Acts 7:54-8:3

This morning we’ll again be participating in the International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church.  When the early Christians had to choose a word to identify those who had suffered intensely and even given their lives for their faith, they chose to call them “martyrs”—a word which denotes not their victimhood but their bold witness to Jesus Christ.  Luke’s account of Stephen’s martyrdom serves as a picture of Christ’s promise that the gates of hell cannot prevail against his church.  Though from one perspective the church looked vulnerable and frail, Luke points out the ways in which God used the persecution in the early church to spread the good news of the gospel.  From the perspective of the devil and those who seek to destroy the church, it is among the most frustratingly indestructible and resilient realities on the planet.