Acts 4

Chapter 4. Witnessing for ChristYou will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. (Acts 1:8)“I have appeared to you to appoint you as a servant and as a witness of what you have seen of me and what I will show you.”… I have had God’s help to this very day, and so I stand here and testify to small and great alike. (Acts 26:16, Acts 26:22)Testimony is the foundation of all jurisprudence in earthly courts and all faith in the economy of grace. The lives of men are determined every day by the word of a credible witness. And so God has rested the foundations of Christianity upon human testimony and required of us the faith that believes on the word of the true witness. God Himself meets us as a Witness. Anyone who believes in the Son of God has this testimony in his heart. Anyone who does not believe God has made him out to be a liar, because he has not believed the testimony God has given about his Son. (1 John 5:10) Faith is not believing because we have seen a mathematical demonstration, but it is believing someone’s word. Therefore God has sent forth the most credible witnesses to bear testimony to men of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ and the offer of salvation which He has made through His name. He has been most careful in the appointment of such witnesses. This was the primary meaning of the apostolic office to be witnesses of His resurrection (Acts 1:22). And for this purpose they were to be endued with supernatural power, that their testimony might be that of the Holy Spirit as well as of faithful men. Our ministry, therefore, is that of witness-bearing. “You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8). Personal Knowledge

1. The witness must have personal knowledge of the matters concerning which he testifies. Hearsay evidence cannot be admitted. We must know Christ personally before we can testify to Him. A personal experience is essential to effectiveness in all work for Christ. Men instinctively become sensible of the lack of it. It gives a fine tone and color to all we say, and its absence is quickly detected even by the unsaved. During the earlier years of the writer’s ministry, before he knew the Holy Spirit personally, no one ever came to him to talk about the deeper life, but within 24 hours after he knew the Lord as an indwelling personal reality, hungry hearts began to come and ask the way to Jesus. You cannot deceive human souls with painted fire and spiritual illusions. We cannot make burning glasses for the heavenly altars out of lumps of ice as they do in Arctic regions to kindle fires. We must ourselves be true, If we the truth would preach; Our hearts must overflow, if we Another’s heart would reach. A Personal Christ2. We are witnesses of a personal Christ. We are not sent to unfold a scheme of doctrine, a logical creed, a system of truth merely, but primarily, to tell about a Person, to make Jesus Christ real to men and make them long to know Him for themselves. We are not to testify of our personal experience so much as of Him; but we are to testify from our personal experience and have it give warmth, reality and force to the message of Jesus, as the heathen child so plaintively expressed it when she cried to the missionary, “Take me with you to your Jesus.” We must have them feel that He is our Jesus, but it is Jesus and not ourselves that we are to preach. Your glowing experiences may only perplex or discourage them and make them feel how unlike their experience is, or still worse, try to copy you. But let Christ be your theme, and you, like the transparent glass, reveal the light without projecting your own shadow. Definite Testimony
2. Their witness of Jesus was at the same time very definite. It was not a vague metaphysical dream, such as Christian Science would give us, of some manifestation of Deity, some idea of love which God was projecting upon the human mind, but it was a real personal, individual Christ of whom they could tell with authority who He was, whence He came, how He suffered, died, and rose again, where He is now and how He is coming once again. Their testimony embraced four points especially. First, they witnessed His divinity. He was “Jesus… the Son of God” (Acts 9:20). “The God of our fathers raised Jesus from the dead—whom you had killed by hanging him on a tree” (Acts 5:30). “God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ” (Acts 2:36). That was the way they testified to Him. Second, they saw His death and atonement. They witnessed to His sufferings and His precious blood as the ground of justification and forgiveness for sinful men. Third, they witnessed of His resurrection. “God has raised this Jesus to life, and we are all witnesses of the fact” (Acts 2:32). They announced Him as a risen and glorified Being, seated on a throne of supreme power, and showing by the might of His very name that He was still alive and was the Son of God. Fourth, their witness included His second coming. They preached Him to men as “judge of the living and the dead” (Acts 10:42). They proclaimed a day when God “will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to all men by raising him from the dead” (Acts 17:31). “He must remain in heaven until the time comes for God to restore everything, as he promised long ago through his holy prophets” (Acts 3:21). These were some of the terms in which they witnessed to His coming again. And so our witness of the Christ must always include His deity, His atonement, His resurrection and His coming again. Scriptural Testimony
3. They testified according to the Scriptures, and they based their arguments on the Scriptures. In Peter’s sermon in the second chapter of Acts we find him quoting with singular appropriateness from the prophet Joel and the patriarch David, arguments which they could not gainsay because they were from their own Scriptures. Again, in Acts 3:22 and Acts 3:24, Moses and Samuel are called as witnesses to corroborate the apostolic testimony. So again we find Stephen basing his entire argument on the Old Testament history, and they were powerless to resist the inexorable logic of his appeal. Philip in his interview with the eunuch, Acts 8:35, immediately turns to the Scriptures and from the book of Isaiah preaches unto him Jesus. Again in his great sermon at Antioch, Acts 13, Paul appeals to their own history as the foundation of his argument and quotes from David and the prophets (Acts 13:33 and Acts 13:41) to clinch his arguments and rivet his messages. So our testimony for Christ must be through His own Word, for the Bible is just one successive testimony of Jesus and every page a glowing portrait of His face. In the Holy Spirit
4. Our witnessing must be in the power of the Spirit. “We are witnesses of these things,” said Peter, “and so is the Holy Spirit, whom God has given to those who obey him” (Acts 5:32). It is the joint testimony of the Spirit and the messenger. Without Him our witness is cold and fruitless. “No one can say, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ except by the Holy Spirit” (1 Corinthians 12:3). And if we have the Holy Spirit the message cannot be kept back. Official Witnesses
5. There were official witnesses and unofficial. There were the appointed messengers and officers of the church, and there were the hearts and voices that overran the limits of conventional ministry and just witnessed because they could not help it, going beyond their own province, but gloriously irregular through the power of the Spirit. First there was the apostolic body, consisting only of those who had seen the Lord in the flesh and were qualified thus to be witnesses of His resurrection. Therefore there can be no apostolic succession, for John saw on the foundations of the New Jerusalem the names, not of all the apostles of later times, but the 12 apostles of the Lamb. Then there were the prophets, whose ministry Paul defines thus: “Everyone who prophesies speaks to men for their strengthening, encouragement and comfort” (1 Corinthians 14:3). The prophet, therefore, is a God-touched messenger who brings to men some living message of instruction or appeal or consolation fresh from the heart of God. He is not necessarily the foreteller of future events. Certainly he is not inspired to give a new Bible or authoritative revelations of the will of God in addition to the Holy Scriptures, but he is just a voice to speak from time to time in living power what God has already spoken through His written Word. Then the evangelist came next, the soul winner, the messenger of salvation to men, with a wider parish than a single church, an office which still God uses and honors, and should be recognized as the special ministry of those whom the Holy Spirit thus calls. Next was the office of pastor and teacher. He was the shepherd of the particular congregation, and associated with him was the elder, an office that included two classes apparently, the teaching and the ruling elder, for the apostle speaks of elders that labor both in word and doctrine as worthy of double honor. The deacon was the servant of the church as the word literally means. His duty was to minister to the poor, the stranger, the neglected, to stand with open heart and hand at the threshold of the church, bidding its children welcome to the Father’s house and helping to make it indeed a household of faith and a home of love. The deaconess, too, had her place, for Phoebe, “a servant of the church in Cenchrea” (Romans 16:1), was literally a deaconess as the words mean. Then there were the irregulars of the Lord’s army, the people that went beyond their formal line of ministry, and like Joseph, allowed their fruit to “climb over a wall” (Genesis 49:22). Such was Stephen, the deacon, who became the most illustrious evangelist and the first martyr of the infant Church, confounding even Saul in the synagogues of the Cilicians with his matchless arguments and heavenly wisdom, and bringing him by his dying prayers to follow in the same pathway. Such was Philip, also a deacon, who through his zeal and faith promoted to be the great evangelist of Samaria and afterwards pioneer missionary of Africa, calling the prince of Ethiopia to Christ and sending him back to his own land, perhaps, to lay the foundations of the great churches which we afterwards find in those regions. And then woman’s ministry, too, found its place; good Priscilla getting ahead even of her husband Aquila in the ranks of service, and Dorcas with her spirit-baptized fingers and heart strings so necessary to the apostolic Church that she had to be brought back even from the dead, while James the apostle was permitted to pass away in martyrdom. Such were the apostolic witnesses in whose footsteps we are permitted to follow in the closing days of the same dispensation. There was a glorious irregularity as well as a divine order, for order was never intended to cramp, but only to direct the forces of the spiritual world. Therefore we find in Acts 8:4, that when persecution came all the Christians were scattered abroad except the apostles, and “those who had been scattered preached the word wherever they went.” This word “preached” is an unusual word, meaning literally, talking informally, or as some have translated it, “gossiping the gospel.” It was the witness-bearing of plain men and women who just talked about Jesus wherever they went, and so talked that, as we read a little later in Acts 11:19-21, they brought a great multitude to Christ and laid the foundations of the mother church at Antioch, which became henceforth the head and heart of the missionary activities of the apostolic Church. Examples
6. Here are some examples of their witness-bearing: Peter On the Day of Pentecost a. We have Peter’s testimony on the day of Pentecost, which Prof. Stiffler characterizes as the most compact and convincing piece of sacred oratory in the New Testament. And yet it was an address that could be delivered in less than 10 minutes, and had none of the shallow tricks of modern oratory about it, but was the simple eloquence of truth and earnestness on fire with the Holy Spirit. Peter Before the Council b. Next were Peter’s messages before the Council, splendid examples of a holy courage that cared not for his own safety, but sought only to make the occasion an opportunity to witness for his Savior and Master. And so convincing was the testimony that the rulers were compelled to let him alone and keep their hands off the word of God. Stephen’s Testimony c. Again we have the testimony of Stephen, so bold and fearless of his own safety, so wise and convincing in its arguments, and so heavenly in its spirit, that the only argument left them in their baffled rage was a shower of stones, making him, as the word witness literally means, a martyr too, the proto-martyr of the Church of God. Philip’s Witness d. Then we have the witness of Philip in Samaria, and later to the eunuch in the desert, and in both instances it was the same simple testimony: “Philip went down to a city in Samaria and proclaimed the Christ there” (Acts 8:5). “Then Philip began with that very passage of Scripture and told him the good news about Jesus” (Acts 8:35)—the same old gospel whether in Samaria or Africa: Jesus only, Jesus ever, Jesus all our theme shall be. Peter’s Testimonye. Next we have the witness of Peter in the house of Cornelius, a beautiful model of gospel preaching. It took a good deal to get him ready for it. God had to take him on the housetop and put him through some pretty hard classes, not only in theology, but also in biology, before he was ready to go to a Gentile congregation and preach Jesus unto them. But he was ready at last, and preach he did, so that the Holy Spirit came like a second Pentecost, and the door of faith was opened unto the Gentiles. What a sermon that was in Acts 10:34-43, only 200 words all told, less than five minutes long and yet the whole gospel compressed into it without the slightest stiffness: all about John’s baptism, Jesus Christ’s life on earth, His death on the cross, His resurrection and its infallible proofs, His coming again as the Judge of the quick and the dead, and His offer of salvation to all that believe witnessed by all the prophets. Nothing lacking. Everything complete and glowing with the very love of Christ. Paul the Witness f. Next we have Paul’s witness-bearing. It began immediately after his conversion. “At once he began to preach in the synagogues that Jesus is the Son of God” (Acts 9:20). Time will not permit us to follow all the recorded testimonies of his life and work: at Antioch, Acts 13, a scriptural testimony to the Jews; at Derbe and Lystra, Acts 14, an entirely different but equally appropriate testimony to a heathen audience; at Athens, Acts 17, a still more wonderful and wisely adapted appeal to the extraordinary audience gathered at the Acropolis at Athens representing all the art, learning and idolatry of Greece, but all woven into the exquisite web of his testimony of Jesus, the coming Judge of all, and the risen Son of God—a message followed even in cold Athens by the conversion of a poor prostitute and a noble councilor. Then we might trace also with equal interest his witness to the jailer of Philippi: “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved” (Acts 16:31); his strenuous testimony at Corinth (Acts 18:5); and the long retrospect he gives us in Acts 20 of his three years’ ministry and his faithful witness-bearing at Ephesus until he could say, “I am innocent of the blood of all men” (Acts 20:26). Again we have his testimony from the stairs of the castle in Jerusalem (chapter 22), addressed to his own countrymen; his heart-searching message to Felix and Drusilla (chapters 24, 25), until the old Roman debauchee trembled on his very throne and for a moment felt himself in the presence of the judgment day; and his longest testimony with the story of his conversion as told by himself in the presence of Agrippa in the 26th chapter of Acts—all these messages are brimming with the glory and the name of Jesus Christ, and his one object is not to clear himself, but to introduce his Master. Later on we see him on the deck of the tossing vessel in the Adriatic storm, taking command of the ship when all hearts failed with terror, and testifying of Jesus Christ, “whose I am and whom I serve” (Acts 27:23), until he himself becomes the central figure in the drama, and for his sake all on board are saved. At Rome it is the same story. Daily in his own hired house they come to him, and the book of Acts leaves him there preaching the kingdom of God and teaching those things which concerned the Lord Jesus Christ with all confidence, no man forbidding him, for two long years. His later epistles give us innumerable glimpses of subsequent testimonies. In the closing scenes unveiled in his last letter to Timothy, we see him brought before the cruel Nero on trial for his life. We hear him say with no bitterness of spirit, only sorrow for them, At my first defense, no one came to my support, but everyone deserted me. May it not be held against them. But the Lord stood at my side and gave me strength, so that through me the message might be fully proclaimed and all the Gentiles might hear it. And I was delivered from the lion’s mouth. (2 Timothy 4:16-17) We can almost hear the growls of the fierce Nubian lions that were appointed for his death. We can see the great crowd of Gentiles gathered round the court of Nero waiting for the verdict, and whether their thumbs shall be turned upward for his acquittal or downward for his doom. But what do we see on the part of Paul? No thought of danger, no fear of death, no notice of the angry lion, but only one purpose, that “the message might be fully proclaimed” (2 Timothy 4:17). It is the chance of his life. For the first and last time he has the ear of Nero, and the old sinner shall hear the gospel now if he never did before. And Paul just preaches it with all his might until not only he, but all the Gentiles, hear once at least the story of Jesus Christ. That was his business. What about the lion? That was God’s business. And in the most incidental manner he just adds, “I was delivered from the lion’s mouth. The Lord will rescue me from every evil attack and will bring me safely to his heavenly kingdom. To him be glory for ever and ever. Amen” (2 Timothy 4:17-18). It was his business to take care of Christ’s glory, and it was Christ’s business to take care of him. Lessons In conclusion:
7. Have something to tell and something to give, and it will get out like the testimony of which Peter had to say, “We cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard” (Acts 4:20).
8. Always hold up Jesus Christ and try to make Him real to the world. That is the only thing that will attract, that will save, that will satisfy, that will help lost men and bring God’s blessing.
9. Begin at home. That is your Jerusalem. Then go to every widening circle of influence and opportunity until you reach the uttermost part of the earth.
10. Recognize every situation that comes to you as an opportunity for testimony. Look at every person you meet as a subject for God’s blessing through you in some way, and thus all your life will be a ministry for Him.
11. Live your testimony, be a Bible. If you cannot be an apostle you can be a “letter… known and read by everybody” (2 Corinthians 3:2).
12. Ask God to put into your life supernatural things that will themselves be His witness to your testimony and commend it to an unbelieving world. Every Christian ought to have answered prayers in his body, in his business, in his trials and temporal circumstances, that will speak for God and make them know that there is a real and a living Christ, and that our Christianity is not a theory but is supernatural and divine.
13. Remember that though you may never be a missionary in Africa or China, you can still be a witness to the uttermost part of the earth. You can shine afar through other lives even where your feet may never go. At a country crossing and beside a village pump, Brainerd Taylor met a young man and spoke to him a few simple, burning words that sent him to seek and find the Lord, and at length become a missionary to the heathen. He never knew the name of his benefactor until long years had passed and Brainerd Taylor had been a good while in heaven. Then one day there fell into his hands a little book containing the story of that saintly life and the portrait of the man on the frontispiece. Then for the first time he knew to whom it was he owed his salvation and his life’s work, and falling upon his knees he thanked God for the saintly man who had never been able himself to go to Africa, but whose witness was being repeated through another life in that dark land. God give us grace to receive our Pentecost and fulfill our testimony.