Sermon Title: "Witness for Christ"
Author's Name: Rev. Alex Knight
(Acts 1:6-14 NRSV) So when they had come together, they asked him, "Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?" {7} He replied, "It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority. {8} But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth." {9} When he had said this, as they were watching, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight. {10} While he was going and they were gazing up toward heaven, suddenly two men in white robes stood by them. {11} They said, "Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven." {12} Then they returned to Jerusalem from the mount called Olivet, which is near Jerusalem, a sabbath day's journey away. {13} When they had entered the city, they went to the room upstairs where they were staying, Peter, and John, and James, and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew, James son of Alphaeus, and Simon the Zealot, and Judas son of James. {14} All these were constantly devoting themselves to prayer, together with certain women, including Mary the mother of Jesus, as well as his brothers.
In our text for today, Jesus is telling His disciples they would be witnesses for Him in all of the world. He said they would begin right where they were in Jerusalem and then extended out to the province where they lived and then to Judea and then Samaria. It would be the same thing as you and me saying that we would be witnesses for Christ in Tallahassee and then Leon County and then Florida and then the southeast and then into the world. It's like concentric circles, you just keep going out with your sphere of influence. In my own life experiences, I spent a lot of time testifying as a witness. First in law enforcement and then later in a career in government. I have been declared an expert witness in several circuit courts around Florida. I understand what it's like to be a witness, to be called in and sworn to tell the truth. The one thing that a witness does, is to tell what he knows from his own experience. I cannot tell a court what my friend saw or what my friend heard. I can only share that which I know. Jesus says here His disciples will bear witness to the reality that Jesus is the Christ and what Christ has done for them and in their midst.
He told them to wait before they began testifying until they had received power from on high. We'll talk about the power from on high next week., because next Sunday is the day that we celebrate Pentecost, the coming of the Holy Spirit to the church to empower us to do the work of Christ. But for today, I want us to think about what it means in our life to be a witness. What is there that we know about Christ that we are called to share?
I have a friend who worked for the police department. Every time I saw him, he would always say the same thing to me, "I did not see you in church last Sunday." That was his way of witnessing. What do you think about when you hear someone say to you, "I didn't see you in church last Sunday." That can say a lot of things. That can say going to church is important to him, or that going to his church is important to him. He may be assuming I was not in any church at all or it may be he thinks that if I was in any other church, but his church, it did not count. You may not want to listen to a whole lot that he has to say because he comes across a little legalistic. I want to contrast his witness with another person's.
Last Saturday, I participated in a memorial service for my friend Betty Cawood. One of the things that Betty wanted me to do in her service was read a poem and I want to share that poem with you. This is the poem that I read last Saturday at her memorial service.
The years have left their imprint
on my hands and on my face.
Erect, no longer is my walk
and slower is my pace,
But there is no fear within my heart
because I'm growing old,
I only wish I had better
time to serve my Lord.
When I have gone to Him in prayer,
He's brought me inner peace
and soon my cares and worries
and other problems cease.
He's helped me in so many ways,
He's never let me down.
Why should I fear the future when
soon I should be near His crown.
Though I know down here my time is short,
there is endless time up there
and He will forgive and keep me
ever in His loving care.Which witness do you want to listen to, hers or the man who said "hey, I didn't see you in church last Sunday."
Betty's witness was a witness that came out of her experience with Jesus, her experience with God and her intimate knowledge of God meeting her needs and loving her and forgiving her and walking with her day by day.
I heard that same kind of witness when I was with the family when Ruby Brumby died. Her grandchildren talked about how she had shared with them how she had come to know the Lord. She said that she was playing a piano or an organ at a little church up in south Georgia. She was about 15 and she was in the middle of playing a song when she felt the presence of God within her life so strong, . . . for her to give her life to God completely. She did not know how she was going to get through playing that song because she wanted to go to the altar and knell and pray and say, "Yes Jesus." But somehow she got through playing the song and then she went and she knelt at the altar. When she got up, she was surrounded by all the young people in that church, because her witness of responding to Christ had encouraged these others to respond and to give their life to Christ. When she shared this encounter that she had with God with her grandchildren it ministered to them, it touched their lives, it warmed their lives with the love of God.
This is what Christ desires for all of us. He wants to touch our lives with the reality of how much He loves us, how much He cares for us, so that we can be His witnesses in the world. Throughout this season of Easter we have been lifting up the reality of God's love for us. We remembered on Easter the words of Jesus to His friends, "Fear not." We remembered how the scriptures teach us that when we are in Christ, Christ has not given us the spirit of fear, but Christ gives us the spirit of power and of love and of a strong mind. We have also considered how Jesus delights to reveal Himself to us. Often our revelation of the love of Christ is in scripture.
My friend, Jimmy Keyton who many of you know, because he and his wife Kathy were here to preach for us earlier this year, he called me last Tuesday. Kathy had been having some problems and was taken to Emory Hospital in Atlanta for an examination. She had heart problems. Tests at the hospital revealed she had a faulty valve and the doctors thought that she might be a candidate for surgery for a valve replacement. However, more tests revealed her heart was enlarged and so weak that they could not do valve replacement surgery. The doctor said he would give Kathy medication and treat her condition but he cannot do surgery because there is nothing that he can do to strengthen her heart. When I talked to Jimmy toward the end of the week he told me when he heard that news he turned to scripture to find comfort. He opened his Bible and asked God, speak to him. He opened his Bible to Psalm 27 and in the 14th verse God speaks and says "I, your God, will strengthen your heart."
I called Emory Hospital to check on Jimmy and Kathy and I talked with Kathy. The peace that was in her was evident to me as I talked with her on the phone. She was asking about the retreat our women were having at Cape San Blas and saying "we'll remember you in our prayers as you are down there seeking God and sharing God on your retreat with your women."
God delights to reveal Himself to us. He reveals Himself to us in scripture, and sometimes it's in very profound ways like it was for Jimmy and Kathy Keaton this last week, as God spoke to them from Psalm 27 and said I'll strengthen your heart. God brought them the peace they needed in this hour when they are struggling.
God encourages us to come to Him with all of our needs. We are not an imposition to Him. We can come to God and share with Him our needs. The question before us is: "What we are willing to do?" Are we so comfortable in trusting our own strength, our own abilities, that we have reduced our need of God. Or, has God brought us to that place where we understand that every breath we take is a gift of God and that we know God wants to so fulfill our life with the reality of His love and of His presence that we can feel His strength and His power day by day. Do we know that God brings us the peace that we are so longing for in our lives. I have said it before and I'll say it again and again and again. . . there are only two kinds of people in this world: Those who have been hurt; and those who have been hurt more.
We have hurting people within our own congregation and we have hurting people among our neighbors and among our friends. Yet, we serve a Christ that makes us whole and binds up the brokenhearted and heals our lives and meets our every need, . . . if we will trust Him and lay aside our pride and our self sufficiency and give our entire life to Christ. All of these blessings of God, (i.e., His desire to have intimacy with us and to fulfill our every need through His grace) have but one demand. There is only one condition and that is we share Him with others; we would pass it on; we would celebrate the goodness of God by sharing with others what God has done for us.
Let me share with you this morning, a description of the church of Jesus Christ seventeen hundred years ago when a historian wrote about the culture of the third century. This is how he described Christians. He said "Christians cannot be distinguished from the rest of humanity by country or language or customs. They do not separate themselves into cities of their own. They use no special language, nor do they follow an eccentric pattern of life. Their doctrine, unlike that of many religious movements, is not based on human ideas or philosophy. Although they live in Greek and Barbarian cities, depending on their place of birth, and follow the usual customs of those cities, they never cease to witness to the reality of another city in which they live. They share in everything as citizens, yet endure in everything as aliens. Every foreign land is their father land and yet for them every father land is a foreign land. They marry, like everyone else and they beget children, but they do not expose their unwanted infants to the elements. They share their board with each other, but not their marriage beds. They busy themselves on earth, but their citizenship is in heaven. They'll obey the laws of the land, but in their own lives, go far beyond the law's requirements. They love all people, and by all people are persecuted. They are put to death and yet they are brought to life. They are poor and yet they make many rich. They are completely destitute and yet they enjoy complete abundance. They are dishonored and in their dishonor, are glorified. They are reviled and yet they bless. They are treated by the Jews as foreigners and are hunted down by the Greeks and all the time, those that hate them, find it impossible to justify their hatred. To put it simply, what the soul is in the body, Christians are in the world."
The question before us this morning at Bethel Church is, "Sometime in the future when the history of this age and this community and of Bethel Church is written, do you think they'll say similar things about us?" If we do not trust Christ to fulfill every need in our life and if we do not bear witness to the world what Christ has done for us, nobody will bother to write a history. Let us pray.
Father, God when we come to this place, we experience Your peace, Your presence, the love that we have here one for another. And as we sit here in the quietness of this holy place, we know that you have touched our lives in so many, many ways. Father, we do not want your love for us to be the best kept secret in all of Tallahassee. Grant us your grace, the power of your holy spirit that truly we may be witnesses for our Savior in this world. Father begin within us to create a hunger for you that will not be satisfied until we have all of you and you have all of us. Father, create within us a love, a Godly love for other people that we can share in their hurt and in their pain and we can testify to the goodness of our Lord. For this is our prayer in the name of the one who did come and set us free, Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.