There’s a true story about a woman walking through the Beacon Hill section of Boston and big time Christian John Vassar stopped the woman and asked her, “If she was a Christian?” The woman told her husband about the incident later that evening and her husband said, “I would have told that man to mind his own business.” His wife replied, “If you would have been there and if you would have met the man you would have known it was his business.”
The Gospel is the business of the church. The church is people you know, it’s not a building and if you follow Jesus you are the church. Southern Baptist president J. D. Greear recently shared, “The Gospel is our one agenda, it is our priority, it is our authority, it is our blueprint for action.”
Do you remember the fictional play by John Masefield, “The Trial of Jesus”? After Easter, Pilate’s wife Procula asks Longinus, one of the Roman soldiers that saw Jesus die on the cross, if he thought Jesus was really dead.
Longinus answers, “No ma’am I don’t.”
“Then where is He?” Procula asked.
The Roman soldier replied, “Lady, He has been let loose in the world where no man can stop Him.”
That’s a picture of you (the church). You have been let loose in the world to share the Good News of Jesus Christ and no man can stop you. In fact Jesus said, “I will put together My church, a church so expansive with energy that not even the gates of Hell will be able to prevail against it” (Matthew 16:18).
“Go” Jesus said in Matthew 28:19, “Go into the world and make disciples of all nations.”
In Acts 1:8, the red letters (If I’m anything I’m a red letter guy) say, “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.”
These are not only the words of Christ but they are the last words of Christ before His ascension so they are final and they are conclusive. The church (you) has been given authority and assured success in this work of beggars telling other beggars where they found bread.
A witness is someone who tells what they saw. They tell what they know. Their story doesn’t have to be anything but true and honest.
Let me ask, where did you find Jesus? Where did you cry out for help with your sin and your brokenness? Where and how did you ask Jesus to save you? That’s what you are to witness about. If that’s true (and it is) why is fulfilling this command so hard to do?
One of the greatest examples of being a witness is in John 9:25. Jesus had just healed a blind guy and the religious (church) folks don’t like it so they question this former blind man about Jesus and I love what he says, “I don’t know much about Jesus, all I know is I was blind and now I can see.”
Can we talk? Some days that’s my testimony. What I’m saying is the more I know about Jesus it seems like the less I know about Jesus. I struggle understanding how much God loves me and wants to include me in His work. Why Jesus wants to hang out with me is hard for me to wrap my mind around.
I’ve got a friend who told me the other day, “Ken, there are only three spiritual laws you really need to know: First, there is a God. Second, you are not Him and thirdly, He is in absolute control.” There’s peace in that.
Some days all I can do is sing, “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me. I was once lost but now I’m found, was blind but now I see.”
I think it was the great evangelist D. L. Moody who had a woman tell him one time, “Mr. Moody, I don’t like the way you do evangelism.”
Moody asked, “Well, let me ask you, how do you do it?”
She replied, “I don’t.”
Moody responded by saying, “Well then I like my way better.”
How you do it is not so important, it’s just important that you do it.
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