STEPHEN'S FULLNESS
"And they chose Stephen, a man full of faith and of the
Holy Ghost "(Acts VI. 5).
This is our first introduction to Stephen. We know nothing
of his birthplace or childhood, his genealogy or his education. We are not told
his political, social, or financial standing. We do not know whether he came
off Fifth Avenue or off the Bowery; out of the slums or from up town. We are at
once introduced to his Christian experience. This makes me think that Christian
experience is the most important thing that heaven sees in a man; and we are
told at once that Stephen "was full of faith and of the Holy Ghost."
So this must be the Divine standard for the measurement of man. Men have their
standards; men measure themselves by themselves and compare themselves with
each other; but God has His standard, and when man stands up alongside of God's
measuring line he finds himself too short. A little boy told his mother that he
was six feet tall; and when she doubted his statement, he assured her that he
had just measured himself by his own little feet. That is the way men measure
themselves; that is the way men measure each other. They measure by their own
rule. But God has a rule, and when we are measured by God's rule we are altogether
too short. God has a way of making men measure up, and if you feel a shortage tonight
in your Christian experience, I am delighted to be able to tell you that God
has a plan by which your shortage may be supplied, and there may creep into
your soul the consciousness that God has rounded you out and filled you up
until you meet the Divine expectation.
I notice that Stephen had a double allowance. He was twice
full. Most people are not once full. But he was "full of faith and of the
Holy Ghost;" and while I do not care to draw the line too closely between
the fullness of faith and the fullness of the Spirit, yet there are a great
many people who have doubtless at some time received the Holy Ghost who are not
very full of faith. There are some here now who do not have the faith they
should have.
We will never have much more faith than we have, unless we
stop talking doubt and unbelief; for if we talk doubt we will have doubt; if we
talk unbelief it will grow on our hands; but if we will cultivate faith, if we
will encourage faith, we will have plenty of it. Faith is not only the gift of
God, but "faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God,"
and we ought to have fullness of faith in Jesus Christ. We ought to be
believing for larger things. We ought, with our faith, to look out beyond the
most forbidding things that threaten us; for "all things are possible with
God," and "to him that believeth."
It is the people that are believing that get blessed, I do
not care what the subject is. Take the subject of salvation, and the people who
scratch their heads and doubt never get blessed. Take the question of
sanctification, and the people who hang around the edges and say, "I do
not believe this, and I do not believe that," never get very happy. You
never see them filled with ecstasy and devotion. Take the question of divine
healing, and the people who always say they do not believe, do not get much out
of it. It is the folks who believe that get blessed.
Beloved, you and I ought to let faith abound. We ought not
to talk unbelief, or permit ourselves to mix up with any kind of doubt about
anything which God has promised in His Word.
I notice that Stephen was right in his "faith"
intellectually, he was right in his faith experimentally, and he was right in
his faith practically. Now, it is worth something to be right in your faith
intellectually. I know that some people tell us that it does not make any
difference what people believe if they are only sincere and honest. I grant
that there are some people who tumble into sanctification without having their
heads right; but if they stay right in their hearts, they will soon straighten
up in their heads. It is worth something to have the truth in our heads.
In these days of error, in these stormy times, I think it is
important that you and I should be grounded in the truth, and should study our
Bibles to know whether God has a salvation that is as big as our need, whether
the remedy is as great as our disease. They are telling us everywhere that it
is not. They are telling us everywhere that the best thing we can have is the
power to control and subjugate sin; but if we can find out from our Bibles that
we can be saved from all sin, we have got a good start. That is worth
something.
Yet there are people who are right in their heads on the
question of holiness, especially Methodists and Quakers, who are not right in
their hearts. But God has a plan by which we can be right in our hearts.
Stephen found out God's plan, and found the blessing; and some of us have found
out God's plan, and received the same blessing as Stephen, and we feel good
about it. You can get God's plan and have the same experience as Stephen, and
it will make you right in your heart. This is exceedingly important; for the
heart is your home; it is the place you live. If people can live right in their
kitchens, in their homes, and around their own firesides, they can generally behave
themselves when they have company.
And Stephen was right practically. He was a man of good
report. He was a man who was right in his walk. What he had in his head had
dropped down into his heart, and he practiced what he preached. God help us to
do thus in these days when men can so easily break engagements, and for such a
trifling thing fail to keep their word! I pray that God may make us practical
in our faith!
Stephen was full of the Holy Ghost. He did mighty works and
miracles among the people. He had a power that gainsayers could not resist,
which is something that is very much needed nowadays. He not only had the power
to perform miracles, but he had the power to stop the mouths of people and to
spike the devil's guns. We need it in these days, and, thank God, He is
bestowing it. Without our scarcely lifting a finger he is giving us power to
create confusion in the devil's camp. All that we have to do is to go up and
take the spoils.
O beloved, when you get the baptism of the Holy Ghost and
fire, it will not only straighten you out in your head, but it will straighten
you out in your life. It will give you a power which will make you irresistible
and invincible. And that is the thing which the preachers and deacons and ecclesiastics
do not like; for they want folks that can be managed, and it is awfully
embarrassing to "the powers that be" to find men that have a blessing
that is unmanageable.
The next thing I noticed about Stephen's blessing was, that
in those days it did not debar him from official position in the church, but
rather confirmed him in his office. He was chosen because he was a man
"full of faith and the Holy Ghost." Now, that leads me to think that,
if the Church of today followed the Pentecostal Church in its selection of
officers, she would choose Spirit-filled men; she would select men who were
full of the Holy Ghost and of faith. But who does not know that in these days a
man who is guilty of having Stephen's blessing is placed at a great discount by
the ecclesiastical authorities and powers in our churches? Let me say to you
that when a witness and advocate of full salvation is held in disrepute in the
church, there is something radically wrong and there ought to be a reformation.
Nowadays many a man who gets Stephen's blessing goes out of office rather than
in. Many a woman has lost her position as President of the Ladies' Aid Society
because she obtained Stephen's blessing. She could not dry the church dishes any
longer, and she had to go. And many a man has been removed from the position of
Superintendent of the Sunday. school or teacher of the Bible class because he
got Stephen's blessing; and many a poor preacher has had to take to the woods
and Hardscrabble Circuit because he is guilty of having Stephen's blessing.
These things make my heart sad. I smile when I think of the preacher, for I
know it is good for him; but I am sad when I think of the folks, for it is
awful for them.
I want to tell you that when a church is in such a condition
that she rejects salvation, it is no time for you to spend your time and money
by undertaking to promote that condition of things. God bless you, you can
thunder around at Bunker Hill if you want to; but the battle was over years
ago. You can waste your ammunition on an empty battlefield if you want to; but
I am going to the front. I am going to fight where God is, and where God is at
work, and where the devil and the enemy are, and I am going to join hands with
God. When you get Stephen's blessing you will lose sight of things that
fill your vision today, and you will see that the things eternal are the
all-important things, and will seek the things that will beat par when the
world is on fire. God in heaven give us something that will stand when
everything else has fallen!
The next thing I notice about Stephen's fullness is, that it
gave him courage. He was filled, not only with the Holy Ghost, but with
courage. To have encountered the jeers and assaults of the world and of worldly
people would have been heroic; but to be attacked by the church, which should
have stood by him, to be arrested by the people who should have been his
friends, to be misunderstood and misrepresented, that was something awful; and
yet Stephen stood out before allsorts of opposition. Look at him before the
council! The Spirit of God comes upon him, and he arraigns the council before
their own consciences, and charges home to judge and jury their awful crime.
Such heroism as God gave Stephen is greatly in demand in
these days; and when you get Stephen's blessing you will have courage to face
folks and look them straight in the two eyes and tell them the whole truth. You
will not feel like crossing the street to escape meeting any one. So far as
your motives are concerned, you would be willing to have them written on the
wall, that people might read them; for your heart is clean as heaven; and you
are not afraid to face people. Nothing else but the second blessing will do
it. Beloved, there is nothing else but the second blessing that will
save the church; there is nothing else that will save the world; there is
nothing else that will deliver us in this age of compromise; there is nothing
else that will save us from this pleasure seeking, time serving, ease loving
spirit which has fastened itself on people generally. There is nothing else
that will kill the indifference and laziness that is getting into the churches;
that will fill us with courage; that will make us go through with God! If we do
not get it, we are gone. Another thing I notice about Stephen's blessing is,
that it gave him great wisdom -- not the wisdom of this world, but the wisdom
that comes from God out of heaven. Now, wisdom, concisely defined, is
"knowledge, with ability to apply it properly." That is what Stephen
had, and that is what people generally want; but it is the rarest thing in all
this country -- "knowledge, with the ability to apply it properly."
In these days, men know a great deal. There heads are stuffed, but their hearts
are starved.
We do not know how to apply knowledge, and we have,
therefore, a great deal of wasted energy. We have efforts that are worse than
fruitless. We are making tremendous strides in activity and in energy nowadays;
but the mill is not turning out much wheat. We have the noise, and the rattle,
and the ceaseless hubbub in our churches; but when you go around to where the
wheat ought to run out, there is nothing. God help us! What is the use in
running a machine, if you can not get any wheat? What is the use of grinding,
if you can not get the grist? What is the use of paying out your money, if you
can not get returns?
Now, I want to say something to you holiness people. You
will not pay a doctor that does not help his patient, and you will not pay a
lawyer that will not win his case, and it is nonsense to pay a preacher that
does not get men saved and sanctified; and the time has come when God's people
must be careful that they get returns for their outlay which will stand the
fire of the judgment.
The time has come when I can not invest my money in foreign
missions (although I believe in foreign missions), when the missionaries have
not had their Pentecost. I can not put my money along lines that do not bring
me returns. I have got to have ten per cent. I must have more than that-- I
must have a hundred per cent. You ought to pray about this matter of where you
put your money. God bless you, you can get a soul for every dollar you invest.
If you do not know the place, I can tell you where. A soul is going to be worth
a great deal a little later on. When gold and silver will not be worth using
for sidewalks, a soul will shine with rich luster. The time has come when we
are forced to pay some attention to what will catch the fish, and less
attention to the appearance of our outfit and things that do not catch fish.
God bless you, I am in for a whole string of fish. I would rather get a
tadpole, and sometimes a sucker, if I can get also a soul, than to return with
an empty net.
Stephen had a blessing that put conviction on people; he had
a blessing that put the hook in men's jaws, and made that old Sanhedrin gnash
their teeth and rage, while the same blessing kept him sweet meanwhile. It is
one thing to stir the devil and it is another thing to have a blessing that will
keep you sweet after he is stirred. I know some people who stir the devil, but
he stirs them!
This wisdom comes, not so much by way of Harvard and Yale,
as it comes by waiting on God; not so much by study as by devotion. It comes to
people who are little and unknown, and are willing to stay unknown. You do not
get it by a great deal of research, but it is something that maybe revealed to
a child. I have seen a child ten years old that had that which would outdo a
whole regiment of bishops. I know men that have been taken from the slums and
from the saloons, and been sanctified and made preachers, that I would rather
have lead my work during my absence than a Doctor of Divinity or a Doctor of
Laws, if he had not had his Pentecost.
I like Stephen. I expect to tell him so when I see him. He
did not live long, but he made a mark while he did live. I would rather preach
myself to death in three months, and go to heaven as Stephen did, than to hang
around for nine hundred and ninety years inactive and ineffective – I would
indeed. I have told God if I can not be something more than an ordinary
Christian, I do not want to be anything. I believe that God wants us to be
something more than ordinary Christians: to be filled with the divine; to be irresistible;
to be irrepressible; to be so that the devil himself cannot do anything with
us; to be so that we can fight our way through a whole regiment of imps, and get
the victory anyway. Notice another thing the blessing did for Stephen.
It put a shine on his face. Look at him before the council! His face looked
like that of all angel. God did it. God knows how to shine his folks for a
state occasion. I believe that God put a shine on Stephen's face for this
occasion. You have known people who at first seemed homely and unlovely, but
when you got acquainted with their lives, and saw how they followed the example
of Jesus Christ in their walk, they got to looking really beautiful. It was not
only heaven shining down on Stephen, but it was truth shining out of his
soul.
It takes hard wood to polish well; and do you know that, in
these days, God is going into the slums, and getting knots and making good
people of them, and putting a shine on them that is going to astonish angels
and devils? We sit up in our cushioned pews and frescoed churches, and we are
too good to go down and fish people out of the slums; and we draw up our
garments when people who are a little beneath us come around, when, if we knew
God as He really is, we would be thankful to help these people for God. If you
have not been through the fire that burns out pride, that burns out strife and
all love of self, you are short of being a good Methodist, or a good Quaker, or
a good New Testament Christian.
I now come to the climax of Stephen's experience, and that
is the blessing of love. The last thing I know about Stephen before he went up
was, that he was praying for his enemies. In the midst of the shower of stones,
with a shining face, with a loving heart, he cried to God for his enemies. That
was a love that made him forget himself, that made him forget that bruise where
that stone struck him on the shoulder and where that one hit him on the side of
the head; that was a love that made him forget his own injuries and pray for
the people who were casting stones at him.
And if you are so fortunate as to get Stephen's blessing, it
will make you like Stephen in that particular, so that when people are saying
all manner of things against you, you can look up to heaven and say, "God
bless them." And there is no sense in your talking about being sanctified unless
you can do that. If there is some one you do not love, you have not got
Stephen's blessing. If there is some one you do not care to speak to, you do
not know anything about Stephen's fullness. If there are people who have lied
about you, and you do not feel good toward them, you have not got Stephen's
blessing. This world is crying out for people who have Stephen's blessing. You
step on a geranium in your garden, and you never think of begging its pardon,
and yet in return it showers you all over with a sweet perfume. O, for
something that will make us return good for evil, so that when people step on
us and bruise us, we will just shower them all over with a bath of heaven's fragrance!
Stephen had this blessing, and we ought to have it, and when we get the baptism
with the Holy Ghost and with fire we will have it; and instead of feeling
sensitive and peevish, and as though every one was against us, we will just
shower even one with blessings.
It is no wonder to me that Jesus Christ rose to His feet to
receive a man like Stephen into heaven. It is no wonder to me that He rose to
welcome Stephen to the sky. If you will get Stephen's blessing, and live
Stephen's life, and die Stephen's death, Jesus Christ will rise up to meet
you.
God did not make man to mock Him. God has not put the desire
in your heart for Stephen's blessing, and at the same time refused to give it
to you. God will do for you exactly what He has done for others; and if you
will meet the requirements and conditions, He will do it now. Amen!
