Acts 2-5: We Are God's Witnesses

"But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.” -- Jesus (Acts 1:8)

What does it look like for a people of God, who are empowered by God and called on mission by God, to live out their lives? In the book of Acts, we find our answer. Christ came, and he promised his Church the coming of the Holy Spirit. We find that Spirit coming and empowering the Church in Acts 2. But how does that Church fulfill their call? Likewise, how do we live out our lives for Christ?

The keyword for today is this: witness. To "witness" about something is to give testimony about it, just as a witness in court bears witness about what he has seen. To "witness about Christ" is to tell others about him, based on your own experience and the truth found in God's Word. And this very "witnessing" is what Christ has called us, his Church, to do, even to all the ends of the earth. If you're not witnessing about Christ, you're failing your primary mission as a Christian. Christ has called us to be witnesses, he has called us to be ambassadors, he has called us to be disciple-makers. Let us not fail that mission.

In Acts 2-5, we see a good, perhaps perfect, example of how that mission is lived out. In these chapters, we see three great events: Pentecost, the Healing of a Lame Beggar, and "Many Signs and Wonders." I encourage you to go study these passages for yourselves, but let me quickly summarize what happens in each one of them: Jesus Christ is witnessed about. At Pentecost, men start speaking in tongues, and amidst the confusion, Peter stands up and proclaims that Jesus is both Christ and Lord. After healing a lame beggar, Peter stands up at Solomon's portico (a building with fancy pillars) and proclaims that faith in Christ is the only way to ultimate healing. After "many signs and wonders" are done and the apostles are thrown in prison, they escape by the power of an angel, and continue to proclaim that Christ is the only name by which men can be saved. In any and every circumstance the apostles were in, they found a way to proclaim the Good News of Jesus Christ their Lord. Such a fact ought to convict us about how we are living our lives today.

Yet we find something else in these chapters that I'd like to talk about: the responses of those hearing the Good News of Christ. In response to the message foretold, Peter and the apostles see one of two things: either men believe or they reject. Honestly, it's quite comical. After Peter gets up and preaches, many believe in the Lord, yet the political leaders of the day arrest him. Note here: there is no middle ground. Now, I don't want to tell you that your Gospel presentation isn't faithful unless it ends up with the other person repenting or with your own arrest. But this does cause us to wonder, does it not, about our own Gospel presentations. Are we presenting the Gospel clear enough that others can come to believe (or reject) Christ? Or have we been quiet about the fact that Jesus can ransom men's souls from the hand of hell?

I realized this isn't my most "polished" devotional. I realize that I could have been more eloquent, but this is what I would like to get across: I think the American Church as a whole is failing their God-given call to witness faithfully about Christ. We have slipped into a lazy version of Christianity where if we go to Church on Sundays and check the "religious" box, we find it permissible sit on our butts the rest of the week and keep silent about the goodness of God. This is not God's plan for his Church. God's plan for his Church is what we see in Acts 2-5 (and the rest of the book), where ordinary men empowered by the Spirit of God witness about Christ despite intense persecution.

So, what do we do? Well, what if we started with those who we knew best. Let me ask you this: could the people who you spend the most time with (who are unsaved) be able to repeat the Gospel back to you, because you've told them about it so much? Do your relatives, neighbors, and coworkers even know what you believe in? What if we showed them, not only by our actions but also by our words, what it means to live in the goodness of salvation of Jesus Christ? Perhaps if we proclaimed it on the rooftops, as Peter did, we might fulfill God's mission for his Church where we stand today.