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Acts 8:1-40

“The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church!” -Tertullian in 197 A.D.

They died the day after my sixth birthday. My Dad and Mom’s response is burned into my memory!

Five young men with incredible gifting, Christian “Ivy-League” training, and irrepressible drive bled to death in the Ecuadorian jungle on a 200 yard long sand-bar they had nicknamed, “Palm Beach.” In a recruiting scenario only the Lord could fashion, a team of 30-somethings came together for one common mission. They would strategize, engage and execute a plan to bring the life-giving Good News of Jesus to the isolated, untouched and unreached head-hunter tribes in the remotest parts of the nation. After weeks of fly-overs, gift drops, and other friendship building endeavors, they packed their small plane with more gifts for the Indians they hoped to meet and camping supplies for an extended stay.

They hugged their wives and kissed their small children good-bye, aware of the danger they were facing yet optimistic that the Lord had gone before to prepare the way for a successful mission. None of them knew that this would be the last hug and kiss they would experience on this side of Paradise. They went because they were undeniably called!

Having invested his administrative gifts in partnership with the other six congregationally appointed and Apostolically ordained “deacons,” Stephen turned his focus toward evangelistic engagements in the five synagogues receptive to a Hellenistic/Greek-speaking bible teacher. With grace and clarity that could only be empowered by the indwelling Holy Spirit, his ministry was stirring hearts and convicting souls. Even the most skillful of the theologians found themselves impotent to counter his insightful explanations. Suddenly he finds himself under arrest and thrust into the center of the Hebrew Supreme Court. There, with the Holy Spirit's courage, he spontaneously “walks” them through the narrative of God’s redemptive plan as revealed in the history of their nation. But as he emphasized the repetitious theme of leadership rejection, the tension built up until finally, unable to endure the growing conviction of personal guilt, they rushed as one man to seize and murder God’s messenger. Yet even as this first Christian martyr’s blood dripped hot on the barren soil, the Lord was planting the seed that would bear fruit in the greatest Gospel missionary in all of church history! “Meanwhile the witnesses laid their coats at the feet of a young man named Saul.” Acts 8:58

I was 6 years old. My Aunt and Uncle were missionaries in Cuba, serving out of a remote mountain village and sporadic news of the Cuban Revolution reaching our home through “snail-mail” placed them on the top of our family’s daily prayer list. Lives had been “lost” for the sake of the gospel and the reality of the danger to those who continued to serve on the mission fields of the world was never clearer in the Christian mind. Yet the national movement of young people stepping forward to “take the place of the five martyrs” was greater than had ever been witnessed!

The enemy of the Gospel may silence the voice of a messenger, but in doing so he only scatters more broadly the Good News of the message. Those who had found a reason for which to die, had suddenly discovered a true reason to live!

“The blood of the martyrs IS the seed of the Church!”

See you Sunday, Church!
Pastor Tom