Introduction
We have all seen, had told to us, or given speeches to encourage and fire up people to go into battle, a sporting event, or many other things in life. We know they have great power to encourage and fire up people to go and do.
Let me give a couple from movies.
This speech from Aragorn in “Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King” right before they take on the evil Sauron’s forces:
This day we fight! By all that you hold dear on this good earth, I bid you stand, Men of the West! Sons of Gondor! Of Rohan! My brothers. I see in your eyes the same fear that would take the heart of me. A day may come when the courage of Men fails, when we forsake our friends and break all bonds of fellowship, but it is not this day. An hour of wolves and shattered shields when the Age of Men comes crashing down, but it is not this day!
Or this from William Wallace (Mel Gibson) in Braveheart right before they take on the English army in their first real battle. Men were wanting to leave and live. But Wallace tells them:
Aye, fight and you may die. Run and you’ll live, at least a while. And dying in your beds many years from now, would you be willing to trade all the days from this day to that for one chance, just one chance to come back here and tell our enemies that they may take our lives, but they’ll never take our freedom!
A warriors call is what we see in these speeches. As good and powerful as these may be, they are not nearly as powerful as the speech Christ gave in Acts 1:6-8
6 So when they had come together, they asked him, “Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” 7 He said to them, “It is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed 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 and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”
Acts 1:6–8 ESV
Being told you will receive power is one method to fire a man up to go and do something. We have the power. As one song says,
We have the power within us.
To move mountains if we try.
To change the course of rivers.
We have the power to give life.
Another band sings,
“Feel the fire, he’s entering the ring, His mindset only knows how to win, This fighter will break you in two, You will feel all his power!”
We have a power above all this. These songs are singing about the power within a person from the person.
We have a power that is external to us until we believe in Christ.
This power is the Holy Spirit who is our guide, comforter, helper, and power to go and impact the world.
So our speech is to wait but serve because we are equipped to serve, we must witness of what we know, and we must go to as many places as possible.
The first thing to do is…
Trust God’s Timetable
The Disciples wanted to know since Jesus was resurrected if now would be the time for the kingdom to be established. He said that it was not for them to know.
We need to realize from this that the kingdom will be future and that it will come when the Father says.
Also, we need to realize that we have work to do until the time is fulfilled and the Lord says now.
We are not in the kingdom now, but the kingdom will come when the Father says it will. We are on a mission to reach as many as we can with the gospel of the grace of God. We strive to get as many people to place their faith in Jesus as we can.
We are not to be so concerned with the redemption of our bodies and worried about the world that we fail to reach the lost with the gospel of salvation.
This is what Jesus was telling the disciples and what we can take from this too.
The disciples wanted to know Jesus’ timetable for the restoration of the kingdom. Like other Jews, the disciples chafed under their Roman rulers. They wanted Jesus to free Israel from Roman power and then become their king. Jesus replied that God the Father sets the timetable for all events—worldwide, national, and personal. If you want changes that God isn’t making immediately, don’t become impatient. Instead, trust God’s timetable. Remember that he is wise, good, and all-powerful. Even when things seem chaotic, he is in control. His perfect will ultimately will prevail. (Bruce B. Barton and Grant R. Osborne, Acts, 8).
The times He has established are out of our hands and jurisdiction. We have no power over when He will call it good and began to restore what He said He would restore. We serve until that time as followers of Christ.
We serve our savior as good and faithful followers. We sit patiently in the back seat and wait until the time is fulfilled. Asking continually does not speed that time up, but makes it seem slower. What does speed it up is serving the Lord as His followers are to do.
Which is what we see in verse 8.
Jesus told them, and us, that you will receive power from the Holy Spirit, you will be my witnesses, and that we are to take the message to all places and everyone everywhere.
We see that the first aspect of our witnessing aspect of discipleship is that…
We Are Equipped with Extreme Power
The Holy Spirit is the Power we all receive upon salvation. He is the power that allows us to be bold and stand boldly for the Lord.
When we have this power in us, there is nothing that can stop us if what we are doing is in the will of God.
Think about some things that happened in the OT. David had the Spirit of God upon him and he was a victorious king in all battles.
Joshua had the power of the Lord with Him and he only walked around Jericho and it fell.
Moses parted the sea. There are many more but the point is, when we are serving God in His will and doing what He has for us to do, the power we have through the Holy Spirit in us will allow for us to do many things.
We are like the fighter entering the ring that everyone will feel our power. We will be able to break the world in two. We have this power inside us and we can be bold and powerful in a world of lost and dying people.
We can be bold and impact them like that fighter where they feel our power and their power falls and fails because their power is only from the world and the demonic.
We can serve until the Lord returns. We are here to go and do until we die or he calls us home by snatching us out.
While we wait we use the power given to impact the world.
Think of Noah. He was told to build an ark because the flood was coming. He worked for many years and preached while working. He was given a strong charge and specific orders. He worked while time went by. Then in his 600th year, the flood waters fell (Gen. 6:19).
Noah did not sit around and complain about the evil wicked people, he worked as he was told to do and preached while doing so (2 Pet. 2:5).
So while we wait on the Lord to pull us out and pour out wrath and then come again to set up His kingdom, we work and we speak boldly because we have the power to do this.
This work is…
All Believers are to be Witnesses
We all receive the power. This means that each believer is called to go and witness for the Lord.
Just as Noah received instructions to build, we have received instructions to be witnesses.
Now, the witness the first disciples had was of the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ. They saw this first hand and knew that He was the savior for the world.
We have not seen that but we have believed it true and placed our faith in Christ alone to secure us forever by His salvation offered to us.
We take that message of the cross and Christ’s triumphant resurrection to as many people as we can.
That is our mission. We go and share. We deliver what was delivered to us. We witness of the goodness of God to people.
To do this we may share our story. We may serve others to help them. We live a life that glorifies the Lord in all areas because we live as Christ would have us in all situations.
We continue in Him and His word in all things. Our lives and actions will speak volumes to the lost.
So to be a witness for the Lord means we strive to live as pure as we can. We live out what we believe before the people.
This means that we are not to act as the world. We may have freedom, as Paul wrote in 1 Cor. 6:12 “All things are lawful for me,” but not all things are helpful. “All things are lawful for me,” but I will not be dominated by anything.”
And again in 1 Cor. 10:23 “All things are lawful,” but not all things are helpful. “All things are lawful,” but not all things build up.” and 1 Cor 10:31 “So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.”
What this means is that we may have freedoms to do most anything, but if that thing is causing harm to your witness before others, we must stop it.
When we live as the world in our lives and actions we are not glorifying God and people see this.
I remember one time back when I was a drunk and an idiot. I was trying to tell someone that they needed to read the Bible and go to church. They retorted back to me, “who are you to tell me to do those things?”
Such a true statement. I was not living how I should have been and I was telling them to do what I was not doing.
When we are not living a life that shines Christ to others but is similar to their life, we are not in a place to tell them of Christ. We may be saved and have the power of the Spirit in us, but we are not using His power in our lives. We are grieving the Spirit in us (Eph. 4:30), and well on our way to quenching the Spirit (1 Thess. 5:19).
We certainly are not living a life of a witness but of hypocrisy and this does nothing but lead others down the path of death.
So, to be a witness we live as Christ desires us to live. Like Paul said do all to the glory of God. Or as Will Rogers said, “So live that you wouldn’t be ashamed to sell the family parrot to the town gossip.”
We can do this because we have the Spirit of God in us. We can say no thank you when offered a drink. We can say no I am not watching that. We can say no I am good when asked if we want to go to the bar.
We can overcome temptations with the power of the Spirit in us and when we do that, we become a good witness for the Lord.
When we do this we begin to grow and develop more fully in the Lord. We begin to realize the need for Him in the world. When we realize this we begin to see that…
No Place is Too Close Nor Too Far
Christ told the disciples in the last of verse 8 that they were to begin in Jerusalem, Judea, and Samaria and then to the ends of the earth.
We see this happen throughout the book of Acts. They started in Jerusalem and then spread out until Paul was called and went to the Gentile world.
We have basically the same call. We can start at home, then spread out until we are going all over.
We are filled with the power to go out. We begin close and spread out all over. We can go into all the world because we have the power of the Holy Spirit in us.
Our job as believers is to do this. Yes, Jesus said this directly to the disciples but Paul went to all places. He never weakened either. He went and he told us to imitate him as he imitated Christ (1 Cor. 11:1).
Paul started more locally in his ministry and then went far out in many missionary journey’s. If Paul felt this was necessary and what it meant to imitate Christ, so should we.
Remember Christ came and died for all (1 Tim. 2:6). If he did this for all, and not all have heard then we need to go and share about this ransom paid by Christ.
Think of it like this, when a ranch begins their spring or fall works, the job is to gather everything on the place. It is not to just gather this place and get what we can, but get everything.
You go out and make a drive and every man on that drive is to cover a certain part of country. He is to not just ride in a straight line but work through the country and gather everything he sees.
Sometimes things get missed and sometimes some just run over you and get away. But that does not stop you from going and gathering and riding your country to get as many as you can praying to get them all. No, it does not. We continue to work and work doing what it takes to gather all the cattle there.
That is what this is about. We continue to gather and work our country and gather all we can.
We have the power and the orders and the pumped up speech to do this, so what are we waiting for?
We can go and gather many lost strays if we will just work our country and try and get them. And when this country is worked move to the next piece and start over again until they are all gathered. And then again, and again, and again until we are done.
That is our call. That is the call we have now. It is a warriors call because the weak will not stand up under the pressure. But we have the power to go and do but the weak will not take that power but stay standing in their home complaining that this world is going to hell.
So warriors what will it be? Stand and fight and work our country, or stay in the kitchen and complain?
Conclusion
As followers of Christ it is of the utmost importance that we take His message of grace and eternal life to as many as possible.
We were saved and left here to do this not just complain or stand around and do nothing waiting on His return.
We can make an impact serving while we anxiously await our uniting with our savior. But we must serve and do. We have the power and the orders to do this. But do this we must. PRIME MINISTER WINSTON CHURCHILL before the House of Commons as the French retreat from Hitler, on May 13, 1940 said:
“We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before us many many long months of struggle and of suffering. You ask, what is our policy? I can say: It is to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us; to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalog of human crime. That is our policy.”
We are waging war against a terrible enemy. Ours is not flesh and blood but powers and principalities. Satan and his minions. We are waging war against the strongholds of this world. As Churchill said we will wage it with all our might. But the might we have is the Holy Spirit in us. We have raw, unending, amazing power in us to fight this war.
I will end with this statement, “The evangelistic harvest is always urgent. The destiny of men and of nations is always being decided. Every generation is strategic. We are not responsible for the past generation, and we cannot bear the full responsibility for the next one; but we do have our generation. God will hold us responsible as to how well we fulfill our responsibilities to this age and take advantage of our opportunities.” (Charles R. Swindoll, 183).
That is working your country and bringing them in. This is working with the power we have from the Lord. This is using all the might we have. We can impact those around us, wherever it is around us is. We are called to do this and we can accomplish it by just saying something like, ‘Hey can I tell you what Jesus has done for me?”
Simple, that simple.
If you are here today and this message has worked on you and you want to know more about Jesus I would love to tell you what Jesus has done for me. He will save you and give you everlasting life if you will just believe in Him for that salvation.
