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Can I get a witness? The last person in the Bible called to be a witness 7th Sunday after Easter, May 4, 2008
If you were here last week, we talked about the second-to-last person in the Bible who was a witness to the resurrected Jesus, and was called to be a witness of that fact to the world. His name was Matthias, and he was the one chosen to replace Judas as one of the inner 12 disciples. Last week I asked if you knew what I meant when I said Matthias was a witness of Jesus before he was called to be a witness of Jesus. Most of you didn’t really answer me, but a couple of people nodded their heads. I do distinctly recall somebody yelling out ‘no!’, though! A different word that could be used for what Matthias was to become as an apostle is the word “testifier.” Because he physically saw Jesus with his own eyes – because he was a witness of the physically resurrected Jesus – he was called to be a testifier of the fact that Jesus was alive; in other words, a witness. Last week we also said that this week we would conclude our series by talking about the last person called to be a witness, or ‘testifier’ in the Bible. We said that person was someone who did not see Jesus with their physical eyes, but was still called to testify about Him. Who is that person? To answer that, let’s go in our Bibles to Ephesians chapter 2, our reading from today. Ephesians is the 10th book in the New Testament, and it was written through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit by the Apostle Paul. So the order goes: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John – the Gospels which record the life, teachings, death and resurrection of Jesus; Acts – a brief history of the early church, written by Luke as a sequel to his gospel, ‘Luke’; after Acts comes letters to the early Christians and churches: Romans, 1 & 2 Corinthians, Galatians and then Ephesians. Ephesians was written through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit by Paul. The interesting thing to keep in mind as we read these verses is that Paul wrote this while he was in prison for being a Christian! The city of Ephesus was located in modern day Turkey and was an extremely important city because it had access to the sea. Most anything that came in or went out of Asia Minor by boat went through the port city of Ephesus. It was a rich and powerful city, and at the same time was rampant with false religion. In fact, the ‘goddess’ of Ephesus was Diana (her Roman name, or ‘Artemis’, her Greek name) and there was a large temple built in Ephesus for the worship of her. Have I given you enough time to find Ephesians yet? Kayla did a great job with the reading this morning, but I’m just going to read these verses again to refresh our memory, this time from the NIV translation of the Bible: As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air {the devil}, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath. But because of His great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions – it is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with Him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages He might show the incomparable riches of His grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God – not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. Did you catch that last part? For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. You know who the last person who was called in the Bible to be a witness, a testifier, of Jesus is? It’s you and me! Oh no! Not a sermon on sharing our faith! Ugh! I don’t know how to do that! I’m not a trained missionary. Isn’t that why we have a pastor, so I don’t actually have to do anything or do any talking about Jesus? Man, I wish someone would call me on my cell phone right now! Here’s the good news: we don’t do this on our own. We simply can’t so God has done three things for you and me. First, He made us alive. But because of His great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions – it is by grace you have been saved. What does it mean to be made alive in this sense? It means that our old sinful selves that were dead to God are forgiven and we are given a new spiritual life. You are either dead spiritually or alive spiritually, and God has made us alive. And how has He done that? Through His grace. Grace is getting what we don’t deserve. So what did God give us that we don’t deserve that has made us alive? He gave us Himself in Jesus, the One who took our sins on His own body – those sins that made us spiritually dead – and He physically died. More than that, though, He came back to life and by so doing, showed He has power over death. That’s what’s then been given to us that we don’t deserve: eternal life instead of eternal, spiritual, death. You know what’s especially interesting here? God doesn’t say in this verse, “I’m going to make you alive.” He says we have already been made spiritually alive. For the believer spiritual life is not something that’s coming in the future, in some pie-in-the-sky, good-ol’-by-and-by. It’s here, now, and it’s God gift to believers through Christ. What else did God do? Second, God raised us and set us with Christ. God raised us up with Christ and seated us with Him in the heavenly realms. This means that just as Jesus was raised from the dead and ascended into heaven, we have been raised from the dead state we were in because of our sins and have been positioned – spiritually at this point – in heaven with Jesus. Jesus died physically, we were dead spiritually; Jesus was raised physically, we are made alive and raised with Christ spiritually; Jesus is seated in the heavenly realms physically in His resurrected, ascended body, and we are seated with Christ in the heavenly realms spiritually. And just like our previous point, all of this has already happened! It was God’s work He did for you and me through His grace – through Him giving us what we don’t deserve: Jesus’ sacrifice for us. It’s all set! It’s a done deal! In Christ we are made alive, and our place is reserved in heaven. And all of this was done because of God’s love for us. So, what does all this have to do with the ending of our sermon series, Can I get a witness? Let me ask you something: if you discovered a cure for AIDS, wouldn’t you share it with the world, and especially with people with AIDS so they could be healed from the sick and dying state they are in and be brought back to health? Something even greater than that has been done for us: we were once dying spiritually, but we’ve been made alive, we’ve been given our life back and we know we will live forever because of God’s grace. Isn’t that worth sharing; isn’t that worth being a testifier about? Isn’t that something worth being the last witness of? That, then, brings us to the third thing God has done for us: He has a plan for each of us individually. For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. Do me a favor. In your Bibles, write Jeremiah 29:11 in the margin next to verse 10: "For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future." God has a plan and purpose for you being right here, right now, and part of His plan includes believers being witnesses – testifiers – about Him to a world that’s lost. Again, we don’t do this on our own, by our own power. We do it through the Holy Spirit working in us. It’s not as if God has said to us, “Go out and be this witness to the world, and good luck with that.” He will not leave us. You know why? Because we are His ‘workmanship.’ I know we’ve mentioned this before, but it’s worth repeating again. The word in our text that gets translated as “workmanship” is from the Greek work ‘poiema.’ It means a work of art; a masterpiece! It is the word we get our English word ‘poem’ from. Believers are God’s work of art, His masterpiece, His poem, and we were made that in spite of our sins, because of our belief in Jesus – the faith that was given to us by the Holy Spirit to begin with! Because of that, God has already laid out in front of us the things He wants us to do. In other words, God has prepared a path of good works for believers which He will perform in and through them as they walk by faith. I’m not talking about you and me doing something for God, I’m talking about God performing His work in and through you and me. I want to be very clear here, even to the extent of belaboring a point. We are not saved because of anything we do, we are saved because of everything God did and still does for us through Jesus. Doing good things doesn’t help one iota when it comes to getting into heaven. Doing things for others, doing good things, is a natural consequence of our faith. It’s like having the flu: when you have the condition of the flu, symptoms of having it are a fever, nausea, body aches. So if you have the flu, you’ll have these things as a result of it. However, having a fever, nausea or body aches by themselves doesn’t mean you have the flu. Doing good or nice things doesn’t mean someone is a Christian. However, if someone is has the ‘condition’ of being a Christian, the natural symptoms of that is the good work that we do – the work that God has already put before us anyway! Make sense? And what’s the ultimate ‘good work’ for a Christian to do? To be a witness to the lost, a testifier of who Jesus is and what He has done for them. The question, I know, is “How do I do it?” The answer is by living the Christian life; by always having an answer ready for anyone who asks the reason for the hope you have;[1] by being ready and willing to reach out. I’ll bet everyone in here today knows The Great Commission statement Jesus made in Matthew: “Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.” [2] Here’s the thing, in the original language, that’s not so much of a command like “GO!” it’s more like a statement on the condition of your life. “As you are going into the world…as you are living your life…as you are walking on the path of your journey in life, teach them about me. Tell them who I am and what I’ve done.” And invite them to church. Do you know the number one reason why people don’t come to church? It has nothing to do with the style of worship, the location of the church or even the pastor. The number one reason people don’t go to church is because no one ever asks them. In a recent study, 82% of people who do not attend church admitted they would go to church with someone they knew if only they were invited.[3] If only the last witness would share their faith through something as simple as asking, “would you come to church with me this week?” “Yeah, but what if they say ‘no’ when I ask them?” Then they say ‘no.’ We’ve all heard ‘no’ to questions before, and we’ve all survived! “But what if they ask me a question about the Bible or Jesus I don’t know the answer to?” Then give them the answer I give when I’m asked a question like that: “I don’t know. But I’ll find out, or get you in touch with someone who knows.” “What if I try to tell someone about Jesus and they shoot me down?” They’ve not shot you down, they’ve shot the Holy Spirit down. But the thing is, you never know. Perhaps even in just talking about Jesus the little that you have was all that was needed to open the heart of a person just a crack to let the Holy Spirit in to do His work. You and I are called to be the last witnesses. The last witnesses, the last testifiers, of the resurrected Jesus. No, we haven’t seen Him with our eyes yet, but we will one day. In the meantime we are made alive, we are raised up and seated with Him, and we have a plan and purpose given to our lives. We are saved by the grace of God through Jesus, and made into His masterpieces, His works of art for the testifying, the witnessing, about Him to our world. Will it always ‘work?’ No, not always. Will people always respond? No, they didn’t always respond to Jesus. Will it be worth it? Tell you what: ask that question to the person that came to know Jesus because of God’s working through your witness, your testifying, and see what they say. You and me. The last people in the Bible called to be witnesses. We are the last witness, the last testifiers. What will we say? Amen |
