Interaction with our society
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Acts 13:47-49
For this is what the Lord has commanded us:
I have made you
a light for the Gentiles
to bring salvation
to the ends of the earth.”
When the Gentiles heard this, they rejoiced and honored the word of the Lord, and all who had been appointed to eternal life believed. The word of the Lord spread through the whole region.
How did the message spread? Get the idea that lots of preaching, but that is never the way the message truly spreads. It is by those who have heard the message and received the message sharing with those who have not.
The kind of spreading described by the passage is not a human thing; it is a spirit thing. It did not come about by a plan; it was not accomplished by a strategy; it was ignited by passion for the reality of Christ in the life of the believers.
1. The central purpose of the gift of the Spirit is power for witness.
Acts 1:4-8
While he was with them, he commanded them not to leave Jerusalem, but to wait for the Father’s promise. “Which,” he said, “you have heard me speak about; for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit in a few days.”
So when they had come together, they asked him, “Lord, are you restoring the kingdom to Israel at this time?”
He said to them, “It is not for you to know times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come on you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”
When the Lord speaks, He is the determiner of the subject matter. In the church today, an abundance of interest in the role and power of spiritual gifts. Yet, the central purpose of everything related to the Spirit of the Living God alive in each of us and in us collectively is NOT the manifestations of spiritual gifting.
Instead, the power (dunamis) dynamite, is for explosive revelation towards those who do not know Christ.
When the power of the Lord is operational in a life, witnessing takes place as a matter of course. What did He say? You will be my witnesses….
Not you might be; not you should be; you will be….
Key point here, different than what you may have heard in the past, is that witness is a natural part of the Christian experience. Not a preprogrammed part. We used to teach evangelism methods. We would go step by step along, believing that at the end a person would just pray a prayer and our responsibility would be over because they would be saved…or not. Witness is not a human planned event. It is a divine moment. It is when God, who is our Guide, opens a pathway into the eternal life of another person.
Point: since the central purpose of the Spirit is the power to witness, we become accountable for that witness. Stay in tune: Lord, make me sensitive to your Spirit. If I have opportunity to speak the things of life, don’t let me waste time on the things of sports, or music or this life. We are not looking for an opportunity to push our religion. We are wanting to make sure that we join our God as He reaches out to those who do not know Him when He chooses to use us as His individual instrument.
Practically, let’s admit there are fears attached to sharing our faith.
Christians and non-Christians have something in common: We're both uptight about evangelism.
Rebecca Manley Pippert
Salvation requires serious life discussion and many people are not interested in serious life discussion. Or maybe it is better to say: they aren’t immediately ready. It may be a series of conversations. With those who do not know God, we may say one little thing sprinkled with salt that creates interest down the line.
2. The confirming presence of the Spirit is the security for witnessing.
Romans 8:16-17
The Spirit himself testifies together with our spirit that we are God’s children, and if children, also heirs—heirs of God and coheirs with Christ—if indeed we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him.
There is within us that: I know that I know that I know. It is from this position of security that the veracity of witness begins. If you feel guilty that you haven't shared, then the probability is that your motivation is not from the right place to begin with. This is not about what you should do! I don’t want you to go home feeling guilty for what you should have done. No! It is about becoming tuned in the inner chamber of our hearts. Hear that phrase again: The Spirit himself testifies together with our spirit that we are God’s children.
People who don’t have the inward certainty of Christ’s redemption and presence are not going to put themselves on the line to share their faith – but those who do know - they become witnesses as a natural extension of being God’s children and by people recognizing some measure of difference between them and us.
On the natural level, you understand this. Almost all of you come from a Caribbean heritage. You are different, even when placed in a similar racial category. As you encounter people here, you may get remarks against you. We iive in a fallen world where an active enemy works destructively to make humanity miserable. Playing those natural differences up into racism is a favorite ploy. To an even greater degree, those who do not know God know pretty soon after they are with a mature believer that there is a difference.
We are not pushers of religion; we are conveyors of truth. Pray for me. Monday night I will be part of a Facebook discussion led by one of our African American pastors. Title of the discussion? Why are we such an intolerant society? One of the other presenters, another pastor, is African American. In the last discussion, he was attacked by the more liberal members of the panel and he tended to joust back with them. He was hesitant about participating this time. He decided to join again when I said this: truth needs no defense; when it is truth about Jesus, who is the Truth, He has the responsibility to vindicate that truth. Not me. I don’t have to win the point; win the debate; carry the argument. Any time I share the truth I have a dual responsibility:
Ephesians 4:15
But speaking the truth in love, let us grow in every way into him who is the head—Christ.
This impacts our witness in every way. We speak in love: we are not morality police; we are witnesses of a life-changing Lord. When we interact with our world, we lay down absolutes before them without demanding that they change their absolutes. You cannot argue people into the kingdom of Christ. We are not in a battle; we are not in a debate. We are in a conversation where we reflect God who has invited people out of their lostness and into His kingdom.
Instead of telling people to give up things, we are safer to tell them to "seek first the kingdom of God," and then they will get new things and better things, and the old things will drop off by themselves.
John Drummond (1851-1897)
I have often been questioned: if I become a Christian, will I have to give up…and they name a behavior. I normally respond: I have never known a person who has become a Christian to ever give up anything they didn’t want to give up. The secret is that the Risen Lord, actively involved in a life, changes our desires completely.
3. The conscious prompting of the Spirit is the impetus for witnessing.
Acts 8:26-29
An angel of the Lord spoke to Philip: “Get up and go south to the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.” (This is the desert road.) So he got up and went. There was an Ethiopian man, a eunuch and high official of Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, who was in charge of her entire treasury. He had come to worship in Jerusalem and was sitting in his chariot on his way home, reading the prophet Isaiah aloud.
The Spirit told Philip, “Go and join that chariot.”
When we know God is leading us to witness, it is essential that we follow through.
God constructs things far differently than our human understanding would construct them. Those most capable in the kingdom for interaction with lost people from a position of theological and biblical truth are theologians and pastors. But the more that we gain that ground, the more we lose the relational ability to interact with the world.
The minister lives behind a "stained-glass curtain." The layman has opportunities for evangelism which a minister will never have.
James McCord (1919- )
God’s plan is not evangelism by the professionals. God’s plan is redemption by means of priests who interact with the world. A priest stands at the intersection of God and man. You must accurately reflect God to those around you, but you also need to remember you will need that true witness, also begins by understanding those we engage.
We preach to men as if they were conscious they were dying sinners, they are not; they are having a good time.
Oswald Chambers (1874-1917)
You live among those who have a new distraction every few minutes. Want to be distracted by money? The ways to risk financially for financial gain have never been more pronounced. Just look at the new world of cryptocurrency alone. Want to be creative? Technology can drive great ways for the creative mind to produce, or distract the creative mind into the technology itself where nothing real is done…just obsession over the process. Want simply to be distracted? Streaming Video, concert hall quality audio every moment of the day; video games. Distraction like this produces isolation. Join that to a shutdown of interaction on a global scale and you have our world in April 2021.
We never fail when we witness. If we are ready, we may find that coming out of this pandemic produces more opportunities for meaningful interaction will emerge than ever before. People will want to come together; to find answers deeper than tech, than video, than quality audio, than video games. They will have had an overabundance of all of that. Mankind may be crying out for the eternal.
I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will have been bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will have been loosed in heaven.”
Jesus has given us the keys to the kingdom. We have the privilege of unlocking the gates of the kingdom for those who are lost and bound in this world…even when they don’t know they are lost and bound. Let’s prepare to open the gates. No greater quest to be found in this universe.