A Spirit-shaped Witness (Aug 23, 09)
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Acts M1 Message Notes August 23, 2009
Title: A Spirit-shaped Witness
Text: Acts 1:1-11
Big Idea: The remarkable growth of the early church was empowered by the holistic, Spirit-filled witness of Christ’s followers.
In his book Outliers: The Story of Success, Malcolm Gladwell, the popular Canadian author, asks how hockey players, computer geniuses like Bill Gates, and rock groups like the Beatles become outliers (i.e., people who achieve success so they are now outside of the range of normal of human experience and statistically “off the charts”).
Gladwell challenges the popular assumption that great hockey players, people like Bill Gates, and rock groups like the Beatles become immensely successful because they are self-made. Gladwell writes about how outliers had unusual opportunities, because they were born in the right place and the right time and were therefore able to take advantage of some unusual opportunity. He points out that NHL hockey players tend to be born in January, February, or March because the earliest birthday for a child to eligible to play in a league in Canada is January 1. If you’re born earlier in the year, then you’re older and likely slightly more physically mature than kids born later in the year, and so you are more likely to be streamed into elite programs and will get to practice more, play more, and get better.
Bill Gates, is successful because he's very bright, but also because he had access to a powerful mainframe computer in high school at a time in the 1960s when few other people did and was able to practice programming for 10,000 hours before he went to college.
The Beatles became very successful because they had great musical gifts, but also because they had Hamburg, a series if gigs in Germany in the 1960s that enabled them to play to all week long and up to 8 hours a day…. They too were able to rack up 10,000 hours of playing time which enabled them to perfect their music.
When you think about the life of Jesus Christ, he was the ultimate outlier (i.e., someone outside of the range norm of human experience—statistically off the charts). He was born into an obscure village, the child of a peasant woman. Never went to college. Never held an office. But, as one poet has said, All the armies that ever marched and all the navies that were ever built and all the parliaments that ever sat and all the kings that ever reigned put together have not affected the life of Man on Earth as powerfully as has that one solitary life.
When we think about Jesus, we have the ultimate outlier (someone who was “off the charts” like no one else)—the most influential person who has ever lived. But Jesus is in a category all of his own. He was after all, Christians believe, the unique, Son of God.
But his twelve disciples became outliers too. The source of their success isn’t quite as obvious.
We read in Acts 4:13, the disciples were ordinary people, uneducated. A number of them were fisherman. As you read the gospels, you will see that disciples had many of the same human frailties that we have: they were prone to disbelief, anxiety, and bailing out when things got hard. Jesus’ disciples Peter, James, and John assured Jesus that they would be willing to suffer for him.
But, when Jesus was arrested, they and all the other disciples of Jesus bailed on him. They went into hiding cowering behind locked doors, afraid for their lives. Yet, it was these very people who had fled for their lives who become fearless leaders of the Christian movement—a movement that would revolutionize the Roman Empire in which they lived and then much of the world. Christianity now composes some 1/3 of the human race, some 2 billion followers out of a world of 6.7 billion people.
How do we explain the success of the early church when it was led by such frail, ordinary people? The Book of Acts provides us with the answer to that question.
Starting today and for the next couple of months we’re going to be exploring the Book of Acts, and we’ll be seeing how the early church grew in the face of great challenges in the first century. The wisdom that we glean from the Book of Acts will be important, not only as we seek to grow in our own spiritual journey, but also as a church as we expand into Kitsilano on Sunday September 13.
If you have your Bibles, please turn to Acts 1, beginning at verse 1.
1 In my former book, Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus began to do and to teach 2 until the day he was taken up to heaven, after giving instructions through the Holy Spirit to the apostles he had chosen. 3 After his suffering, he presented himself to them and gave many convincing proofs that he was alive. He appeared to them over a period of forty days and spoke about the kingdom of God. 4 On one occasion, while he was eating with them, he gave them this command: "Do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift my Father promised, which you have heard me speak about. 5 For John baptized with water, but in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit."
6 So when they met together, they asked him, "Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?"
7 He said to them: "It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority. 8 But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth."
In Acts 1:1 we read:
1 In my former book, Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus began to do and to teach 2 until the day he was taken up to heaven, after giving instructions through the Holy Spirit to the apostles he had chosen.
Luke, the author of the Book of Acts, and also the author of gospel that bears his name: “Luke,” was likely a gentile by birth. He was a physician, and quite possibly a slave. Physicians in the first century in Greco-Roman world could be slaves.
We know from the gospel of Luke that the recipient of the Book of Acts is a man named Theophilus. His name means “one who loves God.” In the Gospel of Luke he’s described as “most excellent Theophilus”. So Theophilus is apparently a person of high standing in the Roman Empire, possibly a Roman official, who knows and loves God. The Book of Acts and the Gospel of Luke were intended for the development of Theophilus’ relationship with God and the faith of all people who would come in contact with these books which describe the origins and the early growth of the Christian Church.
How did the early church achieve its outlier (off the charts) status? How did it grow so quickly? How did it spread like wildfire with no political power, no connections, no money?
We read in verse 3:
After his suffering, he presented himself to them and gave many convincing proofs that he was alive. He appeared to them over a period of forty days and spoke about the kingdom of God.
One of the reasons, according to verse 3, is because after Jesus died on the cross and rose again from the dead, he showed himself to his disciples and gave them many convincing proofs that he was alive. He appeared to the disciples over a period of 40 days.
In the culture of Jesus’ day, like in ours, people simply would not have believed that someone had risen from the dead. (In fact, people in Jesus’ day would have been more resistant to that idea that someone would rise from the dead than people are today). Some of Hebrew people of Jesus day were expecting a general resurrection at the end of time, but no one anticipated that a person would be resurrected during the normal course of history.
So people in Jesus’ day would have needed convincing proofs that he had risen from the dead and was alive. Jesus gave them convincing proofs by appearing to them over a 40 day period.
Those first disciples were convinced that Jesus had risen from the dead. The reason we know that is because they were completely transformed after they saw Jesus risen from the dead. They went from being fearful cowards who fled for their lives when Jesus was arrested on Thursday night, the eve of Good Friday, to being fearless proclaimers of the message that Jesus had risen from the dead the following Monday. From Thursday to Monday they went from being zeroes to heroes. All of those early disciples of Jesus, with the exception for John, died for their belief that Jesus rose from the dead. The only plausible explanation for this radical transformation in their lives was that they believed that Jesus actually rose from the dead. When you are not afraid to die, you become very powerful--think about a social activist or a revolutionary who is unafraid to die—he or she is a powerful force.
But the fact that these disciples who had been cowards lost their fear of death because they believed that Jesus had risen from the dead was not the primary reason for the explosive growth of the early church.
Notice verse 4: “On one occasion, while he was eating with them, he gave them this command: Do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift my Father promised, which you have heard me speak about.” The gift that Jesus referred to here was the gift of the Holy Spirit.
What empowered the movement of the early church, with extraordinary vitality enabling it to achieve outlier (“off the charts”) growth status is the fact that God through his Holy Spirit was working through these people who were following Christ.
In verse 8, Jesus says these last words to his followers… 8 But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth."
In Luke 24:45-49 Jesus similarly said: "This is what is written: The Messiah will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, 47 and repentance for the forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. 48 You are witnesses of these things. 49 I am going to send you what my Father has promised; but stay in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high."
The key to the explosive growth of the early church was the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit clothed those early disciples with the power from on high, the power of God. As a result, the early followers of Christ became bold witnesses to Christ’s death on the cross as a sacrifice for our sins and his rising again from the dead, first in Jerusalem; and then the movement spread to Judea and Samaria, and then to places like Asia Minor, Greece, Rome and Spain; and later through their spiritual offspring the gospel would go to the ends of the earth.
The kingdom of God is spread through the Spirit-empowered witness of its followers. The word “witness” then, as now, simply means that a person experienced some event and then talked about it. When a person is filled with the Spirit of God that person bears witness to the reality of God through what they say and by who they are; and other people begin to experience the reality of God and the movement of God spreads in the world.
A couple of years ago CBC radio broadcast a story on how difficult it is for the typical Canadian person who has some kind of faith to actually talk about his or her faith in their workplace. When we are filled with the Spirit of Jesus Christ, we will become increasingly free to talk about the reality of Christ. As we grow closer to Jesus Christ and grow deeper in our love for him, the more natural it will be for us to speak about him.
My wife Sakiko sometimes says that when she meets someone (referring to women primarily outside of this community, so don’t be self-conscious), she can get a sense after a few conversations as to how close they are to their husbands, or to their partners (if they are married or in a relationship), if after a few conversations that woman (she says she’s not sure if this true of men) never mentions their significant other, she just wonders how close they are. But if the person is really in love with their husband or their partner, then that person comes up pretty regularly and naturally into the conversation.
And so it is with us. When we are filled with the Spirit of Christ and growing in our love for Jesus, it will be increasingly natural for us to talk about Jesus (not out of a sense of obligation, but out of a sense of overflow).
There is a person who is important to me here in Vancouver. I have known her for about 7 years. She is not a church-going person. We have been in each others’ homes regularly. It would be rare for a week or two to go by without having some kind of interaction with this person. This person recently lost a very significant loved one in her life and came by to talk about it. Not long after, I dropped in just to see her to see how she was doing. She knows I am a Christian pastor and though there was some hesitancy on my part… I talked about my belief in God, in Christ rising from the dead, and the hope we can have because of his rising
I asked her if I could pray for her. I sat in her living room and prayed with her (and the tears streaming down her cheeks). It was very meaningful moment to her. I don’t know that she had ever been prayed for before. She didn’t fall on her knees and say, “I now want to become a follower of Christ.” She was able to experience in some small way the reality of Christ by my simply naming him and praying for her. That is what we are called to be and do. We are called to be witnesses to the reality of Christ.
Perhaps one way to begin to serve as witness is to ask the Holy Spirit to so fill us that we would be willing to talk about Jesus naturally, as we would any other important person or pursuit in our lives.
I was at dinner with about 10-12 people honoring a prominent political leader in the city. He was receiving The Order of Canada award. During the dinner he asked each one of people seated around the table guests to share for a few minutes something we were passionate about. There was a part of me that wanted to talk about a safer topic like my love of sailing or running through endowments lands with the Golden Retriever, but I felt the Holy Spirit prompting me to share part of my spiritual journey. I said,” I’m pastor of Tenth Church here in the city. People often ask why I choose enter the somewhat unusual vocation of a Christian minister.” Then I said, “As teenager, I had troubled years. I was involved in taking and dealing drugs, shoplifting, and joyriding. My dad was concerned about me. So, he took me to a prison, and later he said, ‘I just wanted you to see your future home… ‘ and he figured to try something even more radical--he took me to a Christian youth conference. At that Christian conference I discovered I could have a new beginning and my life was radically changed me for the better. So one of things I am passionate about is seeing lives changed by the power of God.”
A starting point in serving as a witness is to pray that we would be filled with the Spirit and free to talk about Christ like we would any other person or pursuit in our lives.
As are filled with Spirit we will witness through our words to reality of Christ , but as Bryant Myers points out we will also point to reality of God through our lives, our deeds, and through signs and as this happens the work of God spreads.
One of key reasons the early church spread like wildfire in the first century was because they were filled with the Holy Spirit and as result reflected the integrity, wisdom, and love of God in their lives. In Acts 4 we read how astonished people were at the courage and wisdom that the disciples Peter and John had even though they were ordinary, uneducated people, and they noted they had been with Jesus.
I said before, my grandfather was very, very hostile to Christianity. He was a corporate CEO. Arrogant. Powerful. He had been hostile toward Christians in general. One time I had a copy of Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis sent to him in Japanese. He had his secretary reduce it to a one page summary. But there was a person in his company that he described with a glow in his eye as a “true Christian.” This person was an individual of extraordinary integrity, capable, trustworthy. I don’t know if he ever explicitly tried to persuade my grandfather to become a Christian, but he was open about his faith. My grandfather deeply respected him and part of the reason my grandfather committed his life to Christ late in life—i.e. in his 80s--was because of someone who gave witness to the reality of Christ through his life.
Another reason the early church spread like wildfire in the first century was because they were filled with God’s Spirit and witnessed to the reality of God through their deeds. In Acts 4 we read how the early followers of Christ shared their possessions with one another so that there was not a single person in need among them. People in the Roman Empire often were stingy with their money, but promiscuous with their bodies. But observers remarked of those first Christians, they share bread with others, not their marriage beds.
Pastor Ourng serves a church of 83 members in Cambodia (where we intend to invest for 10-15 years as a church). He said, “Several years ago, World Vision came to the community and set up a TB clinic to care those suffering with that disease. They helped us improve our schools, and taught us better agricultural methods to increase our crop yields. Since the genocide in Cambodia, I did not trust strangers. I was suspicious of the World Vision people. Why would these strangers help us? I wondered. One day I confronted the World Vision leader and demanded to know, ‘Why are you here?’ The leader said, ‘We are followers of Jesus Christ, and we are commanded to love our neighbours as ourselves.’” The Cambodian asked, “Who is Jesus?”
They gave him a Bible and then introduced him later to a Cambodian Christian. Ourng became a follower of Jesus and then pastor…
A story a little close to home:
Rose Smith, is an active member of this church, she has given me permission to share this story. Rose lives here in Vancouver (She is married to Bruce who serves as the chair of our Board of Elders).
Rose met her friend Patti 28 years ago last Tuesday (August 18) when Rose’s daughter Heather and Patti’s son Mark were born at BC Women’s’ on the same day. Six years later Patti, her husband Chris and their family moved 3 houses away from Rose and Bruce. They’ve ended up being close friends for over 20 years.
Four years ago Patti was diagnosed with cancer in her appendix. Her cancer spread into her abdomen and into spine. For four or five months, Rose organized friends to spend the day with Patti. This gave her husband Chris a much-needed break.
One day when Rose was with Patti in Palliative Care when she between medications, and in excruciating pain. Rose was in hospital holding her (Dec 06). The pain was coming and going like as if Patti were in heavy labour…
And just before Patti died, Rose was stroking her head and then her arm, prayed for Patti and said, “It’s OK. It’s O.K, time to go… you’re going to a better place...” (Patti, though she had not been attending any church at the time, had placed her faith in Christ, but her husband Chris was not a believer in God.) Chris told me this week, “I knew then that they were in touch with a reality of which I knew nothing, and thought, “What am I missing?” That was two years ago. On July 1 2007, Patti died.
As a result of seeing love that Rose had for Patti, by seeing how Patti was able to let go because of her faith in the reality of God, made Chris think that there was some kind of reality that he had not experienced. Rose and Bruce invited Chris to Tenth and he has been attending Tenth and has been coming for the last two years, and a few months ago took his first communion here. (As a result of Chris a good friend of his has started coming, a friend of his friend coming, and someone who is not regular churchgoer has joined the small group they are part of.)
Like the early church, as we are filled with the Holy Spirit, we can witness to Christ through word, life, deed, and also through sign. In the book of Acts we see how the early believers experience certain “signs”: the ability to speak in tongues they hadn’t studied before, healings, supernatural deliverances from danger—that could only be plausibly explained by God.
When we are joined to Christ and filled with His Spirit, we will bear witness to the reality of God through some kind of sign in our life.
I was born in a country where most people are Buddhist or Shinto. People ask me if other members of my family are Christian. The Christian stream of our family began with my great uncle. He was diagnosed with tuberculosis when it was considered a terminal illness. There was no medication. He was given 6 months to live. Someone gave him a Bible. He read it. He came to the part in the Gospels where Jesus healed people. He prayed for healing and was miraculously healed. As a result of his healing, my mother came to faith in Christ. And as a result of that, I came to know Christ.
Our may not be as dramatic a change as that, but is there some kind of sign in your life that would point to the reality of God that those who know you might see God at spiritual at work in you?
In my own story my own sign was not nearly as dramatic as in my great uncle’s experience, but it was enough to spark the curiosity of my grandmother.
My grandmother remembered me as a little brat (which I was). I was always asking, “How can I become rich when I grow up?” When I went to work in Japan for the Sony Group, I also started volunteering in a little church in northeast Tokyo. My grandmother was really intrigued. When she heard I was going to speak at church one Sunday my grandmother was intrigued. On a rainy Sunday morning, she decided she would come to church for the first time in over 20 years to hear me speak. I gave a little message about the power of the cross to change us. At the end of the message I invited the people who wanted to give their lives to Christ to come forward. My grandmother to my great surprise came forward. She was in tears, and I said, “Are you OK?” She said, “Am I OK? Today is the happiest day of my life. I thought I had been a Christian all my whole life, but today for the first time I really understood why Jesus Christ died for me.”
This is how the kingdom of God spreads in the world--as followers are filled with the Spirit of Jesus and they witness to the gospel—through word, life, deed and sign.
Dorothy Day said, “Live a life that is so mysterious that the only adequate explanation for it can be a living and loving God.”
The way that we become people who preach the gospel through our lives and our words, and live a life so mysterious that they only explanation for it a living, loving God is that we are filled with the Spirit of Christ.
As we are we are filled with the Spirit of Christ, we will become witnesses to the reality of Christ… in fact we will becomes Christ’s “voice” and Christ’s “touch” and (in Paul’s words) “the body of Christ” in our relationships, as a community in places like Kitsilano (as we launch our new site there on September 13), and as we are led to Cambodia, and around the world.
But, being an outlier in the most important work of all, the eternal work for Christ, isn’t primarily being born in the right place and the right time or having the most persuasive argument, but the result of being filled with the Holy Spirit of Jesus Christ—being clothed with power from on high. When that happens, we will naturally—or supernaturally--become witnesses to the reality of Christ and become his “voice” and “touch” in our world. We will find ourselves partners with God in creating the eternal kingdom of God.
Prayer:
Would you like to be filled with the Spirit? You can pray that now.
As you pray that perhaps you’ll also say, “God I am available in the coming week to serve as witness for Christ through what I say, who I am, what I do, or some kind of sign in me.”
Acts M1 Message Notes August 23, 2009
Title: A Spirit-shaped Witness
Text: Acts 1:1-11
Big Idea: The remarkable growth of the early church was empowered by the holistic, Spirit-filled witness of Christ’s followers.
In his book Outliers: The Story of Success, Malcolm Gladwell, the popular Canadian author, asks how hockey players, computer geniuses like Bill Gates, and rock groups like the Beatles become outliers (i.e., people who achieve success so they are now outside of the range of normal of human experience and statistically “off the charts”).
Gladwell challenges the popular assumption that great hockey players, people like Bill Gates, and rock groups like the Beatles become immensely successful because they are self-made. Gladwell writes about how outliers had unusual opportunities, because they were born in the right place and the right time and were therefore able to take advantage of some unusual opportunity. He points out that NHL hockey players tend to be born in January, February, or March because the earliest birthday for a child to eligible to play in a league in Canada is January 1. If you’re born earlier in the year, then you’re older and likely slightly more physically mature than kids born later in the year, and so you are more likely to be streamed into elite programs and will get to practice more, play more, and get better.
Bill Gates, is successful because he's very bright, but also because he had access to a powerful mainframe computer in high school at a time in the 1960s when few other people did and was able to practice programming for 10,000 hours before he went to college.
The Beatles became very successful because they had great musical gifts, but also because they had Hamburg, a series if gigs in Germany in the 1960s that enabled them to play to all week long and up to 8 hours a day…. They too were able to rack up 10,000 hours of playing time which enabled them to perfect their music.
When you think about the life of Jesus Christ, he was the ultimate outlier (i.e., someone outside of the range norm of human experience—statistically off the charts). He was born into an obscure village, the child of a peasant woman. Never went to college. Never held an office. But, as one poet has said, All the armies that ever marched and all the navies that were ever built and all the parliaments that ever sat and all the kings that ever reigned put together have not affected the life of Man on Earth as powerfully as has that one solitary life.
When we think about Jesus, we have the ultimate outlier (someone who was “off the charts” like no one else)—the most influential person who has ever lived. But Jesus is in a category all of his own. He was after all, Christians believe, the unique, Son of God.
But his twelve disciples became outliers too. The source of their success isn’t quite as obvious.
We read in Acts 4:13, the disciples were ordinary people, uneducated. A number of them were fisherman. As you read the gospels, you will see that disciples had many of the same human frailties that we have: they were prone to disbelief, anxiety, and bailing out when things got hard. Jesus’ disciples Peter, James, and John assured Jesus that they would be willing to suffer for him.
But, when Jesus was arrested, they and all the other disciples of Jesus bailed on him. They went into hiding cowering behind locked doors, afraid for their lives. Yet, it was these very people who had fled for their lives who become fearless leaders of the Christian movement—a movement that would revolutionize the Roman Empire in which they lived and then much of the world. Christianity now composes some 1/3 of the human race, some 2 billion followers out of a world of 6.7 billion people.
How do we explain the success of the early church when it was led by such frail, ordinary people? The Book of Acts provides us with the answer to that question.
Starting today and for the next couple of months we’re going to be exploring the Book of Acts, and we’ll be seeing how the early church grew in the face of great challenges in the first century. The wisdom that we glean from the Book of Acts will be important, not only as we seek to grow in our own spiritual journey, but also as a church as we expand into Kitsilano on Sunday September 13.
If you have your Bibles, please turn to Acts 1, beginning at verse 1.
1 In my former book, Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus began to do and to teach 2 until the day he was taken up to heaven, after giving instructions through the Holy Spirit to the apostles he had chosen. 3 After his suffering, he presented himself to them and gave many convincing proofs that he was alive. He appeared to them over a period of forty days and spoke about the kingdom of God. 4 On one occasion, while he was eating with them, he gave them this command: "Do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift my Father promised, which you have heard me speak about. 5 For John baptized with water, but in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit."
6 So when they met together, they asked him, "Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?"
7 He said to them: "It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority. 8 But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth."
In Acts 1:1 we read:
1 In my former book, Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus began to do and to teach 2 until the day he was taken up to heaven, after giving instructions through the Holy Spirit to the apostles he had chosen.
Luke, the author of the Book of Acts, and also the author of gospel that bears his name: “Luke,” was likely a gentile by birth. He was a physician, and quite possibly a slave. Physicians in the first century in Greco-Roman world could be slaves.
We know from the gospel of Luke that the recipient of the Book of Acts is a man named Theophilus. His name means “one who loves God.” In the Gospel of Luke he’s described as “most excellent Theophilus”. So Theophilus is apparently a person of high standing in the Roman Empire, possibly a Roman official, who knows and loves God. The Book of Acts and the Gospel of Luke were intended for the development of Theophilus’ relationship with God and the faith of all people who would come in contact with these books which describe the origins and the early growth of the Christian Church.
How did the early church achieve its outlier (off the charts) status? How did it grow so quickly? How did it spread like wildfire with no political power, no connections, no money?
We read in verse 3:
After his suffering, he presented himself to them and gave many convincing proofs that he was alive. He appeared to them over a period of forty days and spoke about the kingdom of God.
One of the reasons, according to verse 3, is because after Jesus died on the cross and rose again from the dead, he showed himself to his disciples and gave them many convincing proofs that he was alive. He appeared to the disciples over a period of 40 days.
In the culture of Jesus’ day, like in ours, people simply would not have believed that someone had risen from the dead. (In fact, people in Jesus’ day would have been more resistant to that idea that someone would rise from the dead than people are today). Some of Hebrew people of Jesus day were expecting a general resurrection at the end of time, but no one anticipated that a person would be resurrected during the normal course of history.
So people in Jesus’ day would have needed convincing proofs that he had risen from the dead and was alive. Jesus gave them convincing proofs by appearing to them over a 40 day period.
Those first disciples were convinced that Jesus had risen from the dead. The reason we know that is because they were completely transformed after they saw Jesus risen from the dead. They went from being fearful cowards who fled for their lives when Jesus was arrested on Thursday night, the eve of Good Friday, to being fearless proclaimers of the message that Jesus had risen from the dead the following Monday. From Thursday to Monday they went from being zeroes to heroes. All of those early disciples of Jesus, with the exception for John, died for their belief that Jesus rose from the dead. The only plausible explanation for this radical transformation in their lives was that they believed that Jesus actually rose from the dead. When you are not afraid to die, you become very powerful--think about a social activist or a revolutionary who is unafraid to die—he or she is a powerful force.
But the fact that these disciples who had been cowards lost their fear of death because they believed that Jesus had risen from the dead was not the primary reason for the explosive growth of the early church.
Notice verse 4: “On one occasion, while he was eating with them, he gave them this command: Do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift my Father promised, which you have heard me speak about.” The gift that Jesus referred to here was the gift of the Holy Spirit.
What empowered the movement of the early church, with extraordinary vitality enabling it to achieve outlier (“off the charts”) growth status is the fact that God through his Holy Spirit was working through these people who were following Christ.
In verse 8, Jesus says these last words to his followers… 8 But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth."
In Luke 24:45-49 Jesus similarly said: "This is what is written: The Messiah will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, 47 and repentance for the forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. 48 You are witnesses of these things. 49 I am going to send you what my Father has promised; but stay in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high."
The key to the explosive growth of the early church was the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit clothed those early disciples with the power from on high, the power of God. As a result, the early followers of Christ became bold witnesses to Christ’s death on the cross as a sacrifice for our sins and his rising again from the dead, first in Jerusalem; and then the movement spread to Judea and Samaria, and then to places like Asia Minor, Greece, Rome and Spain; and later through their spiritual offspring the gospel would go to the ends of the earth.
The kingdom of God is spread through the Spirit-empowered witness of its followers. The word “witness” then, as now, simply means that a person experienced some event and then talked about it. When a person is filled with the Spirit of God that person bears witness to the reality of God through what they say and by who they are; and other people begin to experience the reality of God and the movement of God spreads in the world.
A couple of years ago CBC radio broadcast a story on how difficult it is for the typical Canadian person who has some kind of faith to actually talk about his or her faith in their workplace. When we are filled with the Spirit of Jesus Christ, we will become increasingly free to talk about the reality of Christ. As we grow closer to Jesus Christ and grow deeper in our love for him, the more natural it will be for us to speak about him.
My wife Sakiko sometimes says that when she meets someone (referring to women primarily outside of this community, so don’t be self-conscious), she can get a sense after a few conversations as to how close they are to their husbands, or to their partners (if they are married or in a relationship), if after a few conversations that woman (she says she’s not sure if this true of men) never mentions their significant other, she just wonders how close they are. But if the person is really in love with their husband or their partner, then that person comes up pretty regularly and naturally into the conversation.
And so it is with us. When we are filled with the Spirit of Christ and growing in our love for Jesus, it will be increasingly natural for us to talk about Jesus (not out of a sense of obligation, but out of a sense of overflow).
There is a person who is important to me here in Vancouver. I have known her for about 7 years. She is not a church-going person. We have been in each others’ homes regularly. It would be rare for a week or two to go by without having some kind of interaction with this person. This person recently lost a very significant loved one in her life and came by to talk about it. Not long after, I dropped in just to see her to see how she was doing. She knows I am a Christian pastor and though there was some hesitancy on my part… I talked about my belief in God, in Christ rising from the dead, and the hope we can have because of his rising
I asked her if I could pray for her. I sat in her living room and prayed with her (and the tears streaming down her cheeks). It was very meaningful moment to her. I don’t know that she had ever been prayed for before. She didn’t fall on her knees and say, “I now want to become a follower of Christ.” She was able to experience in some small way the reality of Christ by my simply naming him and praying for her. That is what we are called to be and do. We are called to be witnesses to the reality of Christ.
Perhaps one way to begin to serve as witness is to ask the Holy Spirit to so fill us that we would be willing to talk about Jesus naturally, as we would any other important person or pursuit in our lives.
I was at dinner with about 10-12 people honoring a prominent political leader in the city. He was receiving The Order of Canada award. During the dinner he asked each one of people seated around the table guests to share for a few minutes something we were passionate about. There was a part of me that wanted to talk about a safer topic like my love of sailing or running through endowments lands with the Golden Retriever, but I felt the Holy Spirit prompting me to share part of my spiritual journey. I said,” I’m pastor of Tenth Church here in the city. People often ask why I choose enter the somewhat unusual vocation of a Christian minister.” Then I said, “As teenager, I had troubled years. I was involved in taking and dealing drugs, shoplifting, and joyriding. My dad was concerned about me. So, he took me to a prison, and later he said, ‘I just wanted you to see your future home… ‘ and he figured to try something even more radical--he took me to a Christian youth conference. At that Christian conference I discovered I could have a new beginning and my life was radically changed me for the better. So one of things I am passionate about is seeing lives changed by the power of God.”
A starting point in serving as a witness is to pray that we would be filled with the Spirit and free to talk about Christ like we would any other person or pursuit in our lives.
As are filled with Spirit we will witness through our words to reality of Christ , but as Bryant Myers points out we will also point to reality of God through our lives, our deeds, and through signs and as this happens the work of God spreads.
One of key reasons the early church spread like wildfire in the first century was because they were filled with the Holy Spirit and as result reflected the integrity, wisdom, and love of God in their lives. In Acts 4 we read how astonished people were at the courage and wisdom that the disciples Peter and John had even though they were ordinary, uneducated people, and they noted they had been with Jesus.
I said before, my grandfather was very, very hostile to Christianity. He was a corporate CEO. Arrogant. Powerful. He had been hostile toward Christians in general. One time I had a copy of Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis sent to him in Japanese. He had his secretary reduce it to a one page summary. But there was a person in his company that he described with a glow in his eye as a “true Christian.” This person was an individual of extraordinary integrity, capable, trustworthy. I don’t know if he ever explicitly tried to persuade my grandfather to become a Christian, but he was open about his faith. My grandfather deeply respected him and part of the reason my grandfather committed his life to Christ late in life—i.e. in his 80s--was because of someone who gave witness to the reality of Christ through his life.
Another reason the early church spread like wildfire in the first century was because they were filled with God’s Spirit and witnessed to the reality of God through their deeds. In Acts 4 we read how the early followers of Christ shared their possessions with one another so that there was not a single person in need among them. People in the Roman Empire often were stingy with their money, but promiscuous with their bodies. But observers remarked of those first Christians, they share bread with others, not their marriage beds.
Pastor Ourng serves a church of 83 members in Cambodia (where we intend to invest for 10-15 years as a church). He said, “Several years ago, World Vision came to the community and set up a TB clinic to care those suffering with that disease. They helped us improve our schools, and taught us better agricultural methods to increase our crop yields. Since the genocide in Cambodia, I did not trust strangers. I was suspicious of the World Vision people. Why would these strangers help us? I wondered. One day I confronted the World Vision leader and demanded to know, ‘Why are you here?’ The leader said, ‘We are followers of Jesus Christ, and we are commanded to love our neighbours as ourselves.’” The Cambodian asked, “Who is Jesus?”
They gave him a Bible and then introduced him later to a Cambodian Christian. Ourng became a follower of Jesus and then pastor…
A story a little close to home:
Rose Smith, is an active member of this church, she has given me permission to share this story. Rose lives here in Vancouver (She is married to Bruce who serves as the chair of our Board of Elders).
Rose met her friend Patti 28 years ago last Tuesday (August 18) when Rose’s daughter Heather and Patti’s son Mark were born at BC Women’s’ on the same day. Six years later Patti, her husband Chris and their family moved 3 houses away from Rose and Bruce. They’ve ended up being close friends for over 20 years.
Four years ago Patti was diagnosed with cancer in her appendix. Her cancer spread into her abdomen and into spine. For four or five months, Rose organized friends to spend the day with Patti. This gave her husband Chris a much-needed break.
One day when Rose was with Patti in Palliative Care when she between medications, and in excruciating pain. Rose was in hospital holding her (Dec 06). The pain was coming and going like as if Patti were in heavy labour…
And just before Patti died, Rose was stroking her head and then her arm, prayed for Patti and said, “It’s OK. It’s O.K, time to go… you’re going to a better place...” (Patti, though she had not been attending any church at the time, had placed her faith in Christ, but her husband Chris was not a believer in God.) Chris told me this week, “I knew then that they were in touch with a reality of which I knew nothing, and thought, “What am I missing?” That was two years ago. On July 1 2007, Patti died.
As a result of seeing love that Rose had for Patti, by seeing how Patti was able to let go because of her faith in the reality of God, made Chris think that there was some kind of reality that he had not experienced. Rose and Bruce invited Chris to Tenth and he has been attending Tenth and has been coming for the last two years, and a few months ago took his first communion here. (As a result of Chris a good friend of his has started coming, a friend of his friend coming, and someone who is not regular churchgoer has joined the small group they are part of.)
Like the early church, as we are filled with the Holy Spirit, we can witness to Christ through word, life, deed, and also through sign. In the book of Acts we see how the early believers experience certain “signs”: the ability to speak in tongues they hadn’t studied before, healings, supernatural deliverances from danger—that could only be plausibly explained by God.
When we are joined to Christ and filled with His Spirit, we will bear witness to the reality of God through some kind of sign in our life.
I was born in a country where most people are Buddhist or Shinto. People ask me if other members of my family are Christian. The Christian stream of our family began with my great uncle. He was diagnosed with tuberculosis when it was considered a terminal illness. There was no medication. He was given 6 months to live. Someone gave him a Bible. He read it. He came to the part in the Gospels where Jesus healed people. He prayed for healing and was miraculously healed. As a result of his healing, my mother came to faith in Christ. And as a result of that, I came to know Christ.
Our may not be as dramatic a change as that, but is there some kind of sign in your life that would point to the reality of God that those who know you might see God at spiritual at work in you?
In my own story my own sign was not nearly as dramatic as in my great uncle’s experience, but it was enough to spark the curiosity of my grandmother.
My grandmother remembered me as a little brat (which I was). I was always asking, “How can I become rich when I grow up?” When I went to work in Japan for the Sony Group, I also started volunteering in a little church in northeast Tokyo. My grandmother was really intrigued. When she heard I was going to speak at church one Sunday my grandmother was intrigued. On a rainy Sunday morning, she decided she would come to church for the first time in over 20 years to hear me speak. I gave a little message about the power of the cross to change us. At the end of the message I invited the people who wanted to give their lives to Christ to come forward. My grandmother to my great surprise came forward. She was in tears, and I said, “Are you OK?” She said, “Am I OK? Today is the happiest day of my life. I thought I had been a Christian all my whole life, but today for the first time I really understood why Jesus Christ died for me.”
This is how the kingdom of God spreads in the world--as followers are filled with the Spirit of Jesus and they witness to the gospel—through word, life, deed and sign.
Dorothy Day said, “Live a life that is so mysterious that the only adequate explanation for it can be a living and loving God.”
The way that we become people who preach the gospel through our lives and our words, and live a life so mysterious that they only explanation for it a living, loving God is that we are filled with the Spirit of Christ.
As we are we are filled with the Spirit of Christ, we will become witnesses to the reality of Christ… in fact we will becomes Christ’s “voice” and Christ’s “touch” and (in Paul’s words) “the body of Christ” in our relationships, as a community in places like Kitsilano (as we launch our new site there on September 13), and as we are led to Cambodia, and around the world.
But, being an outlier in the most important work of all, the eternal work for Christ, isn’t primarily being born in the right place and the right time or having the most persuasive argument, but the result of being filled with the Holy Spirit of Jesus Christ—being clothed with power from on high. When that happens, we will naturally—or supernaturally--become witnesses to the reality of Christ and become his “voice” and “touch” in our world. We will find ourselves partners with God in creating the eternal kingdom of God.
Prayer:
Would you like to be filled with the Spirit? You can pray that now.
As you pray that perhaps you’ll also say, “God I am available in the coming week to serve as witness for Christ through what I say, who I am, what I do, or some kind of sign in me.”
posted by Shigematsu at 5:00 PM
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