And it's probably not good. So he has time to kind of think about the fact that now he's probably gonna die. And it says, and they took him out outside the city and they began to stone him. Now, I don't know what your concept of stoning is. In the Gospels, there's the story of the guys who bring the woman caught in the midst of adultery to Jesus and they pick up stones as they're ready to stone her.

And you know the story, Jesus writes in the dirt, says, let him who is without sin cast the first stone and from the oldest to the youngest, they dropped their stones and left. That's not a normal stoning. First of all, they bypassed all legal grounds. I mean, they just, you know, Jesus at least they appealed to Pilate, can we kill him? You know, we wanna kill him.

Here they bypassed all the legal stops along the way and you can read and find that Pilate was probably as a result of that, very weak in his own person and weak with the Roman government. And so they felt like they'd probably get away with it. You read this, they didn't even think about it. This was just a rage. They jumped on him and dragged him outside the city,

probably out the South gate where Gehenna is, where the garbage dump is. And they would have thrown him down in a pit or in a depression in the ground. When they stoned, they would throw him usually off a ledge into a pit area. And hopefully as they threw him into the pit, they would hit in such a way that maybe they'd break their neck and that would pretty well kill him.

But if they didn't, maybe they'd break a leg or break an arm or break a hip and they couldn't move. And they'd be a target that could sit there. And then they would pick up rocks. And I'm not talking little bitty pebbles that you skip across a stream. I'm talking, they'd pick up rocks with both hands. It says that they took off their robes and laid them at the feet of a man named Saul,

young man named Saul. Why'd they do that? Man, we're gonna get some power here. We've got some rocks to eat. We're gonna take off the robes so I can get some strength and pick up that rock and throw it at him. And it might be for me to that overhead projector and I'm gonna throw this rock and I wanna kill him. I wanna crush his skull. I wanna hit an arm maybe and knock a shoulder

out of the socket or hit a knee and break the leg where he can't stand and move around. I wanna get him down. And then we'll just pummel him with rocks and crush him, crush the life out of him. That's what Stephen was facing. Now, Stephen was probably a young man, teens or early 20s. He was a articulate man. He was a good servant. He witnessed well, he worked hard for the Lord.

God was blessing him. And we look at this and we go, why such a young man? I mean, look at what he could have done. In 1948, Jim Elliott, who was later martyred while seeking to minister to the Alka Indians. Jim Elliott had written in his journal, quote, I seek not a long life, but a full one like you, Lord Jesus. Two years later, he wrote, quote, I must not think it's strange if God takes in youth

those whom I would have kept on earth until they were older. God is peopling eternity and I must not restrict him to old men and women, not my will, but for your glory, Lord. Whatever you wanna do for your glory. It's trusting in God's grace. It's placing your life in the hands of a loving, gracious God and trusting that, that he knows what he's doing. And he'll do what he does, every part of it,

every step of the way from your birth through your death and into his presence, because he loves you. And his grace will indeed be sufficient for you. Now, although we are all in the process of dying, none of us knows specifically when or how we will die. But unless the rapture happens before that fact, everyone in this room is gonna die. Everyone listening on the radio is gonna die.

Everyone listening by tape, as you listen to this study, you are eventually gonna die. You are in the process of dying. And barring the rapture, that is a fact that we're gonna have to face. Now, I talk about the rapture because it excites me to talk about the rapture of the church. People say, well, you believe in the rapture before the tribulation, you're an escapist.

You wanna get away from the tribulation period. I do not have tribulation posters at home. I'm not saying, go to tribulation, I can't wait. If there's a chance to leave, I wanna go. I do believe, what I see in scripture is the tribulation period is called Daniel's 70th week, the time of Jacob's trouble, the time of the outpouring of God's wrath, such as has never been before and never will be again.

It's the outpouring of God's wrath. That's the purpose of tribulation. From what I see about the purpose of God sending his son is to redeem mankind, that Jesus came and hung on a cross and suffered the wrath of God once for all, that whosoever believeth in him doesn't suffer that wrath. That's the way I understand redemption. That's what I understand the purpose of Jesus coming

was to redeem us, so we don't have to face. I don't have to look for word to the wrath of God. Now, if the tribulation's purpose is the outpouring of God's wrath and Jesus came to suffer that wrath once for all for those who would believe, then if I'm a believer, I'm not gonna be there. I'm looking forward to being in the presence of the Lord. Does not preclude.

The rapture could happen tomorrow. I could die today. Does not preclude the fact that we're gonna face times of persecution or times of death, but the rapture is a hope, a hope that we're to have. Paul said, Paul told the Thessalonians in 1 Thessalonians chapter four that we're to encourage each other with that hope, and so I'm anticipating the rapture, longing for that, believing it's gonna come in my lifetime, but if it doesn't, then I will face death, and so will you, and so we better learn how to die.

One way or another, as a believer, you and I are with the Lord. We're the Lord's, and as a believer, we need to see the encouragement that comes from the scripture where that's concerned, and as we look at Stephen here, we see that he has been in close communion with God, and he has understood God's grace, and he's living in God's grace. Now, let me ask you, how do you live? How do you live day by day in God's grace?

Because you see, it wasn't just something that he waited until it's time to die to experience. He lived in it daily. When you go back to chapter six, and you find out what he did during a day, what he did all the time, he was ministering to others constantly. He was constantly ministering to the widows, to the Grecian widows, bringing them their food, and whatever they needed.

He was going beyond just the simple ministry of the food. He was taking care of them. He was giving his life, and in the midst of that, he was talking about Jesus, because that's why these guys got all fired up in the first place. Remember, that's why they brought him in. He was talking about the Lord. He was talking about God's grace. He not only was learning about it,

he was talking about it. It was becoming a part of his, every part of his life during that. He was experiencing it as he was talking about it. Hold that thought, and let me share with you what John Corson has shared in one of his commentaries regarding this. John is a pastor of Calvary Chapel in Applegate, Oregon. Huge Calvary up there. He says, quote, "'Whenever you start talking to people

"'about some quality of the Lord, "'by the time you finish the conversation, "'you find yourself enjoying and seeing "'that very quality in your own heart.'" Remember that? Remember when you, the times you have talked to people about Jesus, and you've talked to him about his love, and you just find yourself kind of bubbling inside because you're realizing that as you're talking to him about his, you're experiencing it again. We talk about, we sing that song about light the fire again. What are we talking about?

Lord, let me experience again that joy, that wonder that I had when I first came to you. How do you do that? You fan the flame. You start talking about him. You start talking to him and with him, and then you start ministering, telling others about him. John Corson goes on to say, it's incredible how that works. Start telling someone how wonderful Jesus is,

and by the time you conclude, you'll be totally in wonder of Jesus. Start sharing about the God of grace, and you'll find yourself receiving the grace of God. That's why I encourage you to share your faith, not because it's a job to do, but because it's a joy to experience. I don't know if you've ever thought about witnessing as that. Witnessing has been black tie, white shirt,

little Bible, come to the door, knock, knock, knock, knock. Would you like to receive Jesus as your Lord and Savior? Four spiritual laws, let me take you down the Roman road. And that's a job, and people shy away from that. But when you think of it as a joy to experience, I wanna talk to you about Jesus because I wanna get excited. It gets me high, man, you know?

I can get high on Jesus because I'm telling you about him. Let me tell you about him. And that's what Stephen did. You wanna experience the grace of God, begin to live it, begin to just tell people about it, begin to spend that time in communion with him and then let him lead you to people to talk about it with. And he'll bring you into situations where you have to trust him, where that grace is concerned.

And Stephen did it up to this point, and as he's there now ready to die, it's just a natural experience for him because he's been experiencing that grace of God throughout his life, throughout this time that he's been a believer. Now, Stephen's response here is a result of God's grace. Verse 59, while they were stoning him, while they're honking these stones down on him, Stephen prayed, Lord, Jesus, receive my spirit. And then he fell on his knees and cried out, verse 60, Lord, do not hold this sin against them.

And when he said this, he fell asleep. That was a response to that grace. He could only do that because he was trusting and experiencing that grace of God. Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. See, that was example to him by the Lord. Jesus' example, how the godly die. And Stephen's example now, how the godly die. And he did it the same way, Jesus, Lord, forgive them,

for they know not what they do. Warren Wiersbe writes that a heckler once shouted to a street preacher, why didn't God do something for Stephen when they were stoning him? And the street preacher replied, God did do something for Stephen. He gave him the grace to forgive the murderers and to pray for them. You see, Stephen had to grow in that grace just by trusting the Lord, walking with him,

sharing about him every day, every day. And one thing I want you to realize as we come to a conclusion here about learning how to die is realizing that every death, your death, when you and I die, every death, even our death affects other people. Even our death affects other people. Remember back up in verse 58, that meanwhile, the witnesses laid their clothes at the feet of a young man named Saul.

And Saul saw Stephen die and watched him die this way, giving testimony to the Lord and praying for those who were abusing him. Stephen was others centered in death, this Christ likeness, others. I'm not others centered in life enough, you know? I'm not others centered all the time in the parking lot, at the grocery store. I'm not others centered all the time at home.

He's others centered while they're heaving stones down upon his head, this grace of God. And Saul saw this among others, Saul saw this. And I believe it embedded itself in Saul's mind. And when he finally is coming down the road to Damascus to haul Christians back to Jerusalem to have them imprisoned or killed, and Jesus confronts him, I believe one of the things that was right there in front of his eyes, even though he was blind, in his mind, he was seeing Stephen dying and thinking if that was real, and you're the God who Stephen was trusting, then woe is me.

How can you forgive me for that? It's interesting when you read later, Paul writing about God is able to forgive all sinners of whom I am chief. Why do you think he said that? Was he just being humble? I'm just a bigger cat than you are. Or was he seeing in his mind's eye Stephen dying and realizing that at that point he was giving his assent to Stephen's death?

And how could God forgive me? If he can forgive me, he can forgive anybody. There needs to be an awareness that at the point of our death, it's gonna affect others' lives. And we need to see godly examples of dying saints so that we can be godly examples of dying saints. We don't hide it under the rug, we talk about it. We see it in God's word. We realize that we may suffer martyrdom

because of our faith. We may be killed as Stephen was. We may die as a result of sickness or disease or an accident that leaves us for a while. We linger and then we die. We may face death that way, but God's grace.