Last Words

Eventually, ladies and gentlemen, across the board, we may have to reach the point that they reached in the first century where they stated, when told to be quiet about biblical truth, we will obey God rather than men. If you are silenced and intimidated now, hold onto your hat. How do you reach the first century?

How do you reach the 20th century? Jesus Christ says, when I ascend, I'm going to send you an empowering person who through you can reach the world. Have you had the experience where living out your Christian faith was extremely difficult? Maybe you were mocked or ridiculed.

Maybe your opinions were dismissed. Maybe doing the right thing actually cost you financially. Situations like this are becoming more common all the time. In times like that, we need the Holy Spirit to help us and strengthen us. Here's the good news, that's exactly what Jesus promised prior to ascending back into heaven.

Stephen Davey is looking at that account today here on Wisdom for the Heart. This lesson from our Vintage Wisdom Library is called, Last Words. We began our discussion on Last Lord's Day and looking at the promise of our Lord to his disciples found in the Book of Action, Chapter 1. While the disciples stood with their risen Lord on that wind swept hill, the wind I'm sure tugging at their garments and I am equally convinced, deep emotion was tugging at their hearts, they heard their Savior and their Master declare to them his final words. He told them as we studied Last Lord's Day not to try to anticipate the coming or the timing of the coming of the Kingdom, but they were to anticipate the coming of a person. As we read in verse 8 of Chapter 1, and when the Spirit has come upon you, you shall be my witnesses. Did you notice he did not say to them, when the Spirit comes upon you, you shall begin to witness.

See, this is a critical point and one I want to camp out with you this morning right here. Jesus Christ is concerned with who we are before he commands what we do. The Church in America primarily, I believe, is ineffective because we have focused on what we are doing.

We have lost sight of what we are being. The Church is busier than ever. The Church is making more noise than ever. In fact, in the last ten years, I think you could argue that there's been more information written about the Church, the creativity, the organization, the procedure, the policy of the Church than the previous fifty years. The Church has become the topic of news stories more in the last few years than probably the previous twenty-five years combined. If you were to ask, I think, the average pastor the question, what does your Church do?

You would get such a long answer about policies and procedures and purpose statements that the next question you'd be tempted to ask, although you're too polite to ask it, would be, do you have any extra strength Tylenol? We are busier than ever before with motion. As we talked about in the past, we are not making forward progress. We have mistaken motion for movement.

We have replaced the person with the program. And I think it's interesting as you come to this passage, you do not read Jesus Christ saying, when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, you shall develop methods and strategies and purpose statements which are fine and we ought to have thought given to those things. But he didn't say that. He didn't say, when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, you shall begin a door-to-door campaign in the greater Jerusalem area. No, he said, in effect, there is a person coming.

And when that person comes, when that empowering person descends and indwells, here's the priority. Here's what will happen when he comes. He says, you shall be my witnesses. You say, Stephen, you mean we're not supposed to go door-to-door or have witnessing or campaigns?

No, I'm not saying that. While we will have opportunities and many of them to witness, Jesus informs us that we are to be witnesses. But here in this is an altogether more demanding quality. That means it isn't enough for you to take an hour on Thursday night or Saturday morning and knock on doors and then say, I've done it. You can't put a ten dollar bill in the offering plate as it comes by and say, I did my part. You can't attach a fish to your bumper and say, am I a testimony or what? Jesus Christ is telling us here that we have a lifelong occupation. We are on permanent jury duty. We are to be witnesses. How we do it?

They take a myriad of forms. Has it ever occurred to you as you've studied the New Testament that Jesus Christ never told you to become salt? He said, you are the salt of the earth. He didn't say, now all of those who believe, I sure hope there's a few in there who will volunteer to be salt. No, no, you are the salt of the earth. John 5 14, he says, you are the light of the world. He wasn't hoping a few of us would qualify. He said, you, by virtue of belief in my Son, are salt. You are light.

You're called to take that stand. And what does salt do? You think about that? It prevents decay. It creates thirst. It flavors food. It's interesting that Jesus Christ did not say, you are the sugar of the earth, although we all could be sweeter.

Amen? Salt is good only insofar as it draws your attention to the flavor of the food. So you as salt are good insofar as you draw attention to the flavor of the bread of life. You are salt. You are light. Now what you do will then flow out of who you are. And for you it may be a little different than someone else. But you ought to circle in your Bibles that keyword that appears right in the middle of verse 8.

You ought to highlight it, underline it. The keyword witness will show up throughout the book of action in some form or another twenty-nine times. This word will pull us into the drama of a courtroom scene where the Christian is called to be a witness to stand trial in the defense of Jesus Christ. The prosecuting attorney is the enemy, the adversary, Satan. The jury is the world who will make their decision, who will cast their verdict on the basis of your testimony, as it were. This is one of those passages that lays responsibility at the feet of those who claim to know Christ.

Now it's interesting if you carry the metaphor further. One of the chief designs of a prosecuting attorney is to destroy the credibility of the witness's testimony by doing what? By destroying the credibility of the witness. In other words, how you live and walk and talk outside the courtroom all of a sudden has great importance as to what you are saying when you are called to take the stand. Perhaps the reason the church in our generation has lost the ability to, with clarity, speak on the stand is because we have lost character when we're off the stand, as it were, when we live.

So that the world today is telling the church to repent when it should be the other way around. So the question becomes, if you were called to take the stand as a witness in the trial of defense for Jesus Christ and the validity of his statement that he is the Son of God, would there be anything in your life, would there be anything in your walk that would discredit your testimony on the stand? That's the challenge. Now, there are a couple of ways you can serve as a witness.

I've given a couple of spots in your study notes. If you're following along, you can witness through the way that you live. You can also witness through the words that you speak. If you're here and you're saying, well, I just live it, and you never speak it, you're not testifying. If you were to say which one of these two things is more important, that would be like asking an airline pilot which wing on his plane is more important.

You need both. And when it comes to speaking in our generation, we have to be careful and discerning as to what and how we say what we do. We have a situation confronting us in our generation that is now, for the most part, known and dubbed as the post-Christian culture. What I mean by that, if you haven't read or heard of that prior to this discussion, that simply means that the Bible and the Judeo-Christian ethic is no longer the norm or the standard. It's no longer viewed as the valid authority for the way we live for what is right and wrong. That's why we're living in what they call a post-Christian culture. In fact, to begin the statement, as you witness to an unbeliever, with the words the Bible says no longer commands the respect of a society that, for the most part, doesn't know what the Bible is all about. According to research that I've read published in the International Christian Digest, that in the 30s and 40s and 50s and even into the 60s, organizations that polled individuals found that the majority of these individuals, 65% of them, respected the Bible as the standard of authority. That didn't mean they obeyed it, didn't mean they did it, didn't mean they read it. But if you asked them where would the standard be located, they would say the Bible. Today in the 90s, only one out of three people surveyed by these same organizations say that this has anything to do with reality or truth.

It's just legends and stories. That means when you approach somebody with the gospel, only one in three care what the Bible says. George Hunter, the dean of Asbury Seminary, who heads up their department of missions and world evangelization, has written an interesting article where he compares the first century with the 20th century. I've given you space to jot down a few ideas. I want you to think about these things as you consider how you can testify for Jesus Christ. He says there are at least three.

He gives more, but I'll only give you three. Three similarities between the first century and the 20th century as we try to evangelize the world. First of all, the first century faced a population with little or no knowledge of the gospel.

We've already talked a little bit about that. Our society then doesn't know the basics. It doesn't know what you mean when you say washed in the blood of the lamb. It doesn't know the basic truth behind your statement that you need to ask Jesus into your heart. What do you mean? You need to go to the cross of Calvary.

Where's that? When the man in the middle of a Donahue show I read stood up and shouted, Jesus is the answer! The response of the crowd was, what's the question?

Our society like the first society, first century society is illiterate. It knows very little any more of this book and when you reference it they're not even sure what you're talking about. That was put sort of into a rather humorous story. I heard David Jeremiah share for the first time and then I found that same story in one of my books.

Let me read it to you. A pastor was teaching a class of Sunday school children and he asked them, who broke down the walls of Jericho? The little boy answered, I didn't do it. The pastor turned to the Sunday school teacher and asked, is this typical? She replied, well pastor this boy isn't on his child, I really don't think he did it. But that really upset the pastor and he called an emergency deacon meeting. He reported the entire story.

After a moment of silence the chairman spoke up and said, listen pastor, just find out how much it costs and we'll hire somebody to rebuild it. Well, fabricated no doubt, but an interesting point. Let me read you a truth story of a society in another generation that's still represented here, but a society that knew the Bible in its basic, even though they may be unbelievers. Here's a story of something that happened in World War II.

Let me read it to you. During World War II after Hitler had marched his way across France, demanding the unconditional surrender of the Allied forces in Europe, thousands of British and French troops dug in along the coast of northern France in a last ditch effort to hold off the German army. Trapped on the beaches of Dunkirk, they knew they would soon be obliterated by the Nazis. British soldiers began sending a message across the English channel, just three words, quote, and if not, was it a code? Was it some secret message the Germans couldn't figure out?

No. It was a reference to the Old Testament episode when Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego stood before the pagan king's fiery furnace and said, our God is able to save us, and if not, we will remain faithful to him anyway. As unbelievable as it seems today, that message was immediately understood by the British people.

In the days that followed, fishing boats, pleasure cruises, yachts, and row boats set out from the shores of England and rescued 338,000 Allied troops. I wonder if our generation today would even get the message. You see, when you approach an unbeliever in our American society today with the words, God said it in the Bible, only one in three, even though it's your meaning or referring to. Number two, their society was a pluralistic society with many gods and many religions. Now, if you'd tried to apply that to American society scenes, it would be ridiculous.

You'd be laughed out of town. Sure, there are other religions in America, but they're not going to make inroads. Eastern religions and all of, no way, we're too solid. We have, you know, apple pie and Chevrolet and God. Those are entrenched in our society.

Well, we still have the first two. The last one has been changed to many gods. No one knows what a Christian is anymore. It's a blending of whatever you'd like it to be so that my wife can be witnessing to an individual this past week who finally said that she was a Mormon and in the same sentence she said, but I am trying to be a good Christian. How did Mormon and Christian ever end up in the same sentence? At an age when our society is experimenting with spiritual things, when it is now politically correct to be interested in something other than what you can see, touch, and feel, the spiritual world at the same time, ladies and gentlemen, the evangelical church is singing the song, let's tear down all the walls, let's throw doctrine away, and let's all get together and hug and kiss, so that we today are losing the definition of spirituality. We live in a day when doctrine is one of the most awkward words. It divides.

It separates. And isn't the adversary clever to develop within our own ranks that kind of thinking at the same time the world around us begins to ask the question, just what do you believe? What is right? Who is Christ? What is the church?

How am I supposed to live? Third, the witnesses of the first century faced a hostile society with the potential of persecution. Eventually, ladies and gentlemen, across the board we may have to reach the point that they reached in the first century where they stated, when told to be quiet about biblical truth, we will obey God rather than men. If you are silenced and intimidated now, hold on to your hat, how do you reach the first century?

How do you reach the 20th century? The point of this passage is you can't. Jesus Christ says, when I ascend, I'm going to send you an empowering person who through you can reach the world. All right, what's the plan? Go back to verse 8.

And you shall be my witnesses both in Jerusalem, that's your own city or community, and in all Judea, that's reaching out further into your own country, then move into Samaria, he says. That's a different culture, yet on the same continent. And finally, you're to go even to the remotest part of the earth, that is every other culture. But wait a second, you say that's not a plan. That's geography.

That's not strategy. Methods would come and go. And what today might work in the Amazon will not work in Cary.

What works in the concrete jungles of LA and New York won't work out in the farming Midwest. So you develop strategies as you seek the directive of that empowering person, but the plan is for you to simply go. Matthew chapter 28 gives us a great clue that we can sort of check ourselves on as to whether or not we're really doing it right. He said that you're to go and make what? Disciples. Okay, that's the product.

So how good are we doing? Disciples are other witnesses, but you say, now Lord, that's going to take a long time, isn't it? Wouldn't it be easier just to say, go out and win souls?

It'd be a lot easier. Or just go out and make sure that everybody just hears a fragment of the gospel. He never said that. He said you're to go and reproduce yourself. You're to make disciples. That's hard. That's lifelong. That'll never be easy.

Have you made a disciple at any time in your Christian experience? You say, boy, that's going to take a long time. How are we ever going to do that? Well, I got out my calculator this past week.

Depend on that thing. We have nine hundred families in our fellowship, or households, singles and couples with kids. Nine hundred households, about 2,000 plus, a little more than 2,000 people who regularly attend. If each household one reached out to, spoke to, developed just over a year period a relationship with an unbeliever to where they trusted Christ.

Take a whole year. Each household one. Not each member of the households each reaching one. Just each household reach one. In the first year we'd reach nine hundred people. In eleven years we would have reached, if we did it every year, one million people. In the space of one generation we would reach the population of planet earth.

Does that sound slow? So what's the response of the disciples? Go back to verse nine. And after he had said these things he was lifted up while they were looking on. And a cloud received him out of their sight. And as they were gazing intently into the sky while he was departing, behold two men in white clothing stood beside them and they said, men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into the sky? This Jesus who has been taken up from you into heaven will come in just the same way as you watched him go into heaven. Modern day vernacular these two guys say, what are you fellas standing around here just looking for? He's told you to do something, you're to go to Jerusalem and you're to wait there for the empowering person.

Going to happen in just a few days. So they returned, verse 12, to Jerusalem from the mount called Olivet, which is near Jerusalem a Sabbath day journey way. And when they had entered they went up to the upper room. Interesting use of an original word, upper room, was used specifically for the prayer and study room of a rabbi. This wasn't their room, it was loaned to them, evidently a rabbi, a teacher of the law, maybe even a member of the highest court loaned them his room. Maybe he had come to face.

We don't know. But you notice what they're doing? Verse 13, when they had entered they went up to the upper room. Can you imagine what they're feeling, what they've just seen and what did they do? Well, as Peter and John and James and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew, James the son of Alphaeus and Simon the zealot and Judas the son of James, these all with one mind were continually devoting themselves to writing church growth manuals, strategies on how to make disciples in 30 days or less.

They devoted themselves to writing their personal memoirs. I was a personal friend of the Lord. I saw him go up. No, verse 14, these all with one mind were continually devoting themselves to prayer along with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus and with his brothers. How simple. None of the baggage, none of the stuff that so distracts us, they just prayed. And out of this prayer meeting would come men and women ready for Pentecost when the Spirit of God would descend and create the church, when these would begin to turn their world upside down for Jesus Christ.

May I ask you a question? Where is your Jerusalem? Where is the place that Jesus Christ would want you to begin?

I will encourage you by telling you that's the toughest place to begin. They know you. You can't hit and run. You have to hit and stay.

Maybe pay the price. They grew up with you. They're down the hall from you.

They're related to you. You and I are to reach our Jerusalem. We collectively get together to pool our resources and cause the Gospel to emanate from this Jerusalem. But this commission was not just given to the corporate church that would be. It was given to individual Christians like you and like me who are called salt and light.

He said you are to be witnesses. That just takes all the other stuff out of the way, doesn't it? It clears it all up. Who we are provides the foundation for what we do.

That's the basic truth. I love the story of Vince Lombardi who was the great coach of the Packers. They had been soundly defeated by their opponents, humiliated. Lombardi called them together at practice the next day and this rather masterful teacher from all that I have read and I'm sure you have read some said to his men, gentlemen, I have seen all that I care to see. I want us today to start over again and we're going to begin with the basics. And at that point he held that object up and he said, gentlemen, what I hold in my hand is called a football.

And one of the jokesters on the team was supposed to have said, please coach, not so fast. In effect, the church surrounded by stuff, attracted by things, caught up in movements and making noise and press needs to come back as the Lord in effect says, what I want out of you is something very simple. I want you to just remember who you are.

What he holds in his hands is a witness. You are not a computer salesman. You are not a secretary. You are not a teacher. You are not a housewife.

You are not a painter or a repairman. That's what you do. You are a witness. And God has called you in the sphere of those influences that I just mentioned among many others to take the stand and with credibility of character, give a defense for the name and cause of Jesus Christ. We have a gift for you if you've never contacted us before, and I'll tell you more about that in just a moment, but first I hope you were encouraged and challenged by our time in God's word today. This is Wisdom for the Heart with your Bible teacher, Steven Davey. We're working our way through a series from our Vintage Wisdom Library. This is a series from the book of Acts called The Harvest Begins. Steven first preached this series to the church he pastors back in 1996.

So if Steven sounds a little younger, or if the quality of the recording sounds a little less than what you're used to, that's why. But we wanted to bring you this series because the truth of these messages is still so practical today. Today's message is called Last Words, and I mentioned a gift for people who make their first contact with our ministry. Today's message was the basis for a booklet Steven wrote called The Last Words of Jesus. We're going to send you one free copy of this booklet upon request.

It's simply our way of thanking you for taking the time to introduce yourself. So call us right now. Our number is 866-48-BIBLE. Again, if you've never contacted us before, call us at 866-482-4253. We're going to continue through this series on our next broadcast, and I hope you'll be with us for that here on Wisdom for the Heart.