Full of the Holy Spirit

All right, I got a question for you.

Have you ever met someone or knew someone who wasn't famous, wasn't wealthy, wasn't powerful, but somehow changed everyone's life around them?

Not because of their title, but because of who they were.

Most of history's greatest kingdom impact wasn't accomplished by kings or celebrities or presidents.

It was accomplished by ordinary people who were full of God.

Ordinary, on this Father's Day, ordinary men.

Ordinary men.

Acts chapter six introduces us to one of those men.

It introduces us to one of these people.

Stephen is his name.

He's not an apostle.

He's not a pastor.

He's not leading a revival meeting.

What he's doing is he's helping the church with some administration problems, yet he's one of the most influential figures in the entire New Testament.

What if the most important thing about your life isn't your gifting, your title, your education, or your platform?

What if the determining factor is simply what you are full of?

Welcome to our There Is More series where we are journeying through the book of Acts verse by verse and chapter by chapter.

So no matter whether you are starting your faith journey today or just recently, or you have been walking with God for decades,

There is more.

Will you shout there is more with me?

There is more.

That's what this series is all about.

It might take us a year to get through the book of Acts.

I don't really care because I am loving the journey.

I'm getting more out of the book of Acts personally than I ever have, and I've read it dozens and dozens and dozens of times.

But today, this is a significant, major shift in the book of Acts so far.

So far, it has been a history lesson in God's outpouring of the Holy Spirit and the results thereof, mainly through the apostles and mainly Peter.

But today, Acts chapter 6, everything changes.

All right, if you're physically able, come on, let's stand up for the reading of God's word, Acts chapter 6.

Here we go.

Now in those days, when it says now in those days, how far are we from Acts chapter one?

We are only about a year, maybe two years from Acts chapter one and chapter two, where the outpouring of the Holy Spirit happened, church is born, Peter preaches the first sermon, and then all of a sudden the church starts growing.

So the church is still a baby church.

A year or two into it, in those days, when the number of the disciples,

was multiplying.

This is the first time the author of the book called Luke uses the word disciple.

So far it's been believers, people, being added to the Lord.

Right here, first time, we'll talk about it more in a moment.

The disciples was multiplying.

All right.

There arose a complaint against the Hebrews by the Hellenists because their widows were neglected in the daily distribution.

Who are the Hellenists?

The Hellenists are also Jewish, but they're Greek-speaking Jews.

they would be people that had been influenced by the Greco-Roman culture.

So where the Jews that wouldn't call themselves Hellenists, the Hebrews, they were Aramaic-speaking Jews.

And so there was this sect difference, okay?

Because their widows were neglected in the daily distribution, then the 12 summoned the multitude of the disciples and said, "'It's not desirable.'"

that we should leave the word of God and serve tables.

Therefore, brethren, seek out from among you seven men of good reputation, full of the Holy Spirit and wisdom, whom we may appoint over this business.

But we will give ourselves continually to prayer and to the ministry of the word, and the saying pleased the whole multitude."

And they chose Stephen.

We're going to talk all about him today.

A man full of faith and the Holy Spirit.

Okay, I want you to read this with me out loud.

A man, what is it?

Full of faith and the Holy Spirit.

And Philip and all these other names that are hard to pronounce.

And Nicholas.

Nicholas.

A proselyte from Antioch.

Something that I just want to point out, and we'll dive into why this matters.

These are all Greek-influenced names.

So they chose Hellenists to deal with the problem of the Hellenists.

We'll get into that in a minute and why.

whom they set before the apostles.

And when they had prayed, they laid hands on them.

Then the word of God spread, and the number of the disciples multiplied greatly in Jerusalem.

And a great many of the priests were obedient to the faith.

And Stephen, here it is, full.

Stevens, full of faith and power, did great wonders and signs among the people.

I want to talk today what it means, what it looks like to be full of the Holy Spirit.

Go ahead and high five somebody.

Say, you look better than you did last week.

Go ahead and just tell them, you look better.

Yes, you do.

Okay.

So Stephen is full of the Holy Spirit.

Let's find out what that looks like in somebody's life.

A reminder again, Stephen is not an apostle.

Stephen is not a pastor.

He's the equivalent of a high school math teacher and a football coach at his local high school, if they had something like that.

But he gets full of the Holy Spirit, and he is chosen because

as one of the seven to oversee a ministry that is ministering to the poor.

So that would be equivalent to something at our church that we have called storehouse ministry, our mobile ministry to help those in need.

So Stephen is chosen to oversee storehouse ministry at Life.Church to carry out a responsibility in the church.

So I wanna show you four things that I see in Stephen's life

Because Stephen is said to be full a couple of times.

He is full of the Holy Spirit, full of faith, full of power.

So what does it look like to be a man of God on this Father's Day?

What does it look like to be a father who is full of God, to be full of faith and full of power?

And of course, ladies, this involves you as well.

What does it look like to be full of the Holy Spirit?

Number one, being full of the Holy Spirit is to be full of service.

To be full of service because Stephen was chosen to be appointed over this ministry, over this business.

And then it says because of that, these men that were chosen and they began to oversee this ministry to the poor, here's what happened.

Then the word of God spread.

Then the number of disciples multiplied greatly.

Notice that the disciples multiplied greatly after people started carrying responsibility in the church.

That's like three amens from the front row.

The disciples multiplied greatly when Stephens and Nicolases and all those other names that are hard to pronounce multiplied.

When men in the church and when people in the church rose up and carried responsibility in the church.

Let me just go through a few Greek words.

Disciples multiplied greatly.

I want to show you these three words in Greek and what they mean.

Disciple.

It is this Greek word.

It means a learner, a pupil, an apprentice.

In the New Testament, it refers to someone who not only studies the teacher's doctrine, but actively commits to living according to their master's way of life.

Remember that.

To be a disciple is not to just be a believer, not just someone who understands theology or what it means to be a Christian intellectually, but it is someone who chooses and commits to living according to their master's way of life.

That's a disciple.

Disciples multiplied.

What is that word?

It is this word in the Greek, and it means to increase, to multiply, to make full.

It is the root word from which we get plethora.

It indicates a massive, rapid, numerical surge or expansion in the number of the disciples.

Then you get it said it happened greatly.

It means sufficiently, abundantly, considerably, or a great deal.

When paired with the Greek word for multiply, it emphasizes that the multiplication of disciples was not just a small bump in numbers, but a significant and overwhelming growth spurt.

This is what God wants to do in his church in the world right now.

He doesn't want his church to limp along.

He wants his church to have disciples multiplying greatly where we can't hardly keep up.

Now this is how the church was always meant to function when a disciple, when believers turn into disciples.

When Stevens and Nicolases and all the other people in the church rise up and carry responsibility.

That's what discipleship

The church is always meant to function like and what a disciple looks like.

Just so you know, this church is not a staff-driven church.

This church is a dream team-driven church.

And the staff is here to help you find your place

and do your part of service like Stephen to do it effectively.

That's what the staff is here for, is to help the body of Christ to know God, to find freedom, to discover purpose and make a difference.

Seven leaders were chosen in response to a problem.

I mentioned to you that the names of these seven leaders, they themselves, it indicates, their names indicate they were a part of the Hellenist group.

They had Greco-Roman influence.

The culture of Rome had influenced them.

They spoke Greek.

And so it was their own people, their own widows that were being neglected.

Amen.

Here's the point.

Has it ever occurred to you that your irritation or that your burden that you just wish the church would do something about could be a sign for where you're supposed to serve?

You're checking in your kids and you're thinking, man, I just wish we had a better system for checking kids in here.

It just takes so long to check all my children in for kids' church.

Hmm.

Guess where God might be leading you to serve?

Or you might be thinking, man, this parking lot is ridiculous.

We just, it takes so long to find a place to park.

Guess what?

We got a new parking lot coming with 500 parking spots in it and an Imagine campaign that you could give towards.

We think, what about the poor in our community?

You just are burdened with it.

You're like, we gotta do something for the poor.

And we're like, we absolutely do.

We have a ministry called Storehouse.

We would love you to partner with us.

Every month, we are doing something for the poor and those in need in our community.

Join the team.

Let's go dream together and serve our community in a greater way.

Or others of you have a burden.

You go, this generation feels like they're going to hell in a handbasket.

They just need some great men and women, some great spiritual moms and spiritual dads.

to be able to help mentor them.

You are absolutely right.

We have a youth ministry here that would love to engage you in small group ministry and to help out our high schoolers and help out our middle school boys and our middle school girls and our high school boys and our high school girls.

When we break up into small groups, you could be a great addition to the team of our youth ministry right here.

Has it ever occurred to you that your irritations

That your burdens could be exactly the area that God is calling you to become a leader and serve in in the body of Christ.

That happened for Stephen.

Stephen was a part of that group.

Could have been his own mom that was neglected in the distribution for the widows.

Could have been his grandmother.

Could have been his own family.

Could it be?

I just have to wonder.

that Stephen was burdened and said, please sign me up.

I want to at least throw my name into the hat.

I want me to be, I want to be, to at least to be considered, to be able to help this ministry to become effective the way that we know that God would have it to be.

Again, this is the first time that Luke uses the word disciple for followers of Christ.

So far, it's been believers.

So far it's just been people added.

But God is always destined for his followers to be called disciples and not just believers.

The difference is this.

Believers believe.

Disciples do.

Believers believe.

But disciples do.

The Bible tells us that Satan himself, he believes that there's a God.

So it's not just about believing, it's about doing.

Another way of saying it that I see in Stephen's life, what it means to be full of the Holy Spirit is that really a saved person, saved people serve people.

Disciples make the shift like Stephen did from serving ourselves to serving others.

Now this is maybe the big surprise for every man when he got married, and especially when he became a father, is you begin to discover, you know what?

When you're a child, you have this belief that the world exists and revolves around your needs.

But when you become a man, you discover that the world does not revolve around my wants or around my needs.

I am here to serve.

God has raised me up and caused me to live in this generation to make a difference.

I am here because God has saved me and because God has saved me, he has saved me too.

to serve.

But I want you to see something where it's a little bit of a negative scripture, but it gives a point that I want to make.

And it's out of Jeremiah where it says, long ago, I broke the yoke that oppressed you.

So God set you free and he saved you and he gave you freedom.

And I tore away the chains of your slavery, but you still said, I will not serve.

And when people say they won't serve, if you refuse to serve on every hill and under every green tree, you will prostitute yourself by bowing down to idols.

If we refuse to serve and to become servants of others, we will exchange our freedom for slavery.

Selfish people tend to drift towards sin or slavery.

Saved people tend to drift toward Jesus and serving others.

Selfish people will drift towards sin and selfishness and serving themselves, but saved people tend to drift towards the Lord and becoming like him.

And I know a lot of people, they'll get in church and if they don't ever hear a message like this and challenge our own selfish nature that says, that boyhood or that childish nature that says, serve me, serve me, feed me, take care of me.

If you never hear something that challenges you to grow up,

then you will always have this kind of mentality.

I'm coming to church.

I want to find a church that meets my needs.

I need a church to meet my needs.

I just need you to know something.

You found one, and here's what you need.

You need to serve.

You found a church that will meet your needs.

It's time to get up and serve.

To get out of our selfishness, we need to serve in God's house.

You know what?

Someone welcomed me when I showed up, I'm gonna welcome someone else when they showed up.

Someone prayed me into the kingdom, I'm gonna pray someone else into the kingdom.

Someone was there for me when I was down, I'm gonna be there for somebody else when they're down.

Someone was there for me when my marriage was going through it, I'm gonna be there for someone else when their marriage was going through it.

Someone was there for me when I had no relationships, felt isolated, and someone welcomed me into their life even though they already had a lot of people in their world and their influence.

I am now going to leave a space at my table and open up room for somebody else into my life as well.

I'm just talking to you about what it looks like to be full of the Spirit.

This is what Stephen shows us.

It's like the very first thing that we see about Stephen is, sign me up.

I'm full of the Spirit.

I want to take care of storehouse ministry.

I want to start serving in the parking lot.

I got a business that I'm going to believe God to raise millions to be able to further into the kingdom of God and to do more than we've ever seen before in the next decade.

All of these things, this is what Stephen's spirit shows me.

He's like, to be full means sign me up.

This is what Paul wrote to the Ephesians.

We are God's masterpiece.

He's created us anew in Christ Jesus so we can what?

We can do the good things he planned long ago.

You know, God has good things that he has planned for your life to do.

Now, Stephen concluded that he was made by God to make a difference.

He realized he wasn't an apostle.

He knew he wasn't a pastor.

He knew, I'm not Peter.

I'm not any of those guys.

I'm no one special maybe.

but I am full of the Holy Spirit.

And if I'm full of the Holy Spirit, then God can make a difference in my life.

You were destined by God to be full of the Holy Spirit, and you were destined by God to make a difference.

The most unused treasures in the world lie in cemeteries of our world.

The books that were never written.

The stories that were never told of how God changed somebody's life.

The love that was never given away.

Buried.

with people in cemeteries.

You are here on purpose.

You were born in this generation on purpose.

When everyone in the church starts doing their part to grow the kingdom of God through the local church, exponential things begin to happen.

Disciples multiply,

There is this plethora of a move of God when everybody says, you know what?

I want to be like Stephen.

I want to be full of the Spirit.

I want to make a difference.

I want to stand up and serve and not be served my entire life.

Can I hear an amen to that?

From whom the whole body joined and knit together by what every joint supplies according to the effective working by which, look at this, every part does its share.

What does that do?

When every part does its share, it causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love.

He goes on.

He says this.

He makes the whole body fit together perfectly as each part does its own special work.

It helps the other parts grow so that the whole body is healthy and growing and full of love.

We learn this from Stephen.

This is a radical point in the book of Acts that you just do not wanna miss, my friends.

So far, it's just been the story of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the apostles and the church and the 120 believers, and then you just see God using the apostles.

And that's kinda where I feel like a lot of the church leaves the story.

Like, that's so great, go, Peter, go!

But that's not where Luke leaves the story.

He's like, this is the beginning of when someone like Stephen lets us know anybody can get full of the Spirit and make a difference.

You don't have to wait for some high calling.

You don't have to wait to be, I'm going to be an apostle or a prophet.

No, you don't.

I'm going to serve the poor.

I'm gonna lead administration.

I'm gonna make sure the rows in the church are straight for the next service.

I'm gonna take out the, I'm gonna do whatever it is that burdens me, that irritates me in the body of Christ and not let it irritate me anymore.

I'm gonna make a difference and make it the best that it possibly can be.

Now the rest of Acts chapter six and Acts chapter seven, this is the first time that I'm doing two chapters in one.

Acts chapter 6 and Acts chapter 7 record for us Stephen's persecution.

So Stephen gets full of the spirit, great signs and wonders done among the people.

People are getting healed, all kinds of stuff.

We don't know, but amazing things are happening through Stephen's life.

At the same time, he's taking care of widows.

He's overseeing the church administration business to make sure that some people aren't neglected over other people's.

So he's doing all of this, and he's just full of the spirit and seeing God do incredible things.

And then...

Persecution comes, which we learned all about last week.

Every time there's advancement, there's resistance from the enemy.

But he then gives a sermon to the religious leaders.

And it is the longest recorded sermon in the New Testament, minus the Sermon on the Mount by Jesus.

It is a walkthrough.

of the entire Old Testament without a cheat sheet, without chat GPT or AI or notes to be able to help him remember all of it and it is impeccably accurate.

This man knew the Bible.

So what does it mean to be full of the Holy Spirit?

Full of service.

I find my place.

I discover my purpose.

I make a difference.

I don't just wait for Peters to do it.

I don't wait for apostles to do it.

I don't wait for my pastor to do it.

I have a place in the body of Christ.

But you know what else I do to be full of the Spirit?

Is I get full of the Word of God.

Because the Bible says that Stephen was full of faith.

And there's only one way to get full of faith.

Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God.

So he was full of faith that came from filling himself with the word of God.

One of the very first things that transpired in my life when I got full of the Holy Spirit was an insatiable desire to read God's word.

I took my Bible everywhere.

Before we had iPhones, but you know, the only thing we take everywhere now is our phone.

Back then, my Bible was with me.

It was in my car.

It was in my classroom.

It went with me.

I loved my Bible.

It was a supernatural craving that God put inside of me.

And the Bible says this.

It says, blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stands in the path of sinners, nor sits in the seat of the scornful.

But what?

His delight is in the Bible.

His delight is in the law of the Lord.

And in his law, he meditates day and night.

And he shall be like a tree planted by rivers of water that brings forth its fruit in its season.

And its leaf doesn't wither.

And whatever he does prospers.

And Peter writes this.

He goes, as newborn babes desire.

Desire.

This is what I see Stephen.

This word desire in Greek, it signifies an intense craving, an earnest yearning, a compelling inward impulse, just exactly like a hungry newborn baby craves for milk.

So Peter's going, this is what you should have for the word of God, and this is what Stephen had.

Stephen had this intense hunger for the word of God or he would not be full of faith.

We believe that the Bible is God's inspired word.

It is the authoritative and trustworthy rule of faith and practice for all Christians of all time.

Amen.

The Bible is this.

It is the word of God.

It is living and powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword.

This is the only book ever written that is alive.

It's written, Jesus said, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.

I love some of these quotes.

James Jennings said, if a man's Bible's coming apart, it's an indication that he himself is fairly well put together.

Dwight Moody said this, sin will keep you from this book or this book will keep you from sin.

He also said this, he said, I prayed for faith and thought that someday faith would come down and strike me like lightning, but faith did not seem to come.

One day I read in the 10th chapter of Romans, faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the word of God.

I'd closed my Bible and prayed for faith.

I now open my Bible and begin to study and faith has been growing ever since.

Amen.

Now, I got to go fast.

You got to listen fast.

I got two more points to say, and I'm only halfway through the message.

Pay attention.

Here we go.

What does it mean to be full of the Holy Spirit?

Look at this.

Therefore, brethren, seek out from among you seven men of what is it?

Seven men of good reputation.

What does it look like to be full of the Spirit?

Someone say, signs and wonders, speaking in tongues, supernatural things, gifts of the Spirit.

All of that may be true, but I think there's something that is just as true and maybe more so, and that is this right here, full of godly character.

Amen.

Full of godly character.

It's called the fruit of the Holy Spirit.

Galatians says this.

The Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives.

Love.

But I don't love people.

Then you're not full of the Spirit.

I don't care if you speak in tongues.

Love.

Joy.

Peace.

Patience.

Kindness.

Look at that one.

Just goodness.

Have you ever said something about somebody?

You go, they're just a good person.

They're just, well, they're so good.

Fruit of the Holy Spirit.

He produced.

Here's what the Holy Spirit will do.

He will make you better.

Not better than someone else.

Better than yourself.

Stephen was chosen.

He was full of the Holy Spirit and he was chosen because he had a good reputation.

Now that doesn't mean that you have to have had a perfect life.

It means that you have a moment, a demarcation where I was born again and I was that and now I'm on a journey to never be that again.

I am transformed.

Here's what I'm saying.

The Holy Spirit will work on your character.

What does it mean to be full of the Holy Spirit?

He'll change you.

Sin will become very troublesome to you.

If you can sin easily and it doesn't bother you, you have no remorse, you're not born again yet.

Now don't let that condemn you.

Let it convict you.

Because when the Holy Spirit gets in you, sin bothers you.

You're like, I shouldn't have said that.

I didn't want to do that.

He'll work on what you say.

He'll work on what you do.

He'll help you love people you would not normally love.

He'll help you reach across the aisle politically.

Well, I don't want to do that.

Exactly.

Of course you don't.

The Holy Spirit will help you love people you wouldn't love.

He'll help you stop saying things that you shouldn't.

Mid-sentence.

He'll help you study to write the research paper for college without using AI writing it for you.

He will produce a righteousness in you from within you.

So he produces change.

And then we get Stephen preaches this incredible sermon.

Accurate Old Testament story.

This is how it all went.

And then he punches him right in the heart with the gospel, you crucified the Lord Jesus.

And they're pierced to the heart.

But they don't want to get saved.

They become angry at him.

And they decide, we're going to kill you.

And they do.

Stephen is martyred for his faith.

But while he is being martyred, I want you to notice what he says and what he does that comes out of the goodness of

and the character that is produced inside of him by being full of the Spirit of Jesus.

He sounds just like Jesus did when Jesus was crucified.

Jesus said, Father, forgive them.

for they do not know what they do.

While he's on the cross, Jesus goes, Father, forgive them.

They don't know what they're doing.

And then he said, when Jesus had cried out with a loud voice, he said, Father, into your hands, I commit my spirit.

Now there's stoning Stephen, blood running down his face.

He cries out, not a prayer of justice, not a prayer of revenge, not God killed them, I didn't do anything wrong.

Not that.

He says,

And they stoned him.

Stephen prayed, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.

He fell to his knees shouting, Lord, don't charge them with this sin.

The Holy Spirit makes us more like Jesus, and we are never more like him than when we forgive our enemies.

Full.

This is what it looks like to be full of the Holy Spirit, full of mercy towards others.

For some of you, the hardest thing you will ever do as a disciple of Jesus is to extend the same mercy and forgiveness that Christ extended towards you when you extended towards your enemies.

Imagine the final moments

of Stephen's life.

Crowd is screaming.

The stones are flying.

Blood is running down his face.

With his final breaths, he's not cursing his enemies, crying out for justice or revenge.

He prays for mercy.

That's being full.

of the spirit of God and that's what it looks like to be full of the spirit and standing there that day watching the entire thing was a man by the name of Saul Stephen didn't know it but God used his life that looked and sounded so much like Jesus

that he would launch the ministry of an apostle that got changed from Saul to Paul.

Stephen wasn't an apostle.

He wasn't a pastor.

He wasn't famous.

He was simply an ordinary man who was full of the Holy Spirit.

So my questions today are, what area is God calling you to serve?

What habit do you need to develop to become full of God's word?

What area of your character is the Holy Spirit trying to transform?

Who is God calling you to forgive?

And what step do you need to take from being a believer to becoming a disciple?

Never underestimate what God can do

through one ordinary person who is full of the Holy Spirit.

There is more.

More than attending church.

More than believing the right things.

More than just coming to a service.

There's more service.

There's more character transformation.

There's more Christ-like character.

There's more mercy.

There is more.

There's more of the Holy Spirit to work in my life.

And God still does extraordinary things through ordinary people who are full of the Holy Spirit.

I want to pray for a fresh filling of the Spirit of God on our lives.

Not so that we can be anybody special, but so that Jesus can live and can shine through our lives in such a way that extraordinary things can be done for the kingdom of God.

Amen?

Let's pray together.

Father, I thank you.

On this Father's Day, we want to say Happy Father's Day to you.

And we remember this where Jesus said, by this my Father is glorified that you bear much fruit.

So Father, we don't want to just say Happy Father's Day.

We want to live our lives in such a way like Stephen did where we bear fruit.

So our lives scream every day and shout, happy Father's Day.

I want to live for the glory of God.

I want to live a life that makes a difference for the glory of God.

I want to be a man of God.

I want to be a father that you would be proud of on this Father's Day.

I pray for every father.

That there would be a demarcation, a line in the sand that says, I was that, I'm never going to be that again.

Today, fill me afresh with the Spirit of God to be a man like Stephen.

I pray it for all the ladies.

I pray it for every one of us that we will be full of the Holy Spirit.

Every head bowed and every eye closed and every campus.

If you are not sure you're right with God, you need to get right with him right now.

This is your moment of opportunity to say yes to the next prayer I'm going to pray.

And if you would say, Bob, I don't know if I'm right with God.

I want to become right with God today.

This is your chance.

I'm calling our campus pastors up on in front right now in Pendleton.

And if you want to get your life right with Jesus, right here in Walla Walla, in Pendleton, would you look up right now and just wave and say, I want to be included in this prayer.

Will you do that right now?

Just look up and wave and say, I want to be included in this prayer.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

All over the room.

Thank you.

Thank you so very much.

Now, if I miss you, God does not.

Every hand, he sees.

I'm going to pray.

I want you just to say yes to this prayer under your breath while I pray.

Right now, Father, I thank you for the grace of Jesus Christ.

I come before you today and say, I'm a sinner.

I don't want to stay the same way I was or I have been.

I want you in my life from this day forward.

Forgive me of every sin I've ever committed or I ever will and become my Lord and become my Savior.

I pray this right now in Jesus' matchless name.

Everybody shout amen.

Come on, let's give God praise one more time.

We love you, Lord.