Acts 8 – Sermon Manuscript

Witnessing to the World

-One of the scandals of the church is who gets to be a part of it. Have you ever noticed the way we work to build ourselves up and tear others down? When we’re little we measure things like height or speed as those who are the best. As we get a little older it becomes intelligence or athletics. Then it’s your bank account and house. But all those pursuits end up leaving people wanting more, while Jesus comes and tears down all those markers that we use to divide. Which means the church has forever been filled by a group of people who don’t look like they should get along. Today we’re going to see the church break down numerous cultural and social divides, which is meant to continue being the call of the church today! I love pointing out that in this room there are 5 different generations of people, where else do they willingly give up their time to be together? Men and women, grandparents and babies, Millennials and Boomers, Gen X and Gen Alpha, all gathering together around the goal of taking 1 step closer to Jesus.

READ/PRAY (pg. 973)

  1. Dispersion of the Church (1-8)

-Last week we ended tracing the ministry of Stephen, one the 7 table ministers, and we were introduced to this new character: Saul. This week’s text picks up with him, which is a great time to remind us that verse numbers aren’t inspired! They were added hundreds of years after the fact to help with navigating it, but that’s why you’ll read in Heb. 2:6 “But someone somewhere has testified:” and then he goes on the quote from Psalm 8. They were compiled onto various scrolls! So vs. 1 should be seen as the conclusion of the killing of Stephen before going on to describe the rest of the persecution. But Saul brackets these 3 verses (1 & 3) so we’ll look at those together.

-Saul ravages: he’s learning where the Christians are meeting, takes men and women and throws them in prison. It was a unique thing for women to be included in this persecution at the time, and even more unique for Luke to specifically call out that persecution. This likely means that everyone viewed the women as vital to the spreading of this church. Instead of just attacking the leader, Saul systematically attacks them and throws them in prison. As I’ve said, I’m going to bring up membership as we see it throughout this book, it’s likely that Saul found some list of who was a part of this group (we today call it a membership list). He wasn’t just going door to door, he was careful and strategic.

-But the middle section tells us that this “severe persecution” doesn’t accomplish what Saul was hoping, instead it says the disciples “scattered” into some new places.

-Think back to Acts 1:8, where Jesus prophesied where the disciples would be His witnesses: in Jerusalem (which is where they’ve been up to this point), and where else? Judea and Samaria and the ends of the earth, look back at vs. 2, where did they scatter to? Exactly where Jesus said they would. God isn’t behind evil events, but even evil events accomplish God’s ultimate plans.

-What do those who were scattered do? They keep doing exactly what they were previously doing! But now they’re doing it in new places, they can’t help but continue preaching the Word everywhere they go. And I think this is something for us to consider too. Do you talk about the word wherever you go? Jesus tells a story about this in Matt. 13 where a farmer spread seed, and the ironic thing about the it is he’s a terrible farmer! Throwing his seed on the walking path next to the field, in a patch of rocks, with the thorns, he’s indiscriminately throwing the seed everywhere he goes. That’s what we’re supposed to be doing with the Word! What’s different about us and this farmer is we don’t know what the soil of someone’s heart is, but regardless of the person we’re talking to, we give the Word.

-The focus shifts to Philip in vs. 5 who was another one of the 7, and just like Stephen has an incredible preaching ministry.

-Our translation says that he went to a city, but some manuscripts (and some translations) describe this as THE city, referring to the capitol. That seems to make sense based on the significance of this story. We’ve seen the conversion of the Jews at their capitol city of Jerusalem, now we’re going to see the conversion of the Samaritans at their capitol city, but Philip just goes doing exactly what all the disciples were doing: spreading the Word about Jesus.

-We’re starting to get in a bit of a rut here because we’ve already seen all these exact same things happen before. Luke tells us that the Word ministry is once again connected to signs. We didn’t read what signs Stephen was doing, here we see what those sings were: exorcisms, healing of the paralyzed and lame. This is a manifestation of something I said last week: the Word ministry and the practical ministry are 2 sides of the same coin; you can’t separate them out. If you believe in the Word, it will be made visible through your actions.

-And the outcome of that ministry of Word and deed leads to great joy. What about when the ministry leads to oppression and persecution?

  • The Samaritan Pentecost (9-25)

-The outcome of Philip’s preaching is the faith of the Samaritans, but that means that there’s also going to be some kind of response from Satan to distract or deter the Word from doing its work, which leads to:

-meeting a new man named Simon, and the first thing Luke tells us is that he had practiced sorcery (magic) that had amazed the people. Today we would say he was dabbling in the occult or involved in dark spiritual practices. This battle between Jesus and the demons will come up again later because Jesus and other spiritual beings don’t get along, but Jesus is greater and stronger than any other being.

-Luke also tells us that Simon claimed to be “somebody great,” last week we saw the impulse of the human heart is always drawn back to Egypt, this week it’s the same idea with a different focus. Another way this sin is made visible in our lives is through trying to make your own name great, but that’s the opposite of how God has called us to live. And this is another thing that we can trace back to the beginning, in Gen. 11 we read the story of some people trying to build up their own names. Their goal is to build a giant tower that reaches the realm of the gods where they can build their own power & prestige, and then look at what the verse says their goal is: to build a name for themselves. Church, the human heart hasn’t changed in thousands of years!

-Today we call it platforming, building a brand, or influencing, and that has no place in following after Jesus. In fact, if what we’re doing leads to us getting the attention, what we’re doing might just be the wrong thing. Our job is to proclaim the Word, point people to the one the Word talks about (Jesus), and then get out of the way. And the unfortunate reality is the church is often just as guilty of this as the world! We chase after the latest fads, we appeal to Christian celebrities, missing how much of an oxymoron that is. In fact, one commentator I read said this story of Simon is the first “celebrity” conversion in the church! But that misses the reality that the point of being a Christian is Jesus, not us.

-And when Philip shows up in Samaria, he changes the dynamics and the focus of all the people! Suddenly Simon doesn’t have the corner on the market and this new gospel news about the kingdom of God is the latest fad in the area leading to some kind of mass conversion.

-Look at what Philip talks about here: the kingdom of God and Jesus Christ. What did Simon talk about? Himself! Since we’re in church, I think I’m allowed to confess this, but I love watching comedians, especially ones that do observational humor like Nate Bargatze and Brian Regan. Brian Regan has a bit about the “me monsters” at a get together (Google it later this afternoon if you haven’t seen it, Vikings are off this week and the Packers aren’t worth watching this year). We’ve all experienced that! Someone who can’t stop talking about themselves (and if you don’t know anyone like that, you’re probably that person). But what Jesus offers us is the ability to get over ourselves and begin to legitimately care for other people around us. In contrast to the “me monster,” CS Lewis said if you ever met a truly humble person, you wouldn’t walk away thinking about how humble they were, but about how kind they were in taking an interest in you. I need these kinds of reminders on a regular basis! It’s so easy for me to become overly fixated on my own comfort or desires instead of worrying about those around me, but that’s not the way of Jesus. Jesus frees me from fixating on myself and allows me to legitimately care about others.

-Apparently, even Simon the Sorcerer believed and was baptized, but that decision either only went skin deep or was a false conversion as we’ll see soon, but that’s getting a little bit ahead of the story.

-Word travels back to the apostles in Jerusalem about the effectiveness of the Word, so Peter and John are dispatched (remember, they’re still the leaders of this movement), but why do you think they’re both sent? Philip’s already there, why does there need to be 2 of the apostles. 2 primary reasons:

-First, according to the OT law, for something to be true, it requires 2 witnesses. Peter & John make 2!

-But the second reason is so they could pray for these new believers to receive the HS. This is one of those cases in this book where what’s described isn’t the normal course of events in the lives of Christians, because today there isn’t any gap between the faith and receiving the Holy Spirit, which means we need to ask the question, why is there this gap of time here? I found Australian commentator Dr. David Peterson helpful here:

-That’s why I titled this section “The Samaritan Pentecost” it’s a repeat of what happened in Jerusalem in Acts 2. And I also think the apostles were there to see that God wasn’t just working in the Jewish people anymore. The Samaritans and Jews were enemies for most of history, in fact, in Luke 9:54, John asks Jesus if he should call down fire on a city of Samaritans for not giving them a place to sleep! Suddenly that apostle is now praying for those same people that he wanted to kill! And in response, the Samaritans receive the HS.

-And just as we saw after Pentecost in Jerusalem, a couple wanted to appearance of holiness, the recognition and acclaim that came from being involved in this new community, an alternative option pops up here, and Simon the sorcerer re-enters the story. He wants whatever it is that the apostles have, and he thinks he can buy it. What’s interesting is he can tell that SOMETHING has happened. There are whole denominations that use this as evidence that we need to experience some kind of miraculous indwelling sometime after our conversion, but this isn’t something that’s true of the normal Christian experience, instead this is a unique event that shows the spread of the early church and connects this event to the Jerusalem church (leaders)

-Additionally, think about Simon’s request with a previous time Peter & John were asked for money back in Acts 3:6 “silver and gold I have NONE,” does it seem like money is something that could influence Peter & John? Nope! In fact, one of the requirements for elders later in the NT is “not a lover of money,” which means if you wouldn’t trust someone to help you with your finances, don’t trust them to be a leader in the church (but the inverse is also true: if you trust someone to be a leader in the church, you should also trust them to talk to you about finances without it affecting your relationship)

-And Peter won’t be affected by any money and condemns Simon. The words Peter uses here follow a number of OT curses God said He would give out to those who were disobedient: “part” or “share” alludes to Deut. 12:12, “poisoned by wickedness” from Deut. 29:16-21. Peter is saying this man isn’t truly a part of this new covenant community.

-It’s important for us to see that Simon doesn’t repent, he asks Peter to pray for him. If he’s truly saved, he would be able to pray on his own!

-And we’re left wondering: what happens to Simon after this! Does he repent? Does he continue looking for power from other places? Old stories would do this, leave them unresolved for us (parable of the prodigal: what happens to the older brother?). We’re forced to provide some kind of conclusion in our own mind, how would we respond if we were in this position? A modern-day example of this would be: how do you respond when someone confronts you about a sin issue in your life? Do you dismiss them? Make excuses? Blame someone or something else? On the one hand, at least Simon asked for prayer instead of trying to justify himself! But what we should do is cry out to Jesus! He has already paid the penalty for that sin, and He’s given us the Holy Spirit to combat those sins.

-But Simon isn’t the main character, this section ends with Peter and John going back to their primary focus: preaching the Word as they travel. Are you starting to catch the theme of this book? We’re tracing the expansion of God’s Word into the furthest corners of the world, beginning with Judea and Samaria. This also fulfills what Jesus said to the Samaritan woman in John 4 where He said a day was coming when Jews & Samaritans would all worship in spirit & truth, this story is that becoming a reality!

  • All Are Welcome (26-40)

-But Philip goes a different direction than the apostles, and this time the Word is going to expand even further out from the Samaritans. We looked at this map earlier, previously he driven out from persecution up to Samaria, now an angel tells him to go south towards Gaza, and Philip obeys! And who does he run into? Another person who wouldn’t have been allowed anywhere near the temple.

-4 descriptions of this person: Ethiopian, man, eunuch, high official. This is the kind of person Roman culture despised, referring to eunuch’s as the ultimate “non-man” but also not a woman, so the prevalent culture wouldn’t have a place for him, but notice what else Luke tells us: in Ethiopia, he was a high official, which tells us he was well connected highly thought of in that culture, even if the Jewish world didn’t have a place for him.

-Luke also tells us that he had come to worship in Jerusalem, making him a “God fearer,” someone who even though he wasn’t a Jew, was working to obey the 1 true God, and what’s incredible is this man likely wouldn’t have even been able to go into the court of the Gentiles because he was a eunuch! But even though he couldn’t “meet” God at the temple, God was coming to meet him on this desert road

-And he’s reading the scroll of Isaiah out loud! Contrast this with what we’ve seen of those opposed to the spread of the church so far in this book who won’t even consult the OT, much less work to obey it. So we’re seeing that God has been at work in other cultures too and has been subtly drawing the nations to himself. What this may be fulfilling is a prophecy from Isa. 56, which would have been just a few inches lower on the scroll this man was reading. Look at what God says about this man:

-Instead of being excluded from the temple worship, the eunuchs and the foreigners will be servants of the Most High God, they’ll be bringing their offerings to worship God together because God is the God of the world, not just 1 nation. But it all depends on their response to Jesus, which is who this eunuch “just happens” to be reading about!

-And Philip is commanded by the Spirit (how?) to run up to it, so he does. And he asks a simple question of the man: do you understand?

-Philip is starting with where this guy is at, taking advantage of the opportunity presented to him, being faithfully present where God has called him to be. We need to be on the lookout for similar situations around us! I remember a time I was working on a sermon in a Starbucks (again, I apologize to all you Minnesotans, Caribou’s aren’t as plentiful in CO), someone asked me what I was in school for because I had a few commentaries scattered around me. If you’ve never seen a commentary, they tend to be pretty large! But one of the baristas asked me where I was going to school, and I got to tell him I was working on a sermon which led to me talking about the church just down the road. Not every conversation goes like that, sometimes when people find out I’m a pastor they stop talking to me! But all of us should be taking advantage of opportunities like that to point people back to Jesus.

-This eunuch is reading from Isa. 53:7-8, which is a Messianic prophecy pointing forward to Jesus, and where the conversation began with Philip asking a question, now the eunuch asks Philip a question: who is Isaiah talking about? And that’s all Philip needs! He starts with that passage in Isa 53 and goes from there to talk about how Jesus is the ultimate fulfilment of what Isaiah was talking about. I think we see Paul telling us part of the significance of this story in Rom. 10: We need both the Word and teachers of the Word to help us understand what God’s saying. The Bible is both simple and complex: simple enough that children can read and benefit from it, but so complex that you can get advanced degrees in studying it because there’s SO MUCH to it! But don’t stop reading, studying, and digging in to it, when God’s Word gets into you, you won’t be able to stop talking about it and taking advantage of every opportunity to share about it with other people, you’ll always end up talking about the things you love, so if you love Jesus, He’s guaranteed to come up in every conversation, which is exactly what Philip has done, which apparently included the need to demonstrate your changed heart by being baptized, so chariot comes across some water and the eunuch asks another question:

-And I guess there’s nothing that would stop him from being baptized, because that’s exactly what Philip does. Once again, it’s important for us to take a minute and talk about this because there are some Christian groups that argue that you need to be baptized in order to be saved so they push for instantaneous baptisms when someone is saved. That’s not what this text is saying! We are saved by grace alone through faith alone in Jesus Christ alone, but since this man has demonstrated that he wants to be obedient to God, he wants to move forward with the sign & seal of that salvation through baptism.

-As soon as the baptism is finished, Philip is apparently carried away by the Spirit to a new place, which means this has to be the weirdest baptism in history! One of my kids has shared that they want to be baptized, but is scared I’ll leave them under the water too long (which probably says more about me than her fear), imagine getting baptized, coming out of the water, and the person baptizing you is just gone! But instead of freaking out (like I would do) the response of the eunuch is the same as the Samaritans: rejoicing, praising God, giving thanks for this salvation, and that’s the last we’ll read about this Eunuch, intentionally contrasted to Simon the Sorcerer, here we have a wonderful conclusion! Salvation leading to rejoicing, which is where we’re now supposed to ask: which one are you like? Jesus says something about what’s going on here in Luke 10:20 right after he sends his disciples out to begin preaching. They come back on cloud 9 because even the evil spirits listened to them!

-In this story, Simon was trying to hold on to power and influence, trying to build up his name and even called himself great, but he ends up with nothing. The eunuch, whose name we don’t even know is given a gift of infinite value, and he walks away rejoicing just like Jesus told His followers to do!

-Philip “appears” somehow in Azotus, then works his way up to Caesarea continually preaching the gospel. Once again, here’s the map showing Philip’s travels (with a skip from Gaza to Azotus), but everywhere he goes he’s continually preaching the gospel, taking advantage of any and every opportunity.

-Which is the primary focus of our witnessing, too. Church, we are the church whether we’re gathered here on Sunday or scattered across the south metro into the places we work, live, and play. And God has placed us there for a reason: to be His witnesses here, to preach the gospel here, to live the gospel here, and to share that gospel with everyone we can. But to do that, we need to be willing to die to ourselves, to be like John the Baptist who said, “He must increase, I must decrease.” Now if you don’t know how to do that, let me recommend a book to you, and then after you read it, anyone on staff would love to talk to you about it!

-And those of you who do feel comfortable talking about Jesus wherever you go: what does another step of faithfulness look like for you? Maybe it’s inviting someone to church, maybe it’s finding a book to read together, but everyone has room to grow in living as Jesus wants us to, so let’s take a step this week to grow in our desire to share the gospel with other, and pray for opportunities to come up where you can talk about what Jesus has done for you!

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by mikethestrand on October 18, 2026  •  Permalink
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Posted by mikethestrand on October 18, 2026

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Acts 6-7 – Sermon Manuscript

-As we’ve traced the development of the early church, what’s been amazing is how quickly the church is growing. 1 sermon from Peter leads to 3,000 people being saved and baptized, the arrest of Peter and John leads to at least 2,000 additional people. That means that with 2 sermons, this group went from 120 to over 5,000, that seems to be a pretty successful ministry, doesn’t it?

-But to answer that, we need to ask: what is success? Our tendency is to view success as bigger, better, and more. We want a bigger house, we want a better car, we want more stuff in that house and car. But is that descriptive of success in God’s kingdom? As the church expands in the book of Acts, we’re also going to see worldly persecution follow along with it. But that doesn’t stop the disciples from continuing to be faithful witnesses. As we saw last week from Peter & John “We can’t stop telling others about what we have heard and seen.” Friends, success in God’s kingdom is radically different than the way we typically view success today, as we’ll see from the story of Stephen.

READ/PRAY 7:2-53 (pg. 972)

  1. Growing Pains (6:1-7)

-If you’ve never been a part of a team or organization that starts to grow, one of the inevitabilities of it is the need for better administration and communication! We’ve seen in the first few weeks of the new church they’ve grown exponentially. That means they had added a whole new level of complexity to their organization! 

-In this case, the complexity led to a group being overlooked in the daily distribution. Remember that we’ve previously seen that the way the early church worked was by people willingly giving from their riches to care for those who are poor? That’s what this is talking about, apparently each day those who were poor were given food, but some people were being left out of this food. 

-So in response, the twelve (we see them operating as the de facto leaders, that’s part of the reason we have church leaders today), called everyone together.

-In our new members class, I call this the first members meeting in the church! And it’s even in response to a conflict! I call it a membership meeting because we’ve already seen numerous instances of the church keeping track of who was a part of their fellowship, which is why they also were able to call everyone together for this meeting

-This is going to begin setting the stage for us to see the way God brings a plurality of gifting into the church, which leads to a multiplication of efforts in the church (go read Eph. 4 if you want to see why that’s significant)

-But what this means is that it requires everyone in the church working together with their unique gifting for the church to flourish as God wants. Even pastors don’t have all the giftings required for a church to flourish! If you relied just on me, our church would really struggle! We’d be great at spending time together, great at discussing theology, and really weak at building structures and policies around our ministries. We need all of us using our gifts, otherwise we’re going to be an unhealthy church! If you haven’t found a place to use your gifts yet, grab someone on staff, we’d love to get you plugged in! 

-I think that what’s taking place here is we see a prototype of the 2 church offices of elders and deacons (preached on this text and those offices on Aug. 30 if you want to go back to listen to that sermon), I don’t think this is the final word on this issue, nor does it refer to those 2 specific offices, but it’s setting the stage for what will eventually become those things.

-2 important notes about that comment, first: don’t view these things as overly restrictive or as the last word about these offices. What’s potentially ironic about those chosen to serve tables is the next chapters will show their gifting in preaching the gospel message! Which means we can’t make a clear delineation between Word ministry and practical ministry, in fact I would say that the Word ministry is in place to support and foster practical ministries.

-The second note is don’t view this as a hierarchy. In worldly terms we tend to interpret this as creating 2 different classes of people, but that’s because we interpret this through our modern lens instead of viewing it as God’s dispersing of varied gifts to His people. In fact, Luke uses the same word “service” to talk about what these 7 men do, as well as what the 12 do (“wait” on tables 2 & “ministry” of the word 4). This also shows us the significance of the Word ministry in the church as both the 7 and the 12 are regularly involved in proclaiming the gospel message. One of the mottos I preach to myself regularly is let the Word do the work. Any teaching and preaching is useless unless it’s faithfully feeding us all the Word.

-I think John Stott (a British pastor) helps us to understand this final threat to the church from Satan:

-The goal of this is the protect and preserve unity in the church. That’s not uniformity, unity means we’re different, but we lay aside our personal preferences for the sake of the whole church. I heard a pastor onetime say that the church is supposed to be a mutual honoring society, where we work our hardest to honor everyone.

-And you can see that in the fact that all the names listed are Hellenistic names. Remember who was being overlooked? The Hellenistic widows. They bent over backwards to ensure that unity would be the marker of them.

-I think it’s also important to note that this isn’t a complete flattening of leadership in the church. Look at vs. 6 the 12 apostles are the ones who commission them into their new ministry, both groups are faithful in the roles they’ve been called to

-The outcome: word of God spread, that’s the unique role of the church. Other groups can (and do) mercy ministry, but the church’s primary call in the world is to proclaim God’s Word, that’s how new disciples are created and the way all disciples grow. Friends, let the Word do the work in your life, too!

  • Stephen’s Betrayal (6:8-15)

-This section focuses on Stephen, one of those 7 men selected to oversee the early church benevolence fund, and this is why I earlier said to not view this as an overly restrictive idea, because Stephen is “performing great wonder and signs.” It doesn’t say what those are, but it points us back to what we previously saw the 12 apostles doing (2:43, 5:12).

-Luke tells us that there’s a specific synagogue that’s comprised of Hellenistic Jews, people who hadn’t grown up in Jerusalem but had found their way back and likely would have been strongly opposed to someone speaking against what they’d worked so hard to maintain in their faith. The term “Freedmen” means it’s people who used to be slaves but had found a way to become free. 

-But Stephen was both full of the Spirit and wisdom! God used Stephen to speak the truth and continue telling this group about Jesus.

-Then begins a close parallel to the crucifixion of Jesus. Because they couldn’t come up with anything to say against him, they bribe some people AND broke the law by presenting false witnesses (contrary to the 10 commandments) 

-But what is Stephen like? An angel, someone who represents God, so whose side is God on in this conversation, Stephen, or these leaders who are disobeying the law?

-Don’t miss that Stephen is a Hellenistic Jew speaking to other Hellenistic Jews about Jesus! 

  • Stephen’s Sermon (7:1-53)

-After these accusations, Stephen gets a chance to respond, and he chooses the same approach as Peter has each previous part of this story: talk about Jesus.

-We need to think back to last week when I said that this whole section is pointing out the new temple reality in the church. Look back at 6:13 about their fake complaints about Stephen, they said that he was speaking against “this holy place and the law,” which tells us that their primary complaint about him was regarding the temple and obedience to the OT. 

-There’s some debate about a centering point of Stephen’s sermon, he’s obviously running through an overview of the OT, but is there any primary topic he’s focusing on that brings all the stories together? I found this summary from Patrick Schreiner helpful:

-Throughout this message, Stephen will glance to the temple, but fixate on Jesus, just as we should do with our study of God’s Word.

-He begins not at creation as our Bible does, but with Abraham. Did God appear to Abraham in a temple? No! While Abraham was an idol worshiper living in a foreign land, God appeared to him and called him to go to a new land that God would reveal to him.

-Abraham eventually has his son Isaac, who has 2 sons, one of whom is named Jacob. Jacob becomes the father of the 12 patriarchs who had a host of family dysfunction. One of those 12, Joseph is sold into slavery because of the jealousy of his brothers (do you remember last week when we saw the jealousy of the temple leaders). And God shows up again, but where is God showing up for Joseph? Not in Israel, this time in Egypt. God continues providing for Joseph and eventually lets him lead the nation.

-But it’s not just for Joseph, all of patriarchs had migrate to Egypt, and God continues to show up as the nation flourishes and multiplies, despite the oppression from the Egyptian king. 

-Up next in the story is Moses, who was spared by God, and eventually adopted by Pharoah’s daughter, which led to him being educated by the Egyptians. Stephen’s summary breaks Moses’s life down into 3 40-year periods of time.

-Vs. 23 tells us that Moses spent the first 40 years of his life in Egypt but eventually runs away to Midian because he killed an Egyptian who was beating an Israelite. Then we see a second 40-year stint in Midian where he becomes the father of 2 sons. And where does God show up this time? In Midian! It says an angel comes in the flame of the burning bush, but the voice of God spoke to him, and the place was made holy because of the presence of God. And this is all happening before the tabernacle or temple had been built! 

-Then we see the final 40 years in vs. 36, but notice what Stephen says marked Moses’s ministry: wonders and signs. And what had we seen previously from Stephen? The same thing! But the people missed this connection.

-One of the most important things to know about Moses is seen in vs. 37, as I’ve shared repeatedly in this series so far, God likes to work in similar ways in history, so Moses wasn’t the ultimate leader for God’s people, he was a shadow pointing to someone else. The people throughout the OT are looking for a prophet to come like Moses.

-But Moses was still God’s representative to His people, and how did the Israelites respond? Not with obedience! I love the way Stephen describes their sin: their hearts turned back to Egypt. They repeatedly accuse Moses of leading them out into the wilderness to kill them! Saying things like: we ate our fill in Egypt! They were slaves, do you really think they ate their fill? The same could be said for us! Our hearts keep looking to the world and what the world offers as the solution to our deepest desires. We’re tempted to try ignoring God and are unwilling to obey because we’re tempted to view God’s rules as slavery, when in reality it’s only by living obediently to God’s law that we can find true freedom. 

-I’ve read one author that said the book of Exodus talks about getting God’s people out of Egypt, but the rest of the Bible is getting Egypt out of God’s people. All of our hearts repeatedly run after sinful things instead of trusting God.

-Then Stephen turns to talk about the tabernacle (which eventually became the temple), but even in these buildings, the people knew that God couldn’t be constrained by them! Which is why he quotes from Isaiah. If even the earth and the heavens can’t fully contain God, why do they think a little building will?

-Stephen has just given a masterclass in how to read and interpret the OT, so before we get to Stephen’s application at the end of his sermon, I think it’s important for us to think about exactly what we’ve just seen Stephen do here. He was given a topic (in this case, God’s presence) and proceeds to give us a summary of the OT message about that topic. He knew the Bible well enough to trace that theme through the whole story. Could you do that? Could you pick a theme and trace it through the Bible? 

-If you’ve never done this before, this is referred to as “biblical theology” and there are entire book series dedicated to this idea! If you want to start exploring this, talk to me or Micah, we have multiple books on it, or just pick a theme and start reading the Bible and looking for it every day. Some of my favorite themes to explore are: temple, infertility, serpentine language, choosing the youngest or weakest, gardens, and eating. Basically, all it requires is carefully reading along the entire storyline of the Bible.

-God has created humans as storied creatures. We use stories to make sense of ourselves and the world, and apart from God’s story we won’t be able to make sense of anything in our lives. The Bible gives us 2 ways to live: either for God or against Him (with lots of little applications underneath them). And you can take any philosophy or thought and trace the story connecting it. I just got a new book this week from Tim Keller and his son Michael Keller that they were working on together before Tim died called The Stories We Live By which is exploring those exact stories people in the world try to live by today. It’s a similar theme to what we studied in our 9AM class last Spring through the study “Making Sense of Us,” and if none of those sound appealing to you, coming up I believe in the new year, we’re going to be offering a class through The Story of God, more info coming soon!

-There is a story that is true, and if we live into that story, our lives will finally start to make sense. The problem is we don’t get to be the hero or the main character, that’s Jesus’s role, our role is to faithfully follow after Him, which is just what Stephen does.

-Stephen ends his exploration of the OT with an application for his hearers. The application is that even though God was with His people, they were disobedient and unfaithful. Stiff-necked and uncircumcised is a low blow! That’s how the disobedient Israelites were referred to by God, and he’s subtly calling them Gentiles, the exact thing they had worked so hard to hold on to!

-Yet another theme from the OT is that every prophet God sent was persecuted, some of them were killed, and this group in front of Stephen even killed the Righteous One, they continually disobey the law, which is the final straw for this group.

  • Stephen’s Betrayal, Part 2 (7:54-60)

-The persecution of the church has been increasing in this book. At first, they were just thrown in prison, then they were threatened, then they were beaten, and it’s all been building to this point. 

-Once again, the temple theme comes up here. It was thought that when you went into the temple you were able to catch a glimpse of heaven, since the temple was God’s footstool, by Stephen catching a glimpse into heaven here it’s showing that he’s currently in the temple. But Stephen’s glimpse into the temple shows us something significant about Jesus. Generally, when the NT talks about Jesus in heaven it says He’s seated, why do you think this time it says that he’s standing?

-There are a number of different proposals as to the significance of Jesus standing. One is that it signifies that He’s on the move, the gospel is going to begin its spread out to the world in the very next chapter. Another option is that Jesus is standing in judgment, either in support of Stephen or against Stephen’s opponents (and maybe both!). A third option is that Jesus is standing to welcome Stephen into heaven as the church’s first martyr. I think there’s probably elements of all 3 in play here!

-What’s ironic about this section is now the Jews start following the law, at least partially. They’re supposed to bring someone outside the city to kill them, which is what they do to Stephen (this is also why Jesus was killed outside Jerusalem). And this is the first time we’re introduced to this new character: Saul, who will become the primary character in this story soon.

-While Jesus has full authority because the earth is His footstool, all Saul has authority over is guarding some garments, and until he falls at the feet of the Son of Man he will continue to live in darkness.

-As Stephen is dying, his last 2 phrases correspond to things Jesus said when He was dying. 

-You can see Jesus’s last moment on the cross in Luke 23, but here’s the 2 phrases that are paralleled by Stephen. Obviously, they’re not an exact copy, but it’s the same sentiment, similar enough that we should be thinking back to what had happened to Jesus! Just as the words weren’t exactly the same, Stephen isn’t exactly like Jesus, but it gives us a picture of what we should be aiming for: we’re supposed to work to be like Jesus in our daily lives, which also means we should expect a similar response to the one Jesus got.

-Jesus said that in John 15. One of the things Jesus promises us is hatred from the world. And whether we want to admit it or not, if Jesus has saved us we’re different from the world. We don’t think like the world, we don’t act like the world, we’re going to stick out and stand out from the world. The question for you is are you ok with that? Because that adds a level of difficulty and complexity to our lives. And friends, the world is going to be a constant source of friction for us until Jesus returns. Our hearts are daily going to be drawn back to Egypt. That’s why we need to remind ourselves of the story that’s really true.

-Following Jesus means we need to begin using a different scorecard for success. Instead of wanting bigger, better, and more, we need to look for faithfulness, fruitfulness, and intentionality. Faithfulness is aligning to God’s call for our lives, fruitfulness is demonstrating the fruit of the Spirit, and intentional is having a plan because we don’t subtly drift toward Christlikeness, it takes grace-drive effort empowered by the Holy Spirit. But what you’ll find on the other side of that pursuit is life that is truly worth living. A life where you no longer need to prove yourself, where you can find rest, and where Jesus will someday be standing to welcome you home!

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by mikethestrand on October 11, 2026  •  Permalink
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Posted by mikethestrand on October 11, 2026

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2026/10/11/acts-6-7-sermon-manuscript/

Acts 3-5 – Sermon Manuscript

-Have you ever had one of those experiences that you can’t stop talking about? Like finding a new restaurant that’s fantastic so you can’t wait to share it with everyone around you? There’s a restaurant that’s on a few of the islands of Hawaii that we visited on our honeymoon called Merriman’s. The primary reason we visited is some of best friends from when we lived in Cheyenne happened to have the last name of Merriman. Turned out it was one of those very fancy restaurants! The food was FANTASTIC, but you pay for it, which was hard to justify in my 26-year-old mind when Burger King was just down the road. But we did it anyway since we were on our honeymoon! Since then, my sister and her husband have visited it, my parents visited it when they were out there, and now you all have a restaurant to visit if you ever get out to Hawaii!

-What we’re going to see in today’s text is how these first disciples couldn’t stop talking about their time with Jesus. It affected everything in their lives, and no matter what other people said or thought, they were going to keep talking about Jesus, which serves as an example for us today. We’re going to cover 3-5, but we’re just going to read the first story together this morning for the sake of time.

READ/PRAY (3:1-10, pg. 968)

-These chapters continue this theme of the way the early church operated. Something would happen, Peter would preach, and would receive persecution. That happens twice in these chapter.

  1. A New Temple (3:1-26, 4:23-5:16)

-This is one of my favorite children’s songs that I remember singing in Sunday School when I was growing up, and it was mostly because (just like pretty much every kid’s song) there were actions to go along with it, which meant I didn’t need to sit still while we sang it. But even though I can still sing every word to that song, I didn’t understand the bigger point of what Luke is communicating to us through this story, and we need to understand what’s going on here to understand the rest of this section (which will carry into next week’s texts as well). What we’re going to see in this section is the fulfilment of something Jesus said in John 2.

-This story takes place right after Jesus’s first miracle of turning water into wine, then He leads His disciples down to Jerusalem during Passover and runs out all the money changers. When asked by the Jews how Jesus would prove Himself, here’s how He replies:

-One of the descriptions of the church in the NT is the body of Christ, which means we should be looking for a new temple that comes after Jesus’s resurrection, which is what we see here.

-Did you catch how frequently temple comes up in these opening verses? 4 times in the first 3 verses, and then twice more in the rest of this section. What we see Luke doing here is setting the stage for us to be thinking about this temple theme here, and looking back to last week’s text we also see that going to the temple was part of their daily rhythm (and that will come again later!)

-The story starts outside the temple, it says Peter and John were on their way to the temple. And that’s significant, this man wasn’t in the temple, he was placed outside because you were only allowed in if you were ritually pure, and a man who couldn’t walk wouldn’t be considered pure. But one of the things we see about Jesus’s ministry is those who were uncleaned couldn’t stain Jesus, around Him those who were unclean were suddenly healed. Through Jesus, the normal order is upended. Instead of sickness and death spreading, holiness becomes contagious, and the early Apostles were continuing that work. 

-Similar to healings we see in the Gospels, this man thinks too small. He wants enough money for a meal from them, but what they give him is a completely new life. Suddenly, this man no longer needs to beg, he’s able to work, and the first thing he does is praise God, and what’s the response of those who see this miracle? Awe and astonishment.

-This is exactly what God said would happen when His kingdom finally broke in. There are 2 OT passages that point to this reality, 1 of them is because of the word Luke uses to talk about the man “leaping,” he uses a unique Greek word that’s also used in the Greek translation of Isaiah 35:6. But that’s not the only one! Listen to the Lord’s description of this new day in Micah 4. And what do we see taking place in this passage? He’s assembling the lame, but just wait, because later on, we’ll read about the scattered being brough back together to comprise this new people of God. God’s sovereign hand means that everything He has promised will happen. We don’t need to live in fear; we need to live in trust and cling to the promises of His Word.

-Just as we saw during Pentecost a couple weeks ago, anytime a crowd gathers, Peter is going to take the opportunity to point people to Jesus. 

-He begins by calling out their sin, which is worthwhile for us to think about today. Sin tends to get downplayed because it feels antiquated or like such a negative thing. But this is reminding us that we can’t talk about the Good News without talking about the bad news. For the Good News to be Good, it has to have something bad to be compared to. What is it that Jesus has saved us from? Ourselves! Because we’re sinners we need someone outside us to rescue and redeem us, which is the Good News of what Jesus has done! That’s what Peter goes on to tell them:

-Seasons of refreshing come on the other side of faith in Him. I don’t have time to dig into this further, so I’ll throw it out there for you to go contemplate on your own this week, Anselm of Canterbury, who lived in the 11th century said that we believe in order to understand. You can’t understand what Jesus has done apart from faith in Him, the Bible tells us that it’s going to look stupid to the world, but through faith we can see and understand what God has done, which is where the seasons of refreshing come from. Where the world tells us to earn, Jesus says to trust. 

-The last thing I want to point out from Peter’s sermon is how God is in control of every event that takes place. We see that in vs. 18 and 24. Even these people’s sinful rebellion against God was used by God to accomplish His good plans. That doesn’t excuse the sin, but it gives us hope that even in our sin God is still accomplishing His good plans in our lives, too.

-One of the markers of this new temple reality is radical generosity, Micah preached about that last week. In this new temple, not only are the sick healed, but the poor become rich because the rich are becoming poor – what we see as a marker of this new temple is all the divisions the world uses to categorize people are obliterated in the church! Joseph (nickname Barnabas – how cool would it be to have that be your nickname), Levite (priests) he’ll come up again in the story as a companion to Paul. Apparently, Barnabas was very wealthy, wealthy enough to be able to sell a field and donate the money to the church, and I think the chapter break here is unfortunate, because we’re supposed to read the Ananias and Sapphira story in contrast to Barnabas.

-The people of God have always had 2 forces working against them: external and internal, we’ll look at the external forces in the next section, but Ananias and Sapphira are unfortunately in a long line of people want the benefits that come from following God without the change of life required to truly be in the fellowship.

-One of the things you may feel as you read this story is it’s not fair that they’re killed. They told a little white lie, was God right in killing them? And I understand that impulse! But I also want to give a slightly different perspective on this. I think we tend to view sin similarly to the way we view the speed limit. Could a police officer pull you over for going 1 mph over the limit? Yep! Will they? Probably not. We all know they judge on a sliding scale, just don’t go TOO far over the speed limit. Sin doesn’t work like that. Any sin, even something that, in our minds, is minor means we are guilty of treasons against God. Sin is nothing to be trifled with, sin is something to be killed, or else we run the risk of becoming killed by our sin. There’s a story in 2 Sam. 6 about a man named Uzzah who is accompanying the ark of the covenant on the way back to Jerusalem being carried on a cart by some cows, the cows trip as they’re walking and the ark starts to slip off the cart, so Uzzah reaches out to stop the cart from falling down and God immediately kills him. And the text tells us that King David got angry about it! I remember hearing an RC Sproul sermon about that text where he said that Uzzah’s problem was he thought he was holier than the ground that Ark was going to fall onto. God had told the people how they were supposed to carry the ark, and it wasn’t on a cart. They thought they could do it their own way instead of being completely obedient to God. Today, Christians tend to be way too careless with our sin, but it’s far better to die on this side of life than to be separated from God for eternity. Do not trifle with the one true God.

-Another warning for us from this passage comes from David Peterson in his commentary on this text: Last week we saw the joy that comes from the church sharing everything they own, this week we see the warning if we don’t share what we’ve been given.

-We also need to interpret this in the same lens we’ve seen the rest of this, as part of the new temple. Patrick Schreiner writes: 

-What that means is that we cannot let our personal piety (practice of holiness) outstrip the depth of your character. Stop comparing your journey with Christ to someone else and focus instead on Jesus. What has He called you to pursue in this stage of your life and growth? There are always more areas for us to grow in, which one is God calling on you right now?

-People respond to this section correctly! Fear. If this God will kill people for disobedience, why would anyone else follow Him? And this seems to lead us to a contradiction in the text, because this verse says no one else dared to join, and then immediately says that more and more people were joining. 

-People realized that this group wasn’t something to be taken lightly, yet they couldn’t help but be drawn in by the way they lived and cared for each other. The bar of entry is high, it requires a complete change of your life, but what you get on the other side makes any loss completely worthwhile. Which is demonstrated by the next verses:

-Just a shadow was all it took for people to be healed and think back to what we read in Micah 4, God promised that a day was coming when he would gather the scattered and turn the lame into a remnant of followers. What’s taking place here? The lame are being gathered together and healed, made new.

-One of the things we saw at the beginning of this study was also that geography plays a role: Jesus’s message is starting to spread outside Jerusalem

  • New Leaders (4:1-22, 5:17-40)

-I said previously that the church faces pressures from both internal and external forces, we’ve looked at the internal with people who want the recognition of being a part of the community without having a transformed heart. This section looks at one of the external forces that stands against the church, and it follows the temple theme we’ve seen. Each time God moves, we can expect that Satan will do everything he can to fight back against that move. Beginning in chpt. 4, (vs. 1, 5) we see that the supposed leaders of the temple are following the same path as Ananias and Sapphira. I literally LOLed when I read this summary about the leaders in Patrick Schreiner’s commentary:

-Luke lists all the leaders of the temple area here, and do you see the problem they’re going to confront? They’re annoyed! They’re operating under an old idea that’s no longer effective and all their attempts to stop this new movement are going to lead to what we see in vs. 4.

-They’re viewing Peter & John as a threat to the status quo, which means their best option is to throw them in prison, little do they realize that by throwing them in prison, they’re just furthering the spread of the gospel.

-After throwing them in prison for a night, the convene the council once again to interrogate these 2 men, and I think their question gives insight into what they’re concerned about: by what power or what name. Those would have almost been synonymous at this time, you would call on the name of a god to bless your work, so they want to find out what this new religion is all about.

-And Peter jumps at the opportunity. Friends, this is a great reminder for us! Do you take advantage of opportunities to tell people about Jesus when they come up? Do you tell your neighbors and coworkers why you can’t do things on Sunday morning because church is a priority for your family? Do you take advantage of sharing with others why you treat people differently? 

-Phil preached about the Pentecost event, which was a one-time thing where all the believers were indwelled with the HS, but here we see a different kind of filling that can also be true of us today! 

-What I love about Peter’s response is he cuts straight to the heart of the issue: are you upset with us about a good deed done to this disabled man? Do these leaders understand what they’re doing? Writing in the late 4th century, an early church father named Chrysostom said: “these leaders not only run to do murder but also make a crime of doing good deeds.”

-I wish we could take the entire sermon to dig into vs. 13, that will have to be for a future sermon but notice what shocks the leaders. It’s not their education, it’s not their training, it’s not their work ethic, it’s not their financial portfolio, it’s their boldness. And where did that boldness come from? Being with Jesus. That tells us 2 things for us today: first, we need to be with Jesus! Second, being with Jesus needs to have ripple effects into our daily lives.

-And even these leaders who are upset about what’s going on have to admit that what Peter and John have done is a good thing, which once again leads to a question for us today. Even if people don’t like our politics, our ethics, or our beliefs, can they admit that good things are happening because of us?

-Peter and John won’t back down. They’ve seen something that’s completely transformed them over these past couple of months. 

-This is why it’s so important for us to be speaking about what Jesus has done and is doing in our lives. It’s not to brag about yourself, it’s because our job is to be witnesses to the ways God is working and moving around us. As we learn and grow more like Jesus, we have the privilege of sharing that with others, and it doesn’t matter if they know Jesus yet or not! The message is the same to both groups! Jesus is Lord!

-One of my biggest questions on this text was vs. 22. Why does Luke tell us this guys age? We don’t even know his name! Think back to what I said the first week of this sermon: God has expanded his plans to reconstitute a new Isreal that’s made up of people from every tribe, tongue, and nation. I think that (once again) what Patrick Schreiner says here is incredibly helpful: 

Isn’t our God amazing in the way that He makes sure that His plans will happen?

-That’s not the only time the apostles are put in prison! Starting in 5:17 we see that now the Sadducees are jealous of the increasing influence of the apostles, so this time instead of just taking Peter & John, they arrest them all. And their incompetence continues, because even the jail can’t hold them back! What’s most ironic about this event is the Sadducees didn’t believe in angels, so God used something they didn’t even believe in to thwart their plans!

-And their incompetence get worse because they can’t figure out what happened to them! And as they’re trying to figure out what to do, someone tells them that the apostles are right back doing what they were doing before, and do you notice what it says about fear? The apostles aren’t scared of anything, but the supposed leaders of the temple are afraid of the people!

-Their frustration continues, and they accuse the apostles of filling the whole city with their teaching and accusing them of telling others that they’re guilty, which they are! 

-And Peter, as the representative of all the apostles tells them: we’re going to obey God, regardless of what these “leaders” ask them to do. They’re going to continue acting as God’s witnesses, sharing over and over what God has done in their lives.

-And the whole leadership group doesn’t like that! They’re used to being the ones in charge, the ones who enforce the rules, and this new group of people is threatening their power. Which means they want to do to them what they did to Jesus: kill them. That would deal with the problem! But 1 person changes their minds: Gamaliel (who was also Paul’s teacher). He shares the story of 2 other uprisings that fell flat after their leader died, so he advises caution in fighting against them.

-This isn’t something that’s true in all times and places, there are examples of other people taking this approach later in church history and it led to all sorts of problems. We have God’s complete revelation today; we don’t need to test things out anymore! We have God’s Word and the Spirit’s power within us to help us understand what is from the Lord, and what is from Satan.

  • The Result: Witnessing to Jesus (5:41-42)

-This section ends with the consequences of the old leaders of the temple trying to stamp out this new group. The true leaders rejoice in their suffering and continue serving as faithful witnesses.

-2 final realities for us today from these last 2 verses. First, do we rejoice when we’re treated shamefully for the sake of Jesus? This can look different for us depending on where we live or work. It could be in getting passed over for a promotion, it could be losing opportunities for more money because you refuse to cut corners, it could be not getting invited to the fun parties because you’re a believer. Do you rejoice in those moments or complain?

-Second, is vs. 42 true about your daily life? Are you daily looking for opportunities to grow closer to Jesus, and share about how to do that with others? I love the wording Luke uses here, he says they were teaching and (my translation) is “gospeling” that Jesus is the Messiah, he uses a verbal form of the Greek word for gospel (good news).

-I mentioned this idea earlier, but I want to land the plane on it: all of us need the truths of the gospel to soak deeper into our lives every single day. We don’t ever grow beyond digging into the realities of the gospel, the gospel message isn’t just to get us across some spiritual line and then move on to other things, we need to be reminded of the gospel every day of our lives because that’s what we’re supposed to be witnesses to. We don’t ever grow beyond needing to be reminded of the implications of this good news, we need to take time every day to give praise to God for the fact that we’re saved. And then we tell everyone around us that they can have that same freedom, joy, and seasons of refreshing in their lives: both believers and unbelievers. So for all of you: trust in the good news that Jesus is the Messiah! Live as if that’s true being generous with every gift God has given you and boldly tell others that the reason you live that way is because of Jesus.

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by mikethestrand on October 4, 2026  •  Permalink
Posted in Bible, Blog, Church, Relationships, Sermon, Worship
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Posted by mikethestrand on October 4, 2026

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2026/10/04/acts-3-5-sermon-manuscript/

Acts 1 – Sermon Manuscript

-New series in a new book. Going through it quickly this Fall, we’ll come back and dig into it a little more deeply someday in the future, but the purpose of this series is to help us trace the storyline of the book of Acts. Each year I pick a “word of the year” for our church, and this year’s word is “Witness” which is also one of our core values. My hope for us from this book is that our church grows in our witness to the world around us as we see the ways the early church witnessed to the implications of Jesus’s resurrection. And just so you hear it this week: God has a tendency to use normal people who are living normal lives do accomplish extraordinary things. You don’t need a million YT followers, you just need to be faithful to speaking what God has done in your life. Our job today is the same as the early disciples, we’re called the translate the gospel, which means becoming fluent in bringing Jesus into every situation we encounter.

-Hopefully you picked up a Scripture notebook on your way in, if you’re planning to stick around for the series. We buy those each time we go through a new book of the Bible for you to take notes in, and then keep, and then go back in the future and see what God taught you through our study of this book together. Also, a special welcome 4th graders who are here now: we’re thrilled you’re here, and I hope you take good notes in your new Bible!

-One of the biggest notes for us as we read narrative in the Bible is not everything is directly applicable to our lives. For example, in today’s text, we’re going to read about the disciples casting lots, and we’ll read about Judas committing suicide. Those aren’t stories that we’re supposed to copy in our lives today. The stories in the Bible reflect real events with real people and some of them serve as examples of what we shouldn’t do in our lives.

-Some key themes to look out for each week: Jesus is the main character, which is true of every book of the Bible. It all flows out from His fulfillment of the Father’s plan, as demonstrated through the power of the HS. If you didn’t hear that, each person of the Trinity is intimately involved in this story.

-God’s work going out is connected to the God’s Word going out. We looked at this a couple weeks ago in Acts 6 where another pivotal moment in the early church led to the Word of God spreading throughout His people.

-The last theme (and the title of this series) is Jesus’s witnesses spreading 3 ways: through HS indwelling, leading to salvation, establishment of churches.

READ/PRAY (pg. 966)

-Luke gives us an introduction to this book that sets us up for the rest of the book

-It also connects us back to his “first narrative” the Gospel of Luke, so let’s look back at that to see how Luke began that book:

-Original eyewitnesses (there we get that again), servants of the WORD

-Know the certainty: our faith isn’t on empty speculation, but verifiable facts and stories. And if you think about it, each time we read the Bible, we join the 2nd generation of Christians, we’re relying on the eyewitness testimony that we read and hold in our hands!

-Theophilus is likely Luke’s financial benefactor (name means loved by God, common 1st century name) 

-Focus on Jesus, Holy Spirit, convincing proofs (what do you think those were?)

  1. Witnesses Require Power (1-11)

-Focus on Jerusalem, central to God’s plans throughout history, also the place where He was killed. 

-Baptism with the HS, as I said earlier, the expansion of the HS is a theme we’ll trace throughout the book. Today, there’s an intimate connection between water baptism and baptism of the HS, we can’t separate those events out, but God is doing something different here in the early church.

-Vs. 6 the apostles tend to get a bad rap for this question, and there a sense where we look at them as ignorant or narrowly focused, but look back at vs. 3, what had Jesus been talking to them about? The Kingdom of God! The issue wasn’t that they were asking about the kingdom, the issue was the timing.

-But this bears some thinking about for us today. A theologian I enjoy has said the temptation is for us to be Acts 1:6 Christians, when Jesus says we need to be Acts 1:8 Christians. What does that mean? The temptation is always to look to worldly means for salvation, but what Jesus offers is something that is above and beyond this world. Chuck Colson used to say, “Salvation won’t arrive on Air Force One.” What Jesus offers is something that in the world’s eyes is as insignificant as a mustard seed, but over time grows and grows and impacts and influences every sphere of the world, that’s what the church is going to do.

-One of the realities about being a witness to Jesus is that you need to live like someone who has seen the resurrected Lord. It’s not enough to go through a mental checklist of beliefs, it requires a holistic life change that affects everything about you: what you say, how you work, how you spend your time and even your money. Jesus requires a complete reorientation of everything you do.

-And it starts with the indwelling power of the HS that spiritually raises us from death to life and allows us to follow after Jesus, then once the Holy Spirit lives in us, we get to be His witnesses, and this has both geographical and political implications. Geographical: it describes the spread of the church and gives a basic outline to the rest of the book (first chapters center on Jerusalem, expand to the surrounding nations, then ends in Rome), but politically it signifies that Jesus’s kingdom isn’t bound by the same national boundaries as the surrounding nations. Something different is taking place in Jesus’s kingdom that can’t and won’t be contained or restrained by other nations and civilizations.

-And one of the new things I learned about this call from God this week is that when Jesus is calling them witnesses, He’s pointing back to a Messianic prophecy from Isaiah (which also tells us something about this book, this new covenant people will re-enact some of the suffering servant ideas found in Isaiah).  

-Isaiah (through the guidance of the HS) is saying that when God’s salvation comes, His people will serve as the witnesses to this salvation, so when Jesus picks this up, He’s saying that what Isaiah spoke about is taking place among this new covenant people called the church. 

-This is the only account of the ascension in the Bible, which contains allusions to previous OT experiences (Elijah & Elisha), and the cloud covering connects to both the transfiguration and theophanies (encounters with God) in the OT (Luke 9:34 “While he was saying this, a cloud appeared and overshadowed them. They became afraid as they entered the cloud. 35 Then a voice came from the cloud, saying, “This is my Son, the Chosen One; listen to him!”) and theophanies like in Ex. 19:9 “The Lord said to Moses, “I am going to come to you in a dense cloud, so that the people will hear when I speak with you and will always believe you.”

-Another piece the cloud cover and Him the angels saying “Come back the same way” points us back to (Dan. 7) isn’t it incredible how the Bible connects together?

-2 angels question shakes the disciples out of their stupor, they’d already been giving their marching orders, the question was: were they going to pursue it?

  • Witnesses Require God’s Plans (12-26)

-They obey, at least initially! They go to Jerusalem to wait for the arrival of the HS. 

-One of the biggest issues throughout the Bible is the lack of obedience to God’s commands. It began in the garden, it continued to their kids, continued with Noah, continued even with the tower of Babel. In order to read and interpret the book of Acts properly, we need to know all these stories from the Bible! God often works in similar patterns and themes throughout the biblical storyline (as we’ve already seen a couple times in this story), and if we can bring those stories to mind, it will help us understand what’s taking place here. We see a similar idea here: God’s initial plan is to have Adam & Eve expand the garden so it covers the whole earth, the people are supposed to spread out. But their disobedience culminates in the tower of Babel where they are going to build a tower to get them to the realm of the gods and to ensure they never needed to scatter out, so God confuses their language and forces them to scatter! We see something similar happening here, Jesus tells them to wait, and then scatter, we’ll have to see if they do!

-The list of the apostles connect back to Luke 6, where Luke used the same list to talk about them, but back then it included Judas Isacariot who betrayed Jesus and then killed himself (as we read earlier), they’re down to 11, which becomes an issue in a bit.

-But do you notice what they’re spending their time doing: gathering to pray. Asking God to strengthen them and move in them, and prayer will come up again, so keep it in mind.

-And others were with them (next verse says there were about 120 of them – become a church member!), women who followed Jesus, including His mother and brothers. The last time the brothers were listed they were trying to stop Jesus. Apparently, they saw something that changed their mind. And I don’t know about you, but I have 2 sisters, I don’t think anyone could ever convince me they’re God in flesh (another reason to believe in Jesus) 

–16 Peter is the focus of these first chapters, we’ll trace his early ministry until we meet Paul “It was necessary” Peter begins by acknowledging God’s sovereign hand even in Judas’s betrayal. And you may be here facing your own betrayal: work, family, friends, even in the church! And this text reminds us that God sees you, knows the pain, and wants you to look to His Son. I was reminded this week of Heb. 12:2 “keeping our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith. For the joy that lay before him, he endured the cross, despising the shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.” Did you see that what Jesus was focused on in the midst of his death on the cross was the joy on the other side of it. The way Jesus could face betrayal was because He knew what was on the other side of it. And church, the reason we can face betrayals today is because we know what joy is coming someday. It might not be today or tomorrow, but someday it will all be worth it. 

-God is good, and His plans are good, even when they lead us through the darkest valley, even when it means His only begotten Son hanging on the cross and bearing the weight and penalty for the sins of the world that was in rebellion against Him. In the midst of that grief, He looked forward to the joy of His bride united back together to Him.

-This next section is a parenthetical note from Luke about what happened to Judas, pretty self-explanatory, so we’ll jump down to vs. 21

-What’s interesting is there are very strict qualifications for who is fit to serve in this role. It has to be someone who was an eyewitness to every event of Jesus’s ministry, which is why we believe that this church office of Apostle doesn’t exist today: no one else can give eyewitness testimony to all of Jesus’s earthly ministry. 

-Why do you think they needed to do this? We don’t see any place where Jesus says they needed to be 12, we’ve already seen there’s other that were also with them. AND Peter seems to be taking the immediate context of his Psalm quotes and stretching them a little bit beyond what they’re supposed to mean. So let’s talk about what Peter is doing.

-First, we need to stop claiming to read the Bible “literally.” The Bible isn’t intended to be read literally, one of my favorite hermeneutics professors says we’re supposed to read it “literarily” according to the genre that it’s in (the Bible is more like a library than a book). But by reading it literarily, we’re also supposed to read it as pointing us to Jesus. He is the main character of the whole story, the OT points to Him, the NT points back to Him, which means we constantly need to be asking the question: how does this text point us to Jesus? What Peter is doing is reading and interpreting David’s Psalms of complaint and lament through the lens of Jesus and saying what David experienced point to and are fulfilled in the experience Jesus had during His time on Earth. 

-Which gets us to the bigger biblical theology picture of what is taking place: Jesus is the true Israel who was faithful in every area that Israel failed (wilderness wanderings, temptations). After coming through the wilderness, Jesus chose 12 apostles as the new patriarchs of His movement (Luke 22:30“And you will sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel.”), and now that Christ’s work is done, the apostles realize they need to fill the vacancy of this new movement of God’s people called “the church” to be able to sit on those thrones when Jesus comes back. Because Jesus is the focus and direction of the whole Bible, His arrival literally changes everything! We need to read the Bible with our focus on Him. I love what Spurgeon said about preaching: preach the text and then make a beeline for Jesus! Our impulse as Christians today needs to be to be looking for Jesus throughout the whole Bible, and if the focus is on anything else, then it’s wrong. 

-One other thing this story is revealing is the delegated authority Jesus gave to these 12. The Gospel and beginning verses of this show us Jesus’s work in the church, now the focus is shifting to the new generation of leaders who have been tasked by Jesus with leading the church, His new people that will eventually comprise every tribe and tongue and nation, and that delegated authority is why we’re here today.

-Luke continues the story in vs. 23: either there were only 2 people who fit the criteria of seeing all of Jesus’s earthly ministry, or they decided together which 2 they wanted, but they were left with Joseph and Matthias. And then, importantly, they took more time to pray. Each time a new movement or direction of the church is brought up, the disciples take time to pray, which is a good reminder for us to spend time in prayer before we (individually and corporately) are making decisions. And don’t forget that the prayer listed here is communal: all of them gathering together to pray.

-And this is a specific prayer: God knows everything, including what the early church needs, so they ask Him to reveal which of these 2 should take the place of Judas, and the Greek is a play on words: Judas left his place as an apostle to go to his own place. This is similar to the Fall in Gen. 3, where Adam & Eve left their rightful place as images of God, and went to their own place of rebellion against God. This is another example in Scripture of the reminder that there are only 2 ways to live: either for God or against Him.

-After praying, they proceed to cast lots. Now there’s a whole bunch of discussion that we can have about this! Is this something we should do today, anytime we need to pick elders we should find 2 men, pray, then cast lots? Is this God endorsing gambling?

-First, there is actually biblical precedent for this move. Prov. 16:33 says: 

-So this isn’t outside of God’s control. But we also have examples from the OT where the people cast lots, one example is when the land is being portioned out to Israelites, they cast lots to determine which part of the land they entered (Josh. 18:6). This may be a connection back to that story as the new symbolic Israel is also chosen by lots, or it might just be that this was the way God worked at the time! 

-But the second and bigger issue is the timing of this, and it’s what makes us today different from the disciples then: we have the Holy Spirit, and one of the descriptions of the HS in the NT is a guide, He leads us towards holiness and righteousness. Now, little spoiler, the HS will come down in power on the disciples next week, but today’s text occurs before that indwelling.

-One last comment on this: this is the only time in the whole Bible Matthias is named. It doesn’t mean that he doesn’t matter, but it’s another reminder that the focus of this is Jesus, not the apostles! AND this is a bit of a spoiler, but one of my favorite phrases in this book comes after the indwelling of the HS in Acts 15: 

-Last week, I got a question come in that I saved for this week because it gets to this text. The question was: how do we determine the voice of God?

-And this text is working to answer that, even though it’s in a different era than we’re in today. So, for us today: how do we determine what God’s calling us to? There’s a little book that came out in 2009 that was so helpful for me that helped me answer this question, because so many times people I talked to referred to some mystical experience that I couldn’t duplicate! And the guidance Kevin says in this book is: live a holy life where you seek God above everything else, live in a church community, pray, and then trust that God will work in whatever you’re doing (as long as it’s not sin). 

-One way I’ve seen this in my life is with my dad when my family moved to MN. He was asked 3 separate times before he accepted the job, and each time he was asked, he brought it to the elders and submitted it to them. He told me that he needed to practice what he preached, and he was tired of people leaving the church without talking to anyone in leadership, and he refused to do that. The third time he was asked, the elders decided that “it seemed good to the HS and them.”

  • What Are You A Witness To?

-Over the next 3 months we’re going to be exploring together what it looks like for us to grow as witnesses in every area of our lives. We just started a 9AM class on parenting, and one of the realities is we’re supposed to be witnesses even in our parenting. Every single one of us witnesses to something in our lives, and Jesus’s invitation to us is for us to continually point people to Him. Now, when I hear that, it blows my mind, because I think that God had to have a better option for spreading His message! He willingly chooses broken, messed up people like you and me as His witnesses.

-And I think this is a growth area for our church. One of the descriptions I was told about our church when I came was that most people that walk into our church came in with well-worn Bibles, which means we haven’t been good at inviting unbelievers in. So, my prayer this Fall is that we as a church grow in being faithful witnesses in every area of our lives. In his book The Rise of Christianity, Rodney Stark, a sociologist (who at the time of writing this book wasn’t a Christian) argues that Christianity’s growth followed typical human impulses without needing any spiritual influence. It’s a fascinating book that I think points to some of the normal ways God works. But one of the things he says in this book is: 

-What that means is we as Christians need to be inviting others into our relational sphere on a regular basis. Invite unbelievers to your LG, invite them over for a meal, have them rub shoulders with your friends at church. I still believe that relationships are the best way for us to be witnesses to others. Even coming up on October 24, we’ve got our annual Fall Fest, which is intentionally designed to be an outreach event! Invite your friends, neighbors, coworkers to join us! And then continue inviting them to join us until they start to see the realities of who Jesus is!

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by mikethestrand on September 13, 2026  •  Permalink
Posted in Bible, Blog, Church, History, Life, Sermon, Worship
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Posted by mikethestrand on September 13, 2026

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2026/09/13/acts-1-sermon-manuscript/

How to Disagree – Sermon Manuscript

Matt. 5:21-26, 18:15-20; Rom. 12:9-18; Titus 3:8-11; 1 Thess. 5:12-22

-Our world today seems to be dividing and fracturing at an ever-increasing rate. Fighting seems to be the new normal both online and IRL, and I think that COVID exacerbated these divisions. We forgot how to disagree, we forgot how to be charitable, and the church unfortunately wasn’t immune from those same issues. Masks became symbols of either oppression or freedom, medical choices became markers of orthodoxy, and meeting together in person determined your entire political ideology (at least that’s what I was told from someone). An articlefrom 2018 found that political disagreements made Thanksgiving meals shorter by anywhere from 30-50 minutes. I know 2018 feels like yesterday, but that’s 8 years ago now, I would have to guess the problem is worse today.

-Does anyone know why I took this selfie, or the significance of that pub behind me? That is the pub where a group called “The Inklings” met, CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien would gather there regularly to share their writings and discuss various books or other things. Another one of the people there was George Watson who said Lewis taught him the art of disagreement: 

-We, as a church, largely do this well! Which is why this is timely to talk about this: a good time to talk about disagreeing is before it happens, so that when it does happen you’re all on the same page.

-Remember to text in questions, and today we’ll have a live answering time at the end of the sermon. I’m just going to give you a waterfall of passages because I want the weight of God’s call to land on us this morning. Once we’ve gone through these texts, Micah’s going to share with us from a counselors perspective, and then Phil will join us both for some live Q&A to end this series!

PRAY

  1. The Final Apologetic:

-Francis Schaeffer said the final Christian apologetic is found in John 13, they’ll know we’re Christians by our love for each other (John 13:35). The world is said to judge whether or not we’re Christians by our love for each other. I believe that the only way to push through disagreement is if you love someone, and specifically love them enough to deal with issues together.

-If we’re saved, there are implications for our lives, which means there are things in our lives that we’ll need to change. There are many lists in the NT of character traits that we’re supposed to take on, I want to look at just 1 of them from Rom. 12, and I love the way the CSB titles this section: Christian ethics. There are a number of things for us to take away from this text, but do you see how it begins with love? Let love be without hypocrisy, or some translations say let love be genuine or sincere, and not only be genuine and real, but we’re also commanded to love each other deeply, like family. That’s why I will often talk about us being a church family.

-Take the lead in honoring. (some translations: outdo one another). What do you think that would look like? It certainly wouldn’t mean you always assume the worst about a fellow Christian! I heard a pastor onetime say this is the only place where Christians should be competitive! Don’t let someone else outdo you in showing honor!

-Bless those who persecute you: if someone is speaking bad about you, what’s your response? To look to bless them! This isn’t where we’re supposed to outdo each other!

-Rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep. Friends, come as you really are here with all the joys and sorrows at once. Story of our miscarriage.

-Live in harmony: what does that look like? As a musician I like that idea: harmony is what makes music interesting, different but complementary notes. Same in the church: difference is what makes the church interesting. 

-Finally, vs. 18: As much as you can, live at peace. What is your impulse when some wrongs you? One of the commitments I’ve tried to make in ministry is that when someone has an issue with me that I’m made aware of, I will move toward the person and the situation – within reason! I’ve had to learn that I can’t be everyone’s best friend (trust me, that’s been a long hard lesson!). 

-Here’s part of the difficulty in loving someone when it comes to a disagreement, in Eph. 4:15, Paul says we’re to speak the truth in love, which is hard to do! People tend to either just “love” or just speak the truth, it’s hard to find that line!

-Tim Keller quote. Since we’re in Christ and supposed to be like Him, this is supposed to be true of us too: speaking the truth in love to each other

  • The Unity of the Spirit 

-One of my weekly prayers for our church is Eph. 1:3, which is way we’re commanded to walk worthy of our calling. It means we need to make EVERY effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.

-Unity, not uniformity. Where’s the fun if everyone is exactly the same? The fact that we have different passions interests and gifts means we all have something new we can learn! People are endlessly fascinating if you just take the time to sit down and listen and ask good questions of them. But it takes work!

-Jesus also gave us instructions for how we’re supposed to approach conflict. One of the most quoted passages that we need to look at in relation to this is Matt. 18, the church discipline passage. But 1 preliminary remark before we look at it: the goal of each step in this process is reconciliation and restoration, not penalization. 

-Begins 1 on 1. If someone sins against you – not just hurts your feelings, although to keep the relationship solid, you should also share if your feelings are hurt. But friends, be quick to overlook offenses, and always assume the best!

-Then it moves from there to bringing someone else in (again: if it’s sin). But do you see this move is ONLY after you’ve gone to the person you’re having an issue with? How quickly do people jump to talking to other people BEFORE they’ve talked to the person?

-One additional step that can be taken, and most churches I’ve been a part of have practiced discipline this way, is before it’s brought to the whole church, it’s brought to the elders for 1 last attempt at restitution.

-Then, it’s presented to the whole church. And one note on this: again, this isn’t punitive, we’re not just trying to air someone’s dirty laundry, but if a process gets to this point, we’re (rightly) questioning that person’s salvation. The church is called to be holy, we can’t let sin go unchecked in our midst. 

-Another note, how does the text say to treat this person? Like a Gentile or a tax collector, aka an enemy. But how does Jesus tell us to treat our enemies? To love them! So we don’t ignore someone under discipline, but we do treat them like an unbeliever, which means we look to share Jesus with them so that they can be restored! Which means if we ever get to this place as a church, and that person repents, we welcome them back with open arms.

-Binding and loosing is what’s given to the church, this is related to the affirming or denying someone’s salvation. Now, that can be taken too far as RCC has done, but there is a role for the church to play in recognizing when someone is saved (baptism, the Lord’s Supper, membership). If someone acts like an unbeliever, the church should treat them like one. We should not be more gracious than God, if we refuse to hold others accountable for their actions, we’re disobeying God.

-2 or 3: church discipline

-But Jesus also tells us that not only is it on us to call out someone else’s sin when we’re the one sinned against, we’re also supposed to go to someone else when they’re upset with us! This passage begins with a matter of the heart. Murder doesn’t come from nowhere, it comes from a heart that hates others, which means we need to be very careful in how we think about and talk about others, we need to keep short accounts. This says that our relationships with each other have a higher priority than our worship. If we come to worship God but have grudges against other people in the body of Christ, we’re supposed to stop worshipping and start reconciling! 

-Next: Titus 3: in this text, we see what we’re supposed to devote our lives to: good works. This isn’t a works-based salvation, but when we’re saved we’re saved SO THAT we can do good works. 

-As far as disagreements, this text tells us there are some things that aren’t even worth having a disagreement about, Paul calls them “foolish debates” here, things that don’t affect the gospel. For example, there was a guy at one church I served that claimed to have determined the day Jesus was coming back based on his study of astrology (stars). If my memory is right, we all missed it, because it was supposed to be last October. Sometimes debates can be fun, but don’t use that as tools to tear down others or divide the church. Another one Paul talks about is “matters of the law” – our job isn’t to hold others accountable for our convictions. Here’s one from my life: what school should Christians send their kids to? Or can Christians watch movies? If they can, what rating do they need to be below? Friends, there’s lots of room for different approaches to some of these ways of living that don’t slide into sin!

-Paul uses the same approach that Jesus used: warn them once, warn them a second time, and then treat them as an unbeliever.

-In his commentary on this section, Bob Yarbrough helpful summarizes: That’s supposed to be descriptive of us: we’re supposed to be the peacemakers.

-The final passage we’ll look at today is from 1 Thess. 5.

-First, one way of ensuring unity is by recognizing and affirming leaders in the church. Similar to what we saw last week from Heb. 13:17. That is one way that we are able to “be at peace together”

-We’re also exhorted to work at helping each person based on what they specifically need. We see 4 different things here: warn the idle, comfort the discouraged, help the weak, and be patient with all. Laziness isn’t allowed in the church, we’re all supposed to be contributing from our gifts. If someone’s discouraged, we’re supposed to look for ways to come alongside them. If someone is weak, we help where we can, and we need to be patient with everyone. That one makes me chuckle because I feel like it’s easy to get impatient with everyone at some point!

-Always pursue what is good individually and corporately, and then he goes on to list how we’re supposed to do that, and every verb he uses is 2ndperson plural, these are things we’re supposed to do together, not individually. Is that true of us?

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by mikethestrand on September 6, 2026  •  Permalink
Posted in Bible, Life, Relationships, Sermon, Theology
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Posted by mikethestrand on September 6, 2026

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2026/09/06/how-to-disagree-sermon-manuscript/

Deacons – Sermon Manuscript

-Sleeping bags have changed since I grew up! When my family went camping, or weren’t sleeping in our beds, we had this giant fabric sleeping bags that were always very neatly rolled back up and tied off so they’d be ready to go for the next camping trip. Today’s sleeping bags aren’t taken care of the same way. Today’s sleeping bags are all made of a synthetic material that makes you slide around everywhere, and they all come in this mummy style which is great for 1 person to stay warm, but not as enjoyable for a married couple.

-These new sleeping bags are meant to be packed a little differently (and much less carefully. You get 1 end in, and then just keep shoving until the sleeping bags all stuffed in!

-This sermon series is a little bit like packing these new sleeping bags. I’m trying to pack in so much information and history into 1 sermon, which means there’s only so far we can go with each part I’m talking about. So if you have questions about anything that’s brought up, please text this number on the screen.

-Today, we’re looking at the church office of Deacon, which was officially added to our bylaws as a church this past June. But that doesn’t mean we’ve answered all the questions about this office, or that we have specifics around what this office is and looks like for us as a church. And today’s sermon is my attempt to answer why it’s difficult to have specifics about this office. I’m also working on a position paper for our church to define why we have the offices we do, as well as what those offices focus on for our church family.

READ/PRAY (971, 1052)

I preached on both church offices in January ’25, so if you were here then, this will be some repetition, but that’s ok! I got a question about this particular office, and I’d forgotten what I preached about, which means it’s worth a repeat (at least for me!)

  1. Church Politics

-Most people I know either roll their eyes or gear up for a fight when I say something like “church politics,” but it doesn’t need to be that way! All we’re talking about when I say this is the way the church governs itself, because there needs to be some way to keep order and accountability across an organization. 

-What makes the church unique is 2 things: it inverts the typical power structures, and we rely on an ancient text called “the Bible” to serve as our guide. All church political structures appeal to the Bible to support their position. As for the inversion of the power structures, instead of viewing movement as “upward” in an organization, I think we need to view it as a move “downward,” because the call of Jesus is to grow in the service of others.

-I’ve shared this story before, but my first pastoral ministry was in Cheyenne, WY (which is in the part of the state that looks like Nebraska). Cheyenne is home to FE Warren AFB, and I learned quickly that military leadership is different than leadership modeled after Jesus. I was told from one military leader (who was also an elder) that Jesus’s leadership command to serve others was for a different time period, but not today. I disagreed then; I disagree now!

-There are 3 primary ways of organizing the church today:

-Episcopalian (Episcopal and RCC) argue more for a natural outgrowth from the Bible instead of explicit biblical texts. Make a big deal out of the “bishop” title and make it distinct from elder (I, and many other scholars, would argue they’re synonymous) 

-Presbyterian: church elects elders (called a session), those elders are part of a “Presbytery” (state, city) (taken from GRK), some of the elders from the Presbytery are a part of the General Assembly (nation)

-Congregational: congregation itself is the highest governing body of the church, from the doctrine of the priesthood of ALL believers (1 Pet. 2:9), corresponds to the way the early church functions (things are presented to the whole church), but among congregational there is a WIDE variety of thoughts and opinions, here’s the list of examples from Grudem’s Systematic Theology.

-I like to describe myself as an aspiring ecclesiologist, that is someone who studies the doctrine of the church. I love the church, I’m committed to the church, and I want to see the church flourish around us. So as I’ve studied and read over the years, I’ve landed on some language that I like to describe the way our church functions. If you’ve been coming for a while, you should have heard this before, but it is: Christ ruled, Elder led, Deacon served, Congregationally governed. I’m sure I stole all those pieces from somewhere, but I’ve lost track of where I found it! 

-I tried to make it look like Grudem’s chart here:

-First and foremost: Christ ruled. This cuts against much of the American ideal because we don’t like Kings! But for Christians it’s a different story, we serve under the reigning and ruling King Jesus. Friends, the church is a theocracy, not a democracy. That means our job isn’t to vote people in and out of office, or to try to find a constituency who represents us, our job is to submit to His will. 

-Story of person who voted no to everything because nothing should be unanimous. 

-If we’re working to submit all our decisions to the will of God, and we’re all keeping in step with the Spirit, there should be unanimous votes on a regular basis! And notice the arrows connecting God to each position below: since we’re a theocracy, God is the one who appoints, the church looks to affirm and follow where God has called.

-Congregationally Governed: this means the highest form of authority in the church is the congregation, but again, this is not a democracy. The congregation is charged with affirming leaders in the church, looking for ways to honor each other, working to keep the unity of the Spirit in our midst, but it’s not the congregation’s job to make every decision in the church. I like the way I’ve heard my dad summarize what this means in the EFCA: everyone gets their say, but not everyone gets their way. There will be times where you may not affirm the direction of the church, that doesn’t mean it’s time to find a new church, it might mean the Lord has you here to learn something new, or to demonstrate how you can willing submit to where it seems God is leading, or maybe that your thoughts were wrong on a topic! That’s happened to me before, where I thought something was a great idea, but I was missing some key information that made it not work out very well. That gets us to what I know is viewed as a 4-letter word today: submission. The Bible does command us to submit to the leaders of the church. Because of the baggage attached to that, let’s chat about it:

-I think Heb. 13 needs to be read in this conversation, the 2 verses that have 7s in them (makes it easy to remember!). Vs. 7 says part of the role of church leaders is to speak God’s Word to you, that comes up repeatedly in the qualifications lists for elders in the church. But it also tells us there’s supposed to be emulation, copying those leaders. So when we’re looking to vote on affirming elders, 1 of the questions you should be asking is: do I want to be like that person? Now, obviously they won’t be perfect, there’s only 1 Savior, but does spending time with them help you become more like Jesus, or as I like saying it, does time with them help you take 1 step closer to Jesus or not?

-Vs. 17 gets more explicit and uses that 4 letter word: submit. But friends, that’s not a negative thing! In God’s kingdom, the people you’re submitting to should have your best interests at heart, will love you deeply, and will work their hardest to faithfully point you to Jesus. But the author goes on, and this is where this text kind of scares me: they keep watch over your souls as those who will give an account. When I stand before Jesus, I will give an account for my leadership of this church family. Now, there’s different levels of account based on the closeness of the relationship (this is one of the many reasons I believe you should pursue membership in a local church, you can go back and listen to other sermons on that). But then for those who are submitting, it says to let them lead with joy. The question for you is do the leaders of the church look forward to your emails, notes, or conversations, or do they dread them because you’re making it difficult? That doesn’t mean you’re not allowed to share your thought or opinions, but HOW do you voice those things with leadership? As I’ve shared before, you can be right but be a jerk about being right! 

-Elder led: God raises up qualified men to serve in this office. That means we are complementarian in our convictions (look up the EFCA affirmations and denials if you want to see more about that). This group is intentionally on the bottom because in God’s kingdom those who are called to leadership roles are called to be servants, putting others interests above their own. The world views authority solely through the lens of exploitation and selfishness, but that’s not the way God’s kingdom works.

-Finally, what we’ll be looking more at today: Deacon served: God also gifts certain people in His body to help in various service-oriented roles to help the congregation operate well. I like the way pastor Matt Smethurst has summarized the distinction between elders and deacons:

-I don’t see these offices as optional in the church of Jesus Christ – if God has given us instructions for how best to operate and function as His bride, we should follow them! 

  • Who Are Deacons?

-Once again, we start with the name. Deacon is used all over the NT, but most of the time it’s translated as “servant,” and once Latin became the common language, it got translated into “minister” (do you see why I think everyone’s confused about terms today!) Here’s a couple verses that you may recognize where the word is used:

-So in one sense, every one of us is called to “deacon” each other, we’re all supposed to look for opportunities to serve each other. But there’s a difference between a general gift and being called to a church office, and this is also true of the elder/shepherd role. I know some women who are MUCH more gifted than I am pastorally (as shepherds), but that doesn’t mean they should be serving in the OFFICE of pastor/elder. Same here, just because all of us are called to serve each other doesn’t mean everyone is called to serve in the OFFICE of deacon, offices are recognized by the church to help serve in some specific way, we need to make a distinction between gifting and office.

-Let’s start with the primary Bible text, and there’s a lot less clarity around this office than the office of elder. One pastor argues that the primary use of the word “deacon” means they are assistants to the elders, based on the way this whole range of Greek words was used, and that’s an option! But here’s what Paul says in 1 Tim. 3, and it takes some work to get at Paul’s underlying argument (I think)

-First, he says Deacons LIKEWISE, which subordinates this section to a previous word he used, the word “must be” in vs. 2. So that verb is assumed here, deacons likewise MUST BE, that verb is carried over in our English translations to help us see it, but it’s not in the Greek, the Greek just says “Deacons, likewise, worthy of respect.” Now do you notice anything special about this list of qualifications for Deacons? First, it’s very similar to the expectations for Elders in the previous section, but they’re primarily character traits. The big difference is that Deacons don’t need to be able to teach. This tells us there’s a different purpose to this office than Elders, so we shouldn’t view the Deacons as future Elders, or view Deacons as the stepping stone to other leadership roles. Churches need both offices distinguished from each other to obey God’s Word!

-The other thing we need to talk about from this section is can women serve as Deacons? And I would argue yes, based on this text, another Bible passage, and church history, and you’re going to need to put on your thinking caps to trace this flow of thought, ok? Here’s what I think is the outline for what Paul is saying here, and in order to get this we need to trace Paul’s use of the word “likewise,” I also color coded this outline, and the text to try to help you understand Paul’s flow of thought. 1 other note: the word for “deaconess” didn’t exist yet. It didn’t come into use until much later, so Paul didn’t have a way of distinguishing male from female deacons. 

-Paul begins with the qualifications for this office of Deacon, then moves to some brief notes for women deacons, then goes back to men deacons, and finally wraps up this section with the reward for serving as a deacon. So in the text we begin with notes for everyone, vs. 11 begins a section on women, 12focuses on men, and 13 is back to all of them. Why do I think that? 

-First, the word Paul uses here that our translation puts “wives” in for is a more general use word that is often translated as “women.” If he’d meant the deacon’s wives he could have used a word that is more common to refer to wives instead of the general word for women.

-Second, I don’t think it makes sense for the qualifications to include wording for wives here if the section on elders doesn’t have anything about wives. It would make more sense to include something about elder’s wives instead of deacon’s wives.

-Third (and this is what clinched this position for me), this is carrying on a bigger argument Paul has made previously. In 1 Tim. 2, Paul similar compares the 2 genders in the church, he says men are to pray, and then he uses the exact same Grk word, translated here as “also,” to call out the women. 

-1 other reason I believe this office is open to women is found in Rom. 16. Our translation says “servant,” but it’s using the same word that we’ve been studying: Deacon. 

-Now, there are 2 other passages that I think help us flesh out how these 2 offices function together. First is Phil. 1:1, which tells us that churches quickly began adopting these 2 offices. The second is Titus 1:5, which tells us the necessity of Elders, but not Deacons. That means a church can function with only 1 of these offices, but as a church grows, in order to remain healthy, they should call Deacons.

-Some church history for us to be aware of:

-Church history: Didache (GRK Teaching) (“The Lord’s Teaching Through the Twelve Apostles to the Nations” late 1st century), limits it to men, but either that was a mistake or a typo, because just 2 decades later we have this account:

-And continuing further through church history.

  • What Should Deacons Do?

-Most people believe that the prototype for what eventually became the office of Deacon is found in Acts 6: 

-First, we see the focus of “the Twelve” and this isn’t meant to denigrate the serving of tables, remember the way the kingdom of God inverts the normal power structures of the world. What’s interesting is the names chosen of all these men are Hellenistic, not Hebraic, so in order to ensure the unity of the body, they chose men who were from that group of people. 

-Second, it’s not fair to limit this to only table ministry, because as we continue reading in Acts, Stephen becomes the first martyr who preaches the best sermon that summarizes the OT message I’ve ever read, and Philip performs miraculous signs in Samaria.

-Finally, look at the outcome of this work: the unity of the church is preserved, the word of God continues to go out, and the church continues growing.

-So I take this picture to mean that the deacons are responsible for various sorts of ministries that build up and unify the church. I like the way Gregg Allison summarizes this point:

-I think the lack of specificity around deacons is intentional in the Bible to allow for a wide level of flexibility for churches to determine which deacons they need for their church to remain unified. This means we can have deacons of music, facilities, kid’s ministry, youth ministry, men’s ministry, women’s ministry, kitchen, welcome team, safety team, IT. 

-One other note is that deacons don’t need to serve in perpetuity. That means there could be deacons called to serve for a set period of time, then be done. One recent example is during COVID. I wish we’d been able to put together a deacon of COVID response to help the elders read and understand all the reports that were coming out to help us know the best ways to meet together. That would have had an end date of when things got back to “normal.” Another example is we could create a deacon team to help with building remodeling that would help us collect bids, be involved in the planning process and communicating updates with the church, then when the remodeling is done, we no longer need those deacons to serve.

-We also could have deacons who are appointed and then build a team around them to accomplish the task they’ve been given! There are all sorts of different options for this office, none of which are prohibited in the Bible, which is why we need to spend some time talking about this.

-And I want to share my current thoughts on a way to talk about these 2 offices because churches should have them both, but what do we call them?

-Churches have people who serve in these roles both as paid and unpaid, so in order to help us clarify which office we’re referring to, I’m working on a position paper that lays out these titles.

-Where this gets confusing today, is people often use the word “Minister” to refer to pastors, but tracing the history of that word it’s actually used to refer to the Deacon office. So my proposal is that we have deacons who serve unpaid (similar to having elders who serve unpaid) and ministers who serve in a paid role (like we have pastors who serve in a paid role).

-I’m not sure if this is the best proposal in the world, but it’s what I’ve got now! It both brings clarity to the positions and also helps us to elevate the role that we call people to when they serve on staff at the church. I think it’s more than just a director role, there’s too much ministry expectations for to just use “director”.

-And as many of you know, I care greatly about the words we use! That’s why I don’t have an office, I have a study, that’s why this room isn’t called a sanctuary, it’s called an auditorium, it’s why we don’t have a worship team, we have a music team – if any of that sounds weird to you, text this number on the screen!

-I believe that God has designed the church to have 2 separate and distinct offices: Elders and Deacons. Elders serve by leading, overseeing, shepherding and teaching. Deacons lead by serving in a wide assortment of practical and ministerial ways under the authority and oversight of the Elders.

-I’m also excited for us to officially recognize both of these offices and would invite you to pray with the Elders as we work to solidify both our church’s needs and ask the Lord to bring the right people to our church to help fill these needs so that what we read in Acts 6:7 could be true at South Suburban:

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by mikethestrand on August 30, 2026  •  Permalink
Posted in Bible, Blog, Church, History, Sermon, Theology
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Posted by mikethestrand on August 30, 2026

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2026/08/30/deacons-sermon-manuscript/

The Order of the Ordinances – Sermon Manuscript

-We’re taking 4 weeks to look at some questions I’ve gotten over the past year. Last week we looked at the EFCA, which is our denomination. And we needed last week to set us up for this week, because this week we’re looking at the 2 ordinances or sacraments of the church (hold on to those terms, I’ll explain them in a bit).

-One of the realities that we need to be reminded of in our world is that there is a spiritual realm that we can’t taste, touch, or see. Sometimes we get glimpses of it where the barrier between the physical and spiritual becomes thin, but that’s not our normal human experience, and our world has been so shaped by the scientific revolution that we sometimes forget or neglect that there is a bigger spiritual reality behind the physical world that we can see. We also neglect that there’s an interplay between those 2 realms, where what we do in the physical realm has implications spiritually and vice versa. That means that the choices and actions we do today have implications for eternity.

-I share all that because we’re talking about things that from a physical perspective don’t seem to do much, but spiritually they’re an act of war where we’re pledging ourselves to Jesus as the King and (to use the phrase from the old baptismal recitation), “renouncing the devil and his works and effects.” That means these are things that shouldn’t be taken lightly or flippantly, but it also means that these things are gifts from God for us that do something to us in both the spiritual and physical realm.

-Text in any questions

READ/PRAY (pgs. 1001, 1018)

-we have a LOT to cover today, so I’m not going to be digging too far into any of these issues so we can at least get an overview of the significance of these practices.

-Here’s what the EFCA believes about these ordinances:

-The EFCA is making a distinction between “true church” and “local church” the way that’s often expressed is the visible vs. invisible church. Every individual believer when they are saved are brought into the church family of God (spiritual/invisible), but that also means they should identify themselves with a local church family (physical/visible)

-The marker of the family of God is that they are the ones who practice these 2 ordinances, which express the gospel. Each time either of these are celebrated they are visible reminders of the spiritual reality of what Jesus has done, it helps our eyes see what our ears and hearts know: the gospel. The Belgic Confession, written in 1561, tells us the 3 markers of a true church. These markers must bepracticed to be considered a church. Now, when we talk about a church, there’s different categories of churches, I got this chart from the book Sojourners & Strangers. And if we see the 3 markers of the church, if an organization that claims to be a church doesn’t practice 1 of these 3 markers, are they a church anymore? Similarly, is the trajectory of a church making them more or less holy?

-THE means of salvation, they are A means of salvation (grace) in that they confirm and nourish believers. Historically, the church has labeled these “means of grace,” things that God uses as gifts to make us more holy and more like Him. Here’s the way the EFCA has said it:

-It’s also important to note that these are markers of the church, which means they’re not something you practice by yourself. I can’t go baptize myself, I’m baptized by and into the church. Similarly, I can’t take communion by myself, I participate in communion as part of the church (meant to mark our union). This also means this is something we shouldn’t do on our own, this came up during COVID when we weren’t meeting in person, some churches encouraged people to grab their own elements and “do” communion in their homes, I was opposed to that because we are embodied people and not meeting together is abnormal, and I wanted us to feel it! There are other implications to this too, like I won’t serve communion at a wedding if it’s just for the couple, it’s not something individuals do together, it’s supposed to be for us all to celebrate, but that’s all I have time to say about that now!

-Where we’ll get to at the end: Jesus gave us these 2 ordinances (or sacraments) to practice as the markers of His people until He returns. 

-Sacrament vs. ordinance. I will use them interchangeably; both can be used legitimately. Sacrament means something sacred or set apart (which they are). Early Protestants preferred the term “ordinance” to refer to something “ordained” by Jesus and to distinguish them from the RCC position on them. I think either one is appropriate for us to use today.

-This is a different sermon (in a bit of a different series), but to help you understand what we’re doing today, we’re going to begin: exegesis (reading the text), move to historical theology (what has the church historically believed), that will get us to systematic theology (summarize and systematize what the whole Bible says) and we’ll land at pastoral (or practical) theology, working to answer how do we live this out today?

-1 other note (I promise this is the last one!) but I want to help us understand how to “triage” this issue. 1st you HAVE to believe to be a Christian, 2nd is why we have different churches and denomination (need to take a position, but can make different biblical arguments), 3rd should be able to have a fun conversation about but not condemn or divide over. The reason this is tricky is because the EFCA is unique in that we’ve put the timing and mode of baptism as a 3rd issue, in most churches it’s a 2nd order issue, but everyone agrees this issue has 1st order implications. The way these are practiced are 2nd order issues, but that they are practiced are 1st order issues, which means these must be practiced in order to be an obedient church. 

  1. What is Baptism?

-The first and most important reason for this is to be like Jesus. Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist (which also shows us the significance of this act). It’s talked about in all 4 Gospels, we’re just going to look at Matt. today to save some time. 

-The end of this Gospel also talks about baptism, it’s often referred to as the great commission. Jesus says that the way we make disciples is by baptizing them and teaching them. Once again, notice is that this is given to the church as a whole, not for individual Christians to do by themselves (this will come up later, I just want to mention it now so you can see it) the commands are plural.

-Then in the book of Acts repeatedly we see 2 things connected to each other: repent AND be baptized. The first time is in Acts 2, after the first disciples have been filled with the Spirit and Peter preaches the most impact sermon ever. God is at work, the people are convicted of their sin, and look at what Peter says:

-This tells us that the marker of someone who has repented of their sins is baptism, and can you imagine being at this baptism service? The church went from a house church to a megachurch in a day!

-1 other passage that we read earlier (so I won’t read it again) Rom. 6. Paul seems to assume that everyone had been baptized. He also tells us that baptism serves as a picture of our union with Jesus. We go down into the water just like Jesus went down into death, then we are raised up from the water, just like Jesus was raised up from the dead. It serves as a physical reminder of the spiritual reality of what has taken place. Our old self has been crucified with Jesus.

-The NT also tells us that there 3 OT stories that point to the reality of baptism: crossing the Red Sea, circumcision, and the flood

-The first is found in 1 Cor. 10, where Paul says that the church must be careful that they remain faithful in their confession because even the Israelites participated in the pictures of baptism and the Lord’s Supper, but they weren’t all saved. Similarly, we can participate in these practices today but not be saved.

-Circumcision is seen in Col. 2, this connects back to Deut. 30:6 when God said He would circumcise the hearts of His people, here Paul is connecting the NT practice of baptism to the OT practice of circumcision (hold on to that, it’ll come up later!)

-Finally, the flood of Gen. 7. Here Paul says baptism corresponds to the way Noah and his family were saved through the flood, centered on the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Now, notice that it’s not baptism itself that is salvific, it’s what baptism points to: the resurrection of Jesus.

-Throughout the book of Acts, the normal order was repentance then be baptized, and it was almost immediate. Things changed in the 4th & 5th centuries when Christianity became much more prevalent (and legal). People started to join the church just for social standing, which meant they weren’t truly Christians. So the church added a period of training before you could be baptized (for a season it was an entire year). The other shift was that the church quickly moved to infant baptism as the general practice (as most rigorously defended by Augustine).

-The church also had conversations (debates) around what “counts” as a baptism? And the general agreement was 2 things: Trinitarian, and water. So a picture of the church in the 1st century can be found in the Didache (teachings), here’s what they said:

-Do you see all the caveats? Living water (moving), cold, pouring onto the head, fasting at least 1 or 2 days. In Geneva, Switzerland, they’ve uncovered a church from the 4th century with a baptistry. What’s fascinating about this is if you look closely you can see that this was “living” water because it was connected to the river.

-To put all the pieces together into a systematic overview, I like the way John Frame defines baptism:

-Today there are 2 positions about who should be baptized: paedo, credo. Credo think of Creed, someone who can confess to believe in Jesus. 

-Everyone practices adult believer’s baptism; the question is what do we do with children? For those who are credo, we do dedications (which my Presbyterian friends tells me is a child baptism I just forgot the water)

-As I said earlier, remember the baptism connection to circumcision that Paul made in Col. 2? If baptism corresponds to baptism, then should it look the same in the NT as the OT? Protestant paedobaptists would argue yes. Both of these serve as the initiatory right: if you a part of this covenant community, you will practice this rite as the beginning of your journey into the church, therefore children should be baptized.

-My position: credobaptist, with a preference for immersion because of Acts, Rom. 6, and the Didache but I have strong with sympathies to and appreciation of paedobaptism who strive to see the children as part of the family of God. My leaning right now (subject to change) is that we should be more willing to baptize younger children than we often are! If God is at work in children, we shouldn’t prevent them from following in obedience to Him, so parents if you see the Holy Spirit at work in your children and they express interest in being baptized, reach out to someone on staff! We’d love to help your kids move towards publicly identifying themselves with Jesus!

-The primary thing is if you are following after Jesus, you must by baptized. I like the way Wayne Grudem summarizes this in his Systematic Theology:

-EFCA says similar: by saying that it is essential, it means that it is required. So friends, if any of you haven’t yet been obedient to Jesus’s command, what’s stopping you? We’d love to baptize you! Reach out to us! 

  • What is Communion?

-Remember, Jesus gave us 2 ordinances (or sacraments), baptism which is the marker of entrance into His people, and communion (or the Lord’s Supper, or the eucharist) as the ongoing reminder that we are a part of His body. That was practice is 1st order, the way we practice is a 3rd order issue. 

-Far fewer passages on this topic, but it’s just as important as baptism as these are the 2 things that mark out the people of God as unique. And just like baptism, we trace this practice back to Jesus, and because we used this Gospel earlier, I’ll stick with Matt.

-The other key text is 1 Cor. 11, Paul’s instructions, very similar to what we say in Matt, but here we see that Paul connects this back to Jesus’s practice.

-It’s likely that the early church practiced this weekly, as inferred from 1 Cor. 11:18

-For the historical practice of the church, I’ll once again quote from the Didache, which lays out clear parameters around who should participate: you must be baptized. This tells us that the practice of the early church was not only that baptism was expected for everyone following Jesus, but it was required before anyone could partake in the Lord’s Supper.

-Over time, the restrictions got more and more narrow, which meant that before the Reformation (1517) the RCC only allowed some people to take the bread (if they were allowed to take at all), no cup, because that was too holy for the “common folk.” (Sidenote: the pre-Reformation church largely became a spectator sport where the preaching was in a language you couldn’t understand, the singing was done by professionals without the congregation, and full communion was reserved for the priests. It seems like many mega-churches today are moving back to that model)

-In more recent history, Spurgeon’s practice was to use tickets that had to be turned in before you were given the elements. They used this system to both track attendance and fence the table. Fencing is the word used to lay out who is allowed to participate in this meal. Spurgeon went so far as having his congregation vote on this practice for visitors (Aug. 13, 1856). He required people to be both baptized AND members of a local church.

-So now a systematic definition once again from John Frame:

-Baptism is meant to be a 1-time thing (can you be born twice?), communion is meant to be observed “perpetually.” There’s some debate about how often that means, we’ll talk about that later!

-4 views of communion today:

-Transubstantiation: RCC, the elements are TRANSformed back into the body & blood.

-Consubstantiation: (Lutheran) CON is Greek for WITH, Christ is uniquely present in, with, and around the elements but they are not TRANSformed.

-Spiritual presence: Christ is spiritually present in in the practice of communion in some unique and special way

-Pure memorial: (“Do this in remembrance of me.) This is often the default position of many Protestants, but I love what Millard Erickson says about the potential negative of this position.

-Who can participate in this sacrament? There’s more to 1 Cor. 11 then we looked at! This says it’s not open to just anyone, and that each person is supposed to examine themselves, which many people have taken as needing to confess all your sins before communion. But that’s not what Paul is saying, there’s a specific examination we’re supposed to do, but it’s not internal. We’re supposed to be repenting of sin all the time, but in communion we’re supposed to examine how we are in relation to the rest of the church (body). This means that you should not participate in this meal if you have unresolved issues with someone else in the church. This tells us that one of the purposes of this celebration is to unite us together (spiritually).

-Vs. 30 is why I’m spiritual presence, because there’s something more than just a memorial meal that’s taking place in communion. 

-This is also where we get the idea of “fencing” the table, this isn’t open to anyone to come take a piece of bread and shot of grape juice, I believe there’s something else going on spiritually here that we shouldn’t be flippant about.

-This has led to the church having 3 approaches as to who can participate. One note is every church believes there is some limit to who is allowed to participate, but they draw the boundaries in difference places.

-Closed communion: in 2 ways, either a baptized member of that denomination, or some go so far as to say a baptized member of that specific church. 

-Close would be say a baptized member of a church (Spurgeon)

-Open is this meal is for anyone who has been saved, without any other limitations.

-My personal position differs from our church on this, we practice open communion, but my position is “close” communion, but because this isn’t a gospel essential, we can dialogue and debate the merits of these positions without dividing over them (more on that coming in 2 weeks)

-The final question is how often should we celebrate? And once again, my preference is different than our church! When I first arrived, it was celebrated monthly, we have since moved to 2/month, but I would love to celebrate it weekly as the culmination of our worship service, where each week, we’re reminded of Jesus’s sacrifice and each week we can taste and see that the Lord is good.

-When we switched to 2/month, I got an anonymous letter from someone who didn’t like this transition. Just so everyone hears this, if anyone ever sends an anonymous letter, it goes straight into the garbage. The Bible tells us if we have an issue with someone we go straight to them, we don’t hide beyond anonymity. I will share all the push backs I’ve gotten to celebrating communion weekly, and why I think they’re wrong, are you ready? I can condense them down to 2:

-First, people have said it makes communion less special. What doesn’t make sense to me is why that doesn’t apply to: singing, or praying, or preaching. Or if we want to go a step further, if communion is meant to nourish us spiritually, I need food to be nourished physically, but eating 3x a day doesn’t make it any less special for me! Sometimes it’s a very special meal, but most of the time it’s just to get calories into my body.

-Second, I’ve been told it takes too much time. Which honestly just sounds lazy. I’m not sure if you realize this, but anything worth doing takes time. And since it’s something Jesus commanded, I think it’s worth “wasting” time on it! I had a conversation with someone once who’s a member of the biggest EFCA church in the country. That church celebrates communion 1/month only at their Saturday service, and they don’t let anyone know that’s the only time they celebrate it. Something’s off if it’s not an essential component of the practices of your church!

-So those are the 2 sacraments given to us from the Lord that are means of grace from God to us to confirm and nourish us as believers.

  • Does the Order Matter?

-I think the order to these does matter, because they’re both connected to being a Christian, but they’re connected to different parts of being a Christian. Baptism is connected to the beginning or entry point. Throughout the NT, the command is repent AND be baptized. 

-But here’s where there’s room for some disagreement. I can’t point to a specific chapter and verse for this ordering. It’s a logical argument that they should be sequential, but that’s where I’ll stop. The way I’ll say it is I think the preferred order should be: you’re saved, then shortly after that you’re baptized, and then only when you’ve been baptized (as the entry rite) should you participate in the Lord’s Supper (the ongoing rite) because why would you willingly only participate in 1 of these 2 practices? Both are commands (not optional) therefore both need to be done. You may be asking: what about if someone gets saved today during this service, would you ban them from the table until they’ve been baptized? No! But I would hope they would want to be baptized ASAP. I’ve said before that I would love to fill this baptistry up every week because people were being saved. The logical ordering from what the Bible teaches seems to be: salvation leads to baptism which then leads to the Lord’s Supper.

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by mikethestrand on August 23, 2026  •  Permalink
Posted in Bible, Church, Life, Sermon, Theology, Worship
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Posted by mikethestrand on August 23, 2026

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2026/08/23/the-order-of-the-ordinances-sermon-manuscript/

What it Means to Be Free – Sermon Manuscript

-We’re going to spend the next 4 weeks looking at some questions I’ve gotten over this calendar year, this week as you saw in that video, we’re looking at the denomination we’re a part of the EFCA. I’m also going to be trying something new with this series, so if you have questions during the sermon or as your processing throughout the week, text 651-252-4486 and I’ll answer those either in Sermon Scraps or in next week’s sermon. 

-So you know where we’ll be going: next week we’ll be looking at the order of the ordinances, then we’ll talk about the office of Deacon which was just added to our bylaws, and finally we’ll talk about how to disagree. But today, what it means to be free because there’s a lot of misunderstanding about the EFCA and what we’re about. And I think a lot of the questions parallel our current societies questions. 

-One of the primary issues in our world today is around your identity. Who are you, who do you want to be or become? I grew up in the era where you were told you could be whatever you wanted to be! So I decided (like most people my age) that I was going to play in the NBA. You may not be able to tell this from where you’re sitting, but I’m white. I’m also a solid 6 foot nothing. Which means my prospects for playing in the NBA were slim to none. But people wouldn’t tell kids that back then! Instead, I had to come to that realization myself through a lot of trial & error.

-There should have been signs though. Some of you have met my parents, they’re both the same height: 5’9” (probably shorter now as they’ve gotten older). Honestly, I’m just glad my first number got to 6 instead of staying in the 5’ range, thankfully my mom’s side has some height!

-Time has a way of tempering our expectations as we start to come to grips with the reality of ourselves and the world. Youth has a naivety about it that as you get older looks simultaneously cute and stupid! The message that you can be or do whatever you want is just not true! We’re all wired differently, we all have different strengths and weaknesses, we’re all products of a wide assortment of things, including the genetic makeup of your heritage, and the reality is we can’t escape those things – we are products of our histories. This somewhat runs contrary to so much of what we’re taught today. Our culture trains us to throw off all the shackles of tradition and chase our own desires. That’s basically the primary point of every Disney movie: “betcha on land they understand, bet they don’t reprimand their daughters sick of swimming.” Or “see the line where sky meets the sea, it calls me, no one know how far it goes.” Or even more explicit: “No rights, no wrongs, no rules for me, I’m FREE!” And there we are, back at freedom. And depending on what you mean by that, it may be true! But there’s a passage in the Bible that talks about being free that I want us to read together to get a sense of what the EFCA is about.

-There are 3 points to today’s sermon, and we’re going to spend most of our time on point 2 because I think it needs the most work! First is what is “free”? Second, what is an evangelical (wait before jumping to conclusions on that word), and finally the reality of the EFCA is an unofficial motto: we’re better together.

READ/PRAY (pg. 1034)

  1. What is “Free”?

-We’re going to start with the biblical and theological point, and then we’re going to get to what the Free in EFCA stands for historically. We just read this text, but there are 3 things I want you to see in from this text that will help us understand this point. As Americans, this is one of the core things to the founding of our country! You can buy “freedom” t-shirts at Wal-Mart every summer! But is that the same thing as Christian freedom that Paul is talking about here?

-We need to understand 2 aspects to freedom: freedom from something vs. freedom to something. Our culture pushes freedom from everything! That’s Disney again, throw off all the shackles so we can be free and true to ourselves. But that’s a different form of slavery. Slavery to our individual wants and desires that change from moment to moment.

-There’s a great picture of this in the show Bluey (if you don’t have young kids right now, you’re missing out on some QUALITY TV, much better than the Barney I had growing up). It’s about a family of Australian blue-heeler dogs who go about their normal lives. In 1 episode, the family is going on a walk, and one of the kids is complaining about being “too tired” to walk, but then they start playing a game and the kid is running in circles as the walk continues. But as soon as the game is done, she’s suddenly “too tired” again. The best thing about this show is how much it parallels real life! We adults are the same way: our motivations and desires change from moment to moment, we are often slaves to our desires.

-But Jesus offers us freedom to live a flourishing life. However, that means there are boundaries to our freedom. If we’re following after Him, we’re not “free” to pursue sin, those things are antithetical to each other. Our tendency as Americans is to focus on vs. 1 and miss vs. 13-15, let me show you what I mean:

-We read vs. 1 and because of the climate that we live in, we jump to we are free from the yoke of slavery. But that misses the bigger context of Paul’s argument here. The freedom isn’t to go do whatever we want, the freedom is to go serve one another! But what’s the temptation? It’s to bite and devour, to fight and push for your own freedoms at the expense of others. Paul is telling us our freedom is a freedom to go serve others, giving higher priority to others because that’s what Christ did for us.

-The second piece I want you to take away from this is that the cross is offensive. Now I want to be careful, because that doesn’t mean you should be a jerk in your witnessing to others. The cross does and should offend people, but we shouldn’t be offensive to people, there is a difference! The last verse here is one of the funniest verses in the Bible – Paul is talking about circumcision, and the word he uses here means to completely cut off, so he’s saying why stop with circumcision? You should go all the way!

-The final piece from this is vs. 6. This is the reminder that we are saved by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone, but that faith that saves us isn’t alone, it comes with strings attached. You can see the focus of our lives as Christians begins with faith, but then it has flesh on it: expressing itself outwardly through love.

-This is what we’re freed to do: to love others just like Jesus loved us. We aren’t saved by our good works, but we are saved (and freed) to do good works to others. Eph. 2 says it like this:

-So the idea of freedom is an idea that’s rooted in Scripture. We’re freed to live as God intended, not giving in to sin. There’s a song from Cityalight that says it this way: “Yes, He rose that we would be free indeed! Free from every plan of darkness, free to live and free to love” Apart from that freedom that has been won in Christ, we can’t truly live or love.

-But historically, the free in EFCA has meant that we are “free” from state-imposed rule. We are congregational in our polity. Let me explain all those words:

-In many European countries there is an official state church that oversees and manages the churches. That means taxes also go to support the pastor and church facilities. The EFCA intentionally didn’t want any higher oversight, so for us the highest governing body is the congregation. Our members are involved in most major decisions of our church (and that’s true of all EFCA churches), that’s what being congregational is.

-Polity is the same word for politics. How does a church govern itself? In the EFCA, the congregation is the highest governing body, where each church determines our leaders (elders/pastors), our annual budget, is involved in membership, taking on any debt, facility purchases, those kinds of major decisions. Here’s the way the EFCA states it:

-Autonomous doesn’t mean independent. We don’t get to make all our decisions on our own. By associating with the EFCA we are agreeing that we will support what the EFCA is doing (hence interdependent). We’re not DEpendent on the denomination, nor are we completely INdependent where we do whatever we want, as we’ll see at the end, we’re better together than apart, which is where INTERdependent is a helpful descriptor for us. 

  • What is an Evangelical?

-Now for the first word! And part of the reason we’re going to spend the bulk of our time on this word is because of the misunderstanding of this word in our culture today. For many people the word “Evangelical” has become a political marker and not a religious marker. Each election cycle we’re told what percentage of “evangelicals” voted for a candidate, but first I don’t think that’s accurate, and second what I’ve read about those polls is people self-identify out of a list of options, which means we have Buddhist evangelicals, Mormon evangelicals, and even Muslim evangelicals! When we use that word, we’re not talking about anything in American politics, we’re going back to a Greek word pronounced euongelion (which I put on the screen, because you can see how we can transliterate that into evangel, the base of evangelical) and all that word means is “good news.” 

-The early Reformers even described themselves as “evangelicals” so Luther described his movement as the (in German) evangelische kirche in English, evangelical church. So that term has more history to it than modern day American politics.

-And where this intersects with the EFCA is that the history of the day parallels the evangelical movement, so in order for us to understand our denomination, we need to understand what we mean when we say we’re “Evangelical,” and part of the difficulty is there’s no one to tell the world what it means! There’s general agreed upon ideas, but it includes Christians from a wide assortment of beliefs! 

-One of the most cited definitions of an Evangelical comes from a historian named David Bebbington who says Evangelicals are known by these 4 things (therefore this is often referred to as “Bebbington’s quadrilateral”)

-Another one is from the NAE (which the EFCA has been involved in since its founding), and they define it this way: 

-Finally, Thomas Kidd, a historian on evangelical religious history wrote a book titled ‘Who is an Evangelical?’ who defines it this way:

-I hope you can see some of the similarities! Evangelicals are Bible people, who emphasize the need for spiritual birth and then work to live and apply that belief to their lives, which is a good summary of the EFCA! Since it’s origination, the EFCA has been focused on the Bible, has sought to be faithful in evangelizing others about Jesus, and has looked for ways to care for the poor and marginalized. For example, in 1996, the EFCA passed a resolution titled, “A Stranger at Our Gates: A Christian Perspective  on Immigration.” This statement was explicitly stated to apply to all immigrants, whether legally documented, or not. I’m not saying that to make a political statement, we need some nuance on this conversation, if you want to talk more about that, email me and let’s grab coffee, but also keep in mind, this statement was written in 1996, 30 years ago! Friends, the more things change, the more things stay the same.

-With all that background to evangelicals, I want to share a brief history of the EFCA with you, which largely parallels the broader evangelical movement, and begins as a movement of immigrants from Sweden and Norway in the latter half of the 1800s. One of the descriptions I’ve heard from people trying to define the EFCA is we’re “like Baptists, but we’re not Baptists” and that’s not actually true. Our founding had a different focus and emphasis than the Baptists did, which you can see on this chart: the 3 primary streams of denominations that came out of the Reformation, and the EFCA is based out of the Lutheran stream, Baptists come out of the Anglican stream. 

-As for the history of the EFCA, we’re going to look at it tracing the mottos of the EFCA, which are:

-We’ll start with the first, and most important one: where stands it written.

-This gets to the primary focus of the Bible for us. The EFCA came out a pietistic movement in Scandinavia that was brought over to the US by immigrants from those countries (primarily Swedish and Norwegian). By piety, I don’t mean something negative, they took it from the Latin word pietaswhich means devotion. They were Lutherans who wanted to take their faith seriously and saw themselves in the lineage of the original Lutheran, Martin Luther. This pietistic impulse led to something known as the “Readers movement” where Christians would gather in homes to read the Bible and apply it to their lives (kind of like we do Life Groups today!) 

-The Bible has always been the focus of the EFCA, and that even impacted the founders of our movement. 2 names that comes up repeatedly when talking about the EFCA are Ellen Modin and Frederik Franson. Frederik was a Swedish traveling evangelist who wanted people to know about Jesus. He spent time in Chicago learning from and emulating DL Moody, and was referred to as “Moody’s Swedish disciple.” 

-Around the same time, Ellen Modin became the EFCA’s first supported missionary who was sent to the Mormons in Utah.

-As they started wanting to send more missionaries and continue expanding their reach and influence, they started realizing they couldn’t just operate by themselves, so they had their first conference in Boone, IA in 1884, which continued emphasizing the Bible, and from that conference this motto originated!

-The Swedes and the Norwegians both continued along parallel paths throughout the beginning of the 20th century, but a controversy was brewing that set the trajectory for the EFCA in the future. Today it’s referred to as the fundamentalist/modernist controversy. The question was centered on the work of God and the Bible being reliable. The “modernists” were influenced by the enlightenment and argued that miracles can’t happen, the “fundamentalists” argued for the “fundamentals” of the faith (wasn’t negative). The EFCA, being Bible people, landed on the side of the fundamentals, which eventually went 2 directions, the first was to become modern-day fundamentalist (arguing over every theological issue), and what are today called “Evangelicals.” 

-This leads us to the 2 motto: All believers, but believers only.

-This statement came out of the evangelical vs. fundamentalist divide and is an implication of theological triage: (EXPLAIN)

-The EFCA intentionally looks to focus on the essential tenants of the historic Christian faith without compromise, but to hold those convictions as graciously and charitably as possible. It’s possible speak the truth but be a jerk about it, this is the EFCA’s way of saying we’re not going to be a fighting fundamentalist. This is the way it’s historically been said in the EFCA: 

-Along with this movement, the 2 Free Churches (Norwegian & Swedish) starting having conversations about merging together, and another father of the EFCA, A.T. Olson, chaired a merger committee, which was finalized in 1950, dropping the European names and becoming the Free Church of America. One of the people involved in this process stated: “We’ll never stop being Norwegian, or Swedes, but tomorrow we will all be American.” Here’s Olson presenting a book celebrating the 75th anniversary (back to 1884) to President Eisenhower in 1959

-What started as a Scandinavian movement eventually realized we needed to reach beyond ourselves to truly represent the communities we lived in. This was FAR more than debating whether we should continue speaking Norwegian in our worship services (which was an early debate!) and it brought attention to the EFCA needing to reflect all peoples across the world, because all peoples in the world need the gospel. This has 2 implications, the first the missions of the EFCA, which includes 550 missionaries in 40 countries across the world, but closer to home it means looking beyond our Scandinavian heritage and reaching out to people from other tribes and tongues and nations who comprise what is today America! One of the big celebrations of the book is that our current acting president is an African American (being voted to officially become the president in June). Carlton Harris did his first internship out of seminary at First EFC in Wichita, KS in 1981, but several families left the church because he was African-American. Friends, that’s a part of our history, too. It’s not always the right things, and we need to be ok with acknowledging our past and working to grow more like Jesus over time.

-The last motto gets at the focus on discipleship (becoming more like Jesus), and I think this is where the history of the EFCA gets fun (in my mind) because our church has some strong connections to the EFCA! As I was reading the book, I came across this picture from 1984, 6 years after our church was planted, featuring our very own Ed Bender, who was receiving training on intentional discipleship. 

-A couple chapters later, I came across my dad, who still works in that role today, this also mentions Bill Hamel who was a member here at South Sub! And THEN, as it was discussing the rewrite of our SOF leading up to the 2008 vote, look who also got a shoutout! We hosted a conference here in 2006, the year after this room was built! And if you didn’t know, the headquarters for the EFCA are right off 494 & Cedar (so make sure you wave whenever you drive by)!

  • We’re Better Together

-As I mentioned at the beginning, there’s also a 4th motto that came up in the book, but I hadn’t heard other places, and that is the third point of the sermon: we’re better together. What started as a wide assortment of individuals coalesced into churches, which banded together to create a denomination that remains tethered to God’s Word, compassionate about reaching the lost, looking to love others in what we say and in how we live, and is committed to making disciples among all peoples. Last year, acting president Carlton Harris shared 4 words that he believes summarizes the EFCA from the past and into the future, and if you go the EFCA website you’ll see them on the front page: biblical and missional, united and free.

-The Bible is our highest source of authority, but we don’t exist to learn more Bible, the Bible compels us to look beyond ourselves and live missionally throughout the rest of our lives (loaded word that I don’t have time to explain now, text me if you want me to explain more about that)

-Similarly, we’re united together around our SOF, but we are free to love and serve the community that God has placed us in, but we don’t use that freedom to pursue selfishness, instead use it serve each other in love.

-Since I arrived 6 years ago, I’ve been working to more closely align us with the EFCA. In 2021 we hosted the same conference we had hosted in 2006, that same year we also hosted a national worship leader gathering. The EFCA has its’ problems and issues that need to be dealt with, but that’s true of any and every church and denomination until Jesus returns! I’m grateful for the EFCA, and am excited about what God continues to do in our little corner of the Evangelical world, and I hope this excites you to be a part of this denomination as well!

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by mikethestrand on August 16, 2026  •  Permalink
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Posted by mikethestrand on August 16, 2026

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2026/08/16/what-it-means-to-be-free-sermon-manuscript/

Sermon Manuscript – Psalm 50

-There’s a movie that came out in 1992 that has become one of the top movies in history. It’s a story about a military investigation into the death of a Marine, and it featured a wide assortment of stars like Tom Cruise, Jack Nicholson, and Kevin Bacon. A quote from the movie has gone down in infamy and has been rated the 29th most impactful movie quote of all time (according to the American Film Institute). I’m sure many of you have heard the quote, if not seen the movie. The pivotal scene of the movie, and the iconic quote, is when Jack Nicholson’s character is on the stand being grilled by Tom Cruise. And it builds up getting more and more intense until Jack Nicholson exclaims: “you want the answers?!” Tom Cruise responds with: “I want the truth!” And then the line: “You can’t handle the truth!” And he continues his verbal tirade from there! 

-There is something exciting about courtroom scenes, getting a glimpse behind the curtain to the legal system. There’s book series devoted to it, movies devoted to it, TV shows that show real life courtrooms. We’re hardwired to want justice, it’s one of the ways God has created us. But what would happen if God were the one who was serving as the judge? Who would serve as the jury? How would humanity defend themselves, and what would God be indicting people for? Today’s Psalm shows us that exact situation. God delivers the opening statements, He lays out His case, and then He enacts a judgment. 

READ/PRAY (pg. 498)

-I found this quote from Derek Kidner’s commentary helpful in understanding exactly what’s going on in this Psalm, as well as a reminder that this text was also written to us! Even though this is addressed to God’s covenant people in the OT, the message applies to us today. We need these words just as much as the first hearers did, and there’s even some similar reminders for us in the NT, as we’ll see when we work our way through this chapter.

  1. Opening Comments (1-6)

-The first thing we need to look at is: Who is Asaph? This is the first Psalm we’ve come across that begins with his name, but he comes up later (mostly in the 70s). We learn more about him in other places in the OT. One example from 1 Chron. 16, tells us that Asaph was the chief musician who played the cymbals (just a reminder that drums are one of the most holy of all instruments!) 

-Whomever was final compiler of this book thought that this Psalm fit contextually here, which makes sense with what we’ve been learning all summer. 

-A brief summary of our study this summer, because all these Psalms build on each other, and I’d forgotten what all we’d seen in these Psalms (vacation brain is real)! We began in Pss. 41-43 with individual complaints and requests for protections from God. Ps. 44 expands the focus out to include the the entire community. Pss. 45 and 46 address the arrival of the King and establishing His reign. Pss. 47-48 celebrate the King and His glory filling the city, and last week we saw the foolishness of looking to worldly riches to fulfill you. This week we see the story of God coming in judgment. 

-The first verse begins with a running list of the names of God: Mighty One, God, the Lord, you should read this as God establishing His credentials. Just as a lawyer lists his various accomplishments and achievements, with God His credentials are connected to His various names because who else would be able to validate these credentials? We’ll see more of this in a few verses. 

-It goes on to say that He goes on to summon the earth, the whole earth. He’s inviting His creation to come and participate in this judgment.

-And where is God calling them to convene? It says from Zion – the place where God lives, the center of the world in Israelite thought. This also connects this Psalm thematically to Ps. 48, where God was establishing His rule and reign as centered in Zion, think of it like Washington DC, the primary city where God rules from.

-The further descriptions of God here allude to the first 5 books of the OT. Radiance could be referring back to Deut. 33 where God “shines forth” as He blesses the tribes of Israel, and then vs. 3 points back to Ex. 19, God’s appearance when He delivered the stipulations of His covenant to His people, the people are warned to stay away from the mountain when God met with Moses so that His glory wouldn’t destroy them

-(4) The same word that we saw previously comes up again here, God is calling the rest of His creation to come act as the jury in His case against His people. Last time it was just he earth; this time He expands His invitation to everything. And do you see why He’s gathering them? To serve as the jury in His indictment against His people.

-One of the fascinating things about this reality is that means the jury is always watching! Think back to Ps. 19 which tells us the the creation teaches and models God’s glory for us, they’re pointing us to God, witnessing to His glory and grandeur, so not only are they serving as a jury, they also serve as God’s witnesses. Let’s think about that for a minute. Can you escape the heat of the sun? You can maybe go to your basement, which stays the same temperature all the time, but even in my basement I have windows! And when it’s as hot as it has been the past month it’s a reminder of how much the sun affects things. Did anyone else appreciate the cloud cover on Tuesday? Just as we can’t escape the sun, we can’t escape God’s watchful eye over us

-But there’s another reason God calls out His creation here: they were the witnesses when the covenant was enacted between God and His people (see the beginning and end of Deut). By calling His witnesses, He’s reminding the people of their previous promises to remain faithful to Him. It’s a bit like pulling out the contract that both parties signed to remind everyone what they had previously agreed to. 

-God tells us who all is assembled in this courtroom. He’s acting as judge and defense attorney. The jury is the heaven and earth (the rest of His creation), and on trial are his “faithful ones” connected to the Hebrew word chesed God’s covenant keeping faithfulness, which signifies that this judgment is against His people.

-Last week’s Psalm was unique because it was meant for everyone, this one gets us back to the “normal” focus of the people of God. And once again we’re reminded that God is a righteous judge, His witnesses will speak to His faithfulness.

-We see a corollary to this in 1 Pet. 4:17. Friends, we will not escape God’s judgment, we’re actually more culpable than unbelievers because we’re supposed to know better! If we fail to live obediently even though we have His Word, what hope does the rest of the world have? This is why we need to ensure we’re faithfully obeying what we learn from God’s Word instead of either going through empty motions or ignoring the commands of how God has commanded us to live. 

–Selah

-“Lord, I praise you that, like a good father, you love your children far more than others, yet you hold them to far stricter standard. It is only when I grasp both of these truths that I change for the better, escaping both self-hate and self-indulgence. Infuse them deep into my heart by your Spirit. Amen.”

  • Judgment Against the Half-Hearted (7-15)

-After setting the stage, God moves to lay out His case, and the first issue he has is with the half-hearted (what Kidner called “unthinkingly religious”). And this group is a helpful warning for us to be aware of because the external appearance here is the same as those who are living in faithful obedience to God. 

-All the things God lists here are things that the people are supposed to offer: sacrifices, burnt offerings, offering up bulls and goats.

-But did you notice the pronouns here? God is building up to vs. 10 in the beginning of this section. Did you catch all the repeated use of “your.” 

-This group of people is faithful in obeying what God has commanded, but that’s where it stops. Those things aren’t wrong! But doing them as a way to “earn” God’s favor is wrong. He says every animal (wild) cattle (domesticated), but then he goes on to mention the birds and creatures of the field. If He’s the Creator of everything, is there anything that isn’t His? No! Why would the people need to “give” Him anything if it’s already His? They wouldn’t! All the offerings they could give are nothing compared the the reality that He already owns it all! 

-Vs. 12-13 we need to understand some historical context. There are some historical documents that list out that if a god isn’t given his sacrifices he dies from hunger (not sure what kind of a god that is that’s completely dependent on other people), but not this God. God doesn’t need anything. We’ve already established this, even if He did need something, it’s already His!

-This is teaching us something about God. Your fancy theological word for the day is “aseity” which means His complete self-existence. (from Latin a se which means “from himself.”) God is completely self-existent. He didn’t come from anyone, He doesn’t need anyone or anything else for Him to exist. Everything else comes from Him.

-There’s also another theological idea that’s coming up in this text, that is that God is also spiritual. He doesn’t need to eat like we do, He doesn’t eat bulls or drink their blood. That means the commands for the people to offer sacrifices to God aren’t just to expand His portfolio, there’s a different purpose to this: it’s meant to do something to us, which is what God talks about in the next verse:

-(14) Instead of just going through the motions, God invites His people to offer a thanksgiving sacrifice, to demonstrate gratitude for the gift of life that He has given.

-We see a parallel to this in Heb. 13:15. The author there tells us this is something that’s supposed to be going on continually, confessing and praising His name, giving Him thanks for the salvation that has been given to us because of His Son.

-When that becomes our way of life, then God invites us to not just go through the motions, but to pursue Him. He will meet us in our struggles and rescue and redeem us.

  • Judgment Against the Hypocrites (16-21)

-This next group has a different problem, Kidner called them the “hardened and hypocritical” This group is similarly going through the motions, but not all of them. These people say the right things, but then intentionally throw away God’s words, and even worse, God refers to this people as “wicked.”

-I’ve had this happen to me before! I had someone come up to me after a sermon onetime and tell me that they didn’t like one sentence of the sermon. When I asked which sentence it was, it was a Bible verse I quoted. This person said, “I don’t agree with that.” So I just said, “you’ll have to take that one up with God!”

-Jesus talks about this idea, too in Matt. 15, quoting from the prophet Isa. They speak the right things, they’ll recite the commands of God, but then live as if those words don’t exist.

-And the question we need to ask ourselves is: what do we do when we’re confronted by God’s Word? The goal of our study of the Bible isn’t to master it, the goal of our study of the Bible is to be mastered by it. Each week when I’m preparing these sermons I’m thinking of the Bible as a mirror: my goal is to hold this up to you and trust the Holy Spirit to reveal to you how closely your image reflects what we’re reading in the text. See, preaching isn’t just about me getting up here to pontificate each week about things I find interesting, God has designed the church to have leaders who weekly remind us of the truths of what God has done, and we’re supposed to respond with obedience. Preaching is meant to be a means of grace in the life of the Christian, a gift that helps us take 1 step closer to Jesus each week. 

-That’s the opposite of the description of the wicked: they see what it would take to grow closer to Jesus, and they run away from it. Instead of moving towards holiness they’re running in the opposite direction, which is the temptation of all our hearts. We think our way is better, we don’t always trust that God’s way is best or that He has our best interests at heart. That’s why the Bible is so incredible, it knows the way we’re all wired, which means it’s timeless. It knows the orientation of our heart, it isn’t bound to a specific cultural climate, it helps us correct our misplaced priorities 

-In this case, the Psalmist goes on to list some specific things they’re doing, ways they’re disregarding God’s Words:

-3 of the 10 commandments are listed here: thief, adulterer, speaking evil. Based on the description of these people, I’m guessing they could even list them out all 10 commandments if asked. But this text also tells us that they’re not always the ones committing the sins. 

-These people are guilty by association. It says they befriend the thief, they spend time with adulterers, and then they join in on speaking evil against others. This means it’s time to hold up the mirror of this text: church: who are you spending time with? We become like the people we spend time with. Now, this doesn’t mean that we never spend time with unbelievers (or the wicked), we’re still commanded to evangelize and tell others about what Jesus has done in our lives, but don’t put yourselves in places where you’ll be tempted to follow in their sinful ways. You need to know yourself well enough to know what faithful evangelism looks like for you without giving in to their sinful ways. You also need to have other Christians who know you well enough to be able to speak into your life and help you as you process and navigate life on this side of eternity.

-And it could even be that the Psalmist is trying to say that even though they didn’t participate in these things they were affirming them by not stopping them or telling their friends that this was wrong. This doesn’t mean you need to be a legalist or a party pooper, but it does mean evaluating what’s taking place around you and refusing to cross the line into sin.

-The last verse in this section tells us that they assumed that because they hadn’t yet been stopped or confronted that there was no problem with what they did. But it gets even worse. The 2nd line here could contain a reference to God’s name “I Am”, so it would be something like “you thought I AM was just like you.” This is connected to God’s aseity that we talked about earlier, God’s covenant name. Think of this like when your parents call you by your full name. The people were taking God’s silence as His permission to sin, but this verse is saying there’s a different reason for this:

-2 things: there is both a reason for His delay in returning and today is incredibly important. We see a warning like this in Heb. 3, where the author repeatedly says watch yourself today. On the day you hear God’s voice, don’t respond with a hardened heart! Obey now! Because tomorrow it could be too late.  

-Paul talks about this exact same idea in Rom. 2: God’s patience and long-suffering is intentional: so that we could have time to repent. And if you don’t repent then it’s going to be even worse for you when God returns, where we will face the consequences for everything we do on earth. Friends, your decisions today have implications for your life in eternity. God invites us into a way of flourishing as humans, but it comes through obedience to God’s way of living. One of the things that worries me is we tend to view Christianity as a 1-time decision and that’s it, instead of seeing that God expects a complete reorientation to our lives. God tells us that we need to pursue holiness with our whole lives, not just the bare minimum.

-So friends, are you pursuing God and living a holy life with all that you have, or are you wanting to continue holding on to your old ways of living?

  • Concluding Remarks (22-23) 

-The ending of this Psalm is a reminder about true wisdom. There are 2 ways to live: either obediently following God or refusing to obey and running away from Him. And we once again see that we’re not just supposed to go through the motions of sacrifices without a changed heart and life, we need to always give thanks to God for the salvation He has won on our behalf.

-Following Christ means that we live a thankful life. We give thanks to God for His good gifts, but there are also string attached: we need to order our conduct, we need to ensure that we obey God’s commands in our lives because those commands are how we live in wisdom, aligning ourselves with the reality of how God has designed this world to operate.

-The mirror of this text has a lot for us to reflect on! We see the reminder to not live a half-hearted life where we go through the motions but don’t allow that to affect our whole being, and the reminder to no be a hypocrite who can say all the right things but not be pursuing holiness and righteousness in our life. And with those reminders to pay careful attention to how we live, we have the promise that we will experience God’s salvation that comes through Jesus Christ.

-And the reality for us is that spiritual none of us can “handle the truth.” Rom. 3 tells us that we’ve all sinned, that we’ve all fallen short of what God has done, which means in God’s courtroom every single one of us has a “guilty” verdict. “But God,” we saw that reality last week! But God did what we couldn’t do, He paid the penalty that we couldn’t and gives us the freedom to live as new creations who have been called to live a holy life. We are the half-hearted, we are the hypocrites, but God’s mercy and grace are enough to deal with our sins.

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by mikethestrand on August 9, 2026  •  Permalink
Posted in Bible, Blog, Church, Life, Sermon
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Posted by mikethestrand on August 9, 2026

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2026/08/09/sermon-manuscript-psalm-50/

Psalm 49 – Sermon Manuscript

-One of the things you probably know about me if you’ve been coming here for any bit of time is that I LOVE history! I love reading history, I love studying history, I love visiting historical things. And 2 years ago, I got to go on the trip of a lifetime around Europe with some other pastors, which means you all will regularly be subjected to pictures and stories of my time from that trip! Partly because it was connected to church history. I got to visit London, Geneva, Rome, Edinburgh, Oxford and visit some places that had a profound influence on the direction of Western Christianity. But it wasn’t just Christianity that has been influenced by these areas, so I want to share some pictures that I took of significant things I saw. I’ll share a bit about each one, but I want you to see if you can figure out what they all have in common. Are you ready?

-This is a bust of the Roman emperor Claudius, who appears 3 times in the book of Acts, which we’re going to be working our way through this Fall, so it’s been on my mind. This bust lives in the British Museum in London.

-Up next is Isaac Newton and Stephen Hawking (who asked to be buried by Newton). Isaac’s comment is in Latin, Stephen’s is the English version, and this is at Westminster Abbey in London.

-In the same building, is the tomb of King Edward the 1 who it says was born in 1239 died in 1307

-Just to prove I was there, too, that’s the Metropolitan Tabernacle, where Charles Spurgeon preached, was dedicated as a building in 1861 (Spurgeon died in 1892)

-Next is a random building I walked by in Edinburgh, Scotland, which according to this sign is where Charles Darwin lived while studying medicine at the University of Edinburgh from 1825-1827.

-Also in Edinburgh is St. Giles Cathedral, where the Reformer John Knox (the statue, not the other guy, that’s my friend Brent) ministered during the Reformation. He had multiple run ins with “Bloody Mary” (Queen Mary I), as well as Mary, Queen of Scots during his life as pushed for Reformation beliefs, and that yellow square in the middle of that parking space marks where he was buried.

-Here is a memorial of where John Calvin used to live in Geneva. Not that building because that building was torn down, but it’s posted there in memory of where he lived while he was a pastor. 

-This is the Reformation wall (another evidence I was actually there) with statues of: John Calvin, John Knox (who you heard about earlier), William Farel (who coerced Calvin to serve in Geneva) and Theodore Beza (followed Calvin as the pastor in Geneva)

-Also, going even further back than the Reformation, here’s a sign in Geneva that says this road is the path Julius Caesar walked when he visited Geneva in 58 AD (which means the Apostles would have still been alive)

-Lastly, this is the stone marking the spot where Nero is buried in Rome. That’s it! Did you figure out what all these pictures have in common? They’re all markers of people who are dead. Today’s Psalm tells us that death is the great equalizer of everyone. The mortality rate has held steady throughout history at 100% (with the exception of Jesus), and in Ps. 49:11, we read, “Their graves are their permanent homes, their dwellings from generation to generation, though they have named estates after themselves.” Let’s read the rest of the Psalm together:

READ/PRAY (pg. 497-8)

  1. True Wisdom (1-4)

-The first 4 verses are an introduction that are saying what this Psalm is about, and there’s a couple things that make this Psalm unique. First comes in the first 2 verses. It says this Psalm is for ALL peoples, low and high, rich and poor. Generally, the Psalms are director to the people of God, this one is for every person who has ever lived, which is why it’s referred to as a wisdom Psalm, hence why it sounds more like the books of Proverbs or Ecc. than Psalms.

-And the entire purpose of those books is seeking to answer the question: what is wisdom? How do we get it? I would define wisdom as living in line with reality. That means aligning ourselves with God’s intent and design for us as humans. That also means sin is pushing against God’s design for us, which is what we see throughout the wisdom literature. Wisdom literature does all sorts of comparisons between the way of wisdom versus the way of foolishness. And the other thing about this Psalm is vs. 3-4 use basically every word the OT uses to talk about God’s wisdom: wisdom, understanding, proverb, and riddle. What’s slightly different about this is the last word: lyre. This is meant to be sung together. So, this wisdom Psalm is a song that contains wisdom for all people from all socio-economic backgrounds to learn a truth together. 

  • A Worldly Ransom (5-14)

-Remember what I said earlier about the comparison between wisdom and foolishness in the wisdom literature? That’s where the Psalmist jumps to next, he asks a question: why should I fear in times of trouble? And the implicit answer is: he shouldn’t! But what times of trouble is he talking about in this Psalm?

-The second half of vs. 5 tells us: the iniquity (that’s another word for sin) of his foes is all around him. Once again, that can be any number of things, right? Sin isn’t restricted to just 1 thing, so which sin? Look at vs. 6, that’s where we see the focus of the rest of this Psalm! It’s addressing the way of the foolish who look to their salvation and satisfaction in worldly wealth.

-He uses 2 interesting financial words in vs. 7 that we have use often when we talk about salvation: redemption and ransom. These are terms the wealthy would know because redemption is the price paid to free something (free an animal from another person, in this time you could free a slave with a financial payment), and a ransom is paid when something or someone in their household is captured by someone else (which the wealthy would have been more susceptible to). We see this even today, people are kidnapped and held hostage until a ransom is paid, but it isn’t generally the poor it happens to. And each of those things would have a price limit, but what would the price be when the ransom needs to be paid to God? Anyone have a way of measuring that price? It’s incalculable, at least in our minds.

-Jesus talks about this idea in Matt. 16: The last question Jesus asks is the same one we’re seeing in this Psalm: what ransom would someone pay to live longer? And isn’t that a temptation around us all the time? There’s a guy named Bryan Johnson (spelled differently), who’s described as a “biohacker” who supposedly spends $2 million each year to attempt to live forever. He’s claimed to have the “biological age” of a 17-year-old, despite actually being 48. It turns out, he has an autoimmune disease that is fatal. Friends, all the money in the world can’t save you from death, and for those of us in Christ, death isn’t something to fear. Yes, it’s an enemy, but death has been defeated! 

-And the Psalmist goes on to say exactly that point in vs. 10, who dies? Everyone. Just as we saw at the beginning of this Psalm, he uses a few words to describe everyone: wise, foolish, and stupid, and all of us are somewhere in that spectrum, right? 

-At some point, if Jesus doesn’t return, all of us will join the rest of humanity in the grave. Graveyards bear this out, don’t they? The checking account of everyone at a graveyard is exactly the same, they left every penny behind. This is one of the saddest things about the Egyptian Pharaohs that we’ve uncovered, they’re buried with all their treasure for the afterlife, but they didn’t take them to the afterlife, they’re sitting in museums all over the world.

-The last part of vs. 11 talks about this idea. Just like my visits to all those places in Europe with plaques and statues named after people, they’re just as dead as the person who died destitute and was buried in an unmarked grave. Even though they’ve worked their hardest to preserve their reputation in the world the only thing that is permanent is their living in the grave.

-Vs. 12 becomes a bit of a theme that serves as the markers of this Psalm, because it’s repeated almost verbatim in the last verse. One of the realities about humans is we have the same trajectory as every animal: death. We’re more than animals (one philosopher said we’re the only animals that think about being animals) in that we’re created as God’s image, but we end up in the same place: dead.

-And for those who live as if their riches make them better than others, that is the end of everything for them, as well as their followers. 

-Selah – Pray through whether or not you’re viewing life through this worldly view of material wealth determining your standing. Keller “Lord, I often catch myself imagining how much greater life would be if I had more. I also quietly ‘boast’ in my heart when I see myself able to afford certain goods and inhabit certain places. Save my heart from such shallowness and foolishness.” (Songs of Jesus)

-The Psalmist makes an interesting comparison in vs. 14 comparing death to a shepherd. What kind of a shepherd do you think death would be? Contrast that with the picture we see of God as a shepherd in Ps. 23

-Do you think death would lead you to green pastures and still waters or renew your life? Death is a horrible shepherd where the outcome is just destruction! That’s where wisdom is aligning yourself to God’s ways.

-The last sentence of vs. 14 says that while they used their money to advantage themselves on earth, the opposite will happen to them in eternity. 

-Jesus tells a parable with a similar focus in Luke 16 about a rich man and a poor man named Lazarus. From the beginning of the story it looks like 1 of these men is blessed and the other is cursed. But then we get a glimpse behind the curtain, after they’re both on the other side of life their situations are reversed. The rich man asks Father Abraham to send Lazarus to put a drop of water on his tongue, and here’s how Abraham responds: 

-And what’s amazing about this story is that the rich man is never even named, as if Jesus is using his as a stand in for everyone Psalm 49 is talking about. The man goes on to ask Abraham to send Lazarus to his brothers to warn them about death, and Abraham says they have Moses and the prophets, who they didn’t listen to, and the parable ends saying: 

-Guess what? Someone did rise from the dead and did tell us exactly how to ensure that we don’t go to the place of torment, which is where this Psalm goes next:

  • An Eternal Ransom (15-20; Heb. 9)

-I think the biggest and most significant 2 words in the Bible are the beginning of this verse: but God. In one of his many explanations of the gospel message, Paul in Eph. 2 says it this way: 

-Friends, this is the best news in the world! We’re all tempted to look with jealousy at those who make more than us, and not just that but we’re also tempted to look down on those who make less than us, aren’t we? How do you feel when you drive up next to someone begging for money at a stoplight? Do you pull over to the far lane to get away from them? Do you pretend they’re not there? Do you pray for them? Do you smile at them? There’s times where each of those responses may be appropriate, depending on the safety of the area you’re in! This isn’t meant to cast judgment on you, especially if you’ve been taken advantage of in the past, but I think it’s worth remembering that financial success doesn’t necessarily always come from God. And the human temptation is to look to worldly success instead of looking to God who is rich in mercy and will lavishly pour out that mercy on His children!

-The Psalmist says the exact same thing, even though he didn’t know the name “Jesus” millennia before He was born. Here he says the gospel message this way: But God will redeem me from the power of Sheol (death, the grave) because He will take me.

–Selah – take some time to pray and thank God for the 2 words at the beginning of this verse, “but God” who did rise from the dead and tell us exactly how to live a wise life

-Reiterating the question he asked at the beginning all the way back in vs. 5, we’re reminded to not be afraid when someone gets rich, or when his investments go up in value, because it has no bearing on their eternal soul. When he dies, he’ll have the same investments as everyone else who’s dead, you can’t take it to the other side with you.

-Vs. 18 is kind of weird, what seems to be taking place is the second half is what the rich person says to himself. He’s blessing himself, taking and spending his money on whatever he wants, then says to himself “you do well for yourself,” and finally the Psalmist interjects once again with wisdom in vs. 19

-This is the final reminder that even the wealthy end up in the same place as the poor: dead. By saying they will never see the light, the OT often picks up the idea of salvation coming with the morning, but for the rich who died without wisdom that morning salvation will never come.

-Vs. 20 is almost a repeat of vs. 12 but with 1 distinct difference, here, I’ll put them next to each other up on the screen so you can see it:

-In vs. 12 we see the reminder that humans are destined to be like the animals in that we’ll all die, what vs. 20 is doing is saying there is a difference among humans. Some humans die “without understanding” which means there’s the option of dying “with understanding,” and not ending up the same as the animals who are here one day and gone the next. 

-There’s a verse in the book of Hebrews that answers the unanswered questions of this whole Psalm. Vs. 7-8 said the wealth and abundant riches can’t redeem a person or pay back his ransom to God since the price of redeeming him is too costly. Which is why those two words that we looked at matter so much: but God. 

-Did you catch what the Psalmist is saying throughout this? The entire wealth of the world put together isn’t enough to pay God off for the consequences of 1 person’s sin. All the wealth in the world will someday pass away, but any 1 single sin has eternal consequences against the eternal God who created everything. But God paid what we couldn’t, He gave us Himself, which includes all the riches of His glory in the heavenly realm. Riches that we get to see little glimpses of here. I was struck this week that what we call “grace”, God’s undeserved and unearned favor poured out on us is nothing less than getting God Himself! Friends, when you’re saved, you are indwelled by the living God, you are united together to Him. Isn’t that incredible? Heb. 9:15

-This verse tells us that Jesus’s death paid that ransom. We were in bondage to sin, the only possible outcome for everyone was death, which is why Jesus had to die. But even death wasn’t strong enough to defeat God, so death spit Jesus back out. Friends, death no longer has power over anyone who is walking in the way of wisdom, another way of saying that is walking in the way of Jesus. If you follow Him, if you obey Him, everything changes, both here and then. 

-This is where the good news of the gospel is actually good news. Friends, Jesus told us that we have access to every spiritual blessing. Our spiritual bank account is LOADED. But we don’t have complete access to it right now. We get a stipend now, but the full inheritance is waiting for us. And it doesn’t come about by accumulating more stuff now, it comes by being faithful now. God brings people from all sorts of backgrounds here: wealthy and poor, young and old, and He invites us to use our gifts to be a blessing to each other. Are you demonstrating your faithfulness by using whatever resources God has given you to be a blessing to others? That’s what’s going to carry over into eternity, not building shrines to yourself, not naming buildings after yourself: using your resources as a way to be a blessing to others instead of building up more recognition for yourself is what shows that you’re living wisely, living in line with reality, and living as someone who is following in the way of Jesus.

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by mikethestrand on August 2, 2026  •  Permalink
Posted in Bible, Blog, Church, Life, Sermon
Tagged , , , ,

Posted by mikethestrand on August 2, 2026

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2026/08/02/psalm-49-sermon-manuscript/

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