Witnesses (Part 1)

Welcome to 2024 and our newest series, Witnesses! 
Through the backdrop of Acts 1:7-8, we explore the profound moment when the disciples were charged with the mission to reach the farthest corners of the earth, equipped with the Holy Spirit's might. 

In this  episode, we uncover the cornerstones of being a compelling witness, finding that it begins with a deep and personal relationship with God. We discuss how the gift of the Holy Ghost is not a burden to bear but a blessing to embrace, freeing us from the anxiety of perfection and guiding us to live out love in its purest form. 

Chapters

• 0:05 The Power and Purpose of Witnessing
• 9:46 The Foundation of Being a Witness
• 15:36 Encouragement From Grace Baptist Tabernacle

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:05

Hello and welcome to the Redeeming Love Bible broadcast. My name is Phil Duddy, evangelist with Grace Baptist Tabernacle of King, north Carolina. I'm excited that you can be with me on the program today as we begin a new series called Witnesses. As always, please do feel free to contact us. Redeemingthelostaticloudcom is our email. That's the best way to contact us and we would love to hear from you.

Speaker 1: 0:28

Witnesses we are going to be kicking off today in Acts, chapter one, and so if you come over with me to Acts, chapter one, we're going to start reading in verse seven. And he said unto them it is not for you to know the times or the seasons which the Father has put in his own power, but ye shall receive power after that. The Holy Ghost has come upon you and ye shall be witnesses unto me, both in Jerusalem and in Judea and in Samaria and unto the uttermost parts of the earth. This is Jesus talking. He's got a group of disciples kind of assembled together with him, and this is a unique time in history. At this point, jesus has been to the cross. At this point, jesus has shed his blood. At this point, jesus became our sin and he bore the Father's wrath upon sin and he shed his blood and he died in atoning death. He died to death as should have been mine, he died to death that should have been yours and he has risen again and he has not yet ascended to the Father. Matter of fact, he's going to ascend to the Father about just about immediately after he gets done.

Speaker 1: 1:38

Speaking here, if you go to verse nine, he says when he had spoken these things, why they beheld he was taken up and a cloud received him out of their sight. He ascended to the Father and the Holy Ghost is mentioned here, but the Holy Ghost has not. These men are not yet filled with the Holy Ghost. That's going to happen in Acts chapter two. That's going to happen when the church is formally born and it happens in what we call Acts chapter two. They receive the Holy Ghost and they go out into the streets and they begin preaching Jesus to the people who are all gathered around there.

Speaker 1: 2:14

And unique time and a very, very special promise and from our perspective, we're looking back on this, and so we're going to look at this promise and we're going to unfold what it is to be a witness of Jesus Christ According to the scripture and in our day and age. As I'm preaching this, it's just become the year 2024. And so let's go back up here. We're going to focus on verse eight. You shall receive power after that. The Holy Ghost has come upon you and you shall be witnesses unto me, both in Jerusalem and in all Judea and in Samaria, and unto the other most parts of the earth.

Speaker 1: 2:59

So we are witnesses of Jesus and we witness with our very lives. Primarily, we witness with our lives. If you look at the definition of witness in English and in Greek here it's a long, long, long definition. Some definitions have to do with stating the facts. While we do that about Jesus Christ, hallelujah, we preach his word, but we witness with our lives.

Speaker 1: 3:25

We witness with our moment to moment, day by day lives, and not only our words, but in the way that we live. We witness that Jesus Christ is alive. We witness that Jesus Christ is true. We witness that the Holy Ghost is real. We witness His forgiveness. We witness His fruits. We witness all the consequences of salvation. We walk through this life and we have a joy. We walk through this life and we have a peace. We walk through this life and we have a living hope. We give a witness that Jesus gives an abundant life. We give a witness that Jesus is a healer, he is a provider, that he is wonderful, that he is counselor, that he gives us a new mind, he renews our mind. We witness all of these things as we live them and we also, based on that, based on the Holy Ghost inside of us, we speak, we speak, we speak. There must be a time in which we speak, we can live and we can live, and we can live and we can live, and amen in Hallelujah. We're supposed to live, we're supposed to enjoy being in Christ, we're supposed to have this, you know this abounding personal fruit in ourselves and in our families, in our households and in our churches. At the same time, there comes a point where we speak, we speak, we preach.

Speaker 1: 4:50

We preach Jesus to those who don't know Him. We preach Jesus to those who aren't under the blood. We preach Jesus to those people and you know, they're still in their sins or sins have not yet been washed away. And yet, at the same time, jesus has provided a complete and a total salvation and he commands that. You know, matter of fact, I was preaching in our church recently, you know, out of the Gospel of John Jesus commands. His commandment is life everlasting. We preach to those people who don't know Jesus. We preach to those people and you know we preach that there's a complete salvation. The blood of Jesus has been shed. Jesus is alive.

Speaker 1: 5:38

Today, jesus is not only ready and able to forgive you, he wants you to come unto Him and he wants you to have your sin washed away. He wants you to be made new. He wants you to receive the Holy Spirit. He wants you to be healed and whole in Him and have peace in Him and have joy in Him and have temperance in Him and have faith in Him and have a living hope in Him. He wants all that for you and you need to come and receive it. You need to hallelujah and amen. You need to obey that commandment to life everlasting in faith.

Speaker 1: 6:15

So there comes a time when we do speak. At the same time we speak from what we're living. We speak from a robust, living, alive, overflowing relationship. You know the Holy Ghost is in us, we're under the blood of Jesus and we're beloved of the Father. We love the Father. We're walking and talking with the Lord, the fullness of who he is. That's sort of our day to day. That's our starting point. Christian, that's our starting point. Church, that's where we start. We witness the fact that he's alive and that he's true and that he is Lord.

Speaker 1: 6:59

To go back to verse 8, you shall receive power. And this is a critical, critical thing because, when it comes to being a witness, all we, you know about all we do, is receive from God we do not witness ourselves the effectiveness of us being witnesses None of the power or the ability, if you will, you know. That's kind of what the word means power. It means you know a strength or an ability. None of it came from us. It all came from God. It all came from God, it all comes from God, it's all renewed by God, it's all sustained by God. But we do not have, you know, this strength or ability in ourselves. It is given to us, and so it's critical that we have the Holy Ghost in us. It's critical because you shall receive power. When did they receive power and when do we receive power? We receive power after that. The Holy Ghost has come upon you.

Speaker 1: 8:10

The Holy Ghost is the one who gives this strength and this one who gives this ability to be a witness of Jesus Christ, and that is absolutely, absolutely, absolutely critical. We receive the power, we receive the strength, we receive the ability. It's all given to us. All we do is receive it and then, amen, we receive it and then we live an abundant life. We receive it and then out of that abundant life that we're living, we do some speaking. Out of that abundant life that we're living, we do some speaking. But the foundational Holy Ghost, we cannot skip that.

Speaker 1: 8:52

Your effectiveness as a witness doesn't have to do with how good of a speaker you are. Your effectiveness as a witness doesn't do with the type of clothes that you wear, doesn't have to do with how good you are at you know engaging people and meeting people. You know sort of how outgoing and charismatic you are. That doesn't have anything to do with this. You receive the power to be a witness for Jesus, of Jesus. You receive that power from the Holy Ghost. We just receive it. It doesn't have anything to do with us. All we do is receive. All we do is receive and we pour out that which we receive. We live that which we receive. And I hope you're seeing how critical relationship is in this process.

Speaker 1: 9:46

Foundationally, it's our relationship with God. That's where it all begins. It begins with you receiving the Holy Ghost. It begins with you believing Jesus. It begins with you being reconciled to the Father by the blood of Jesus, and all of that's by faith. By faith, so as people, as what we might call lost people, we receive salvation. You know that comes by grace and through faith. We receive that. When it comes to being a witness, we continue to receive.

Speaker 1: 10:28

See, I've seen a lot of people. They put a lot of pressure on themselves. They put a lot of pressure on themselves to do the right thing at the right time and say the right thing at the right time, and then they go away wondering and it's just torment. You know, did I say the right thing? Did I do the right thing? You know, am I personally responsible for this person walking into an eternal hell? We've got to get rid of that type of thinking, because that type of thinking is just going to hold things back, and we've got to look at what it is to be a witness. We receive and I'm repeating myself, I know I'm repeating myself, but it's so critical Just as we receive salvation in Jesus Christ, we receive the Holy Ghost.

Speaker 1: 11:15

We receive what the King James calls this power to be a witness and it's not a human power, it's not a human strength, it's not a human ability, it's not something even that you can particularly learn, but at its foundation, it's something that you get from God and the good news is it's available to everybody. It's available to everybody who trusts Jesus and, as a matter of fact, you know, you know the Lord would have us be a witness type of a people, and he goes through the Gospels and he goes through the New Testament. We see that heart, we see that heart, you know, and so much of it goes back to the way we're living. How do people know that Jesus is real? One of the big things is that we love one another. We love one another, we love our brothers and the Lord, we love our sisters and the Lord, we love our neighbors and just in doing that, there's such an impact there that, you know, in a way it proves that the Lord is real, because it just doesn't happen in the world. It doesn't, you know, and the type of love I'm talking about is the Godly love, no strings attached. It's real and it's genuine and it's pure and it's of the Lord, and we're just walking around loving one another and witnessing the fact that the Lord is real and the fact that Jesus, who is loved, that the Father, the Son and the Spirit, god is love and he's moving in us, he's moving through us and we're living in Him. We're living abundant eternal life in Him, and just that is a witness. And how easy is it just to say you know, look, you know, this love is real, this love is for you. This God, this God, he laid down His life for you as well. My friend, how do you know that Jesus loves you as a sinner While we were yet sinners? Christ died for us. He has a redeeming love for us, and so this whole thing kind of all goes together. We're receiving from the Lord, we receive the Holy Ghost, we're living out this abundant life, and there comes a time in this abundant life where we speak to people. Faith comes by hearing, and hearing comes by the word of God. We've got to say something, we've got to speak, we've got to preach Jesus, hallelujah, releasing the LordCongregation.

Speaker 1: 13:53

But this will be kind of the first foundational part of this series. But it all goes back to the Holy Ghost, my friend. It all goes back to the Holy Ghost. You shall receive power after that. The Holy Ghost has come upon you and you shall be witnesses unto me, both in Jerusalem and in all Judea and in Samaria, and to the uttermost parts of the earth. That's every tribe, that's every tongue, that's every nation, that's every culture on this earth.

Speaker 1: 14:21

Hallelujah and amen. It all started in Jerusalem. It all started, you know, out of Zion. It all started there, and amen and glory to God. It has spread to the uttermost parts of the earth and and we need to be a part of that every Christian man, every Christian woman, every Christian child. You know hallelujah and amen. The Lord would have you be a witness to the Lord Jesus Christ, no matter where you are, no matter who you're interacting with, no matter what day of the week. It is amen In hallelujah, all day, every day, 24, seven. We are witnesses to the fact that Jesus is alive and that Jesus is true and that Jesus is Lord, and I hope this has been a real encouragement to you.

Speaker 1: 15:08

Like I said, we're going to be keeping on with this for a couple podcasts after this one, so please do come back and join us for that. Please feel free to keep on sharing these. Thank you for helping us. You know, as I, as I, you know, record this one. We're in 53 nations. Thank you for helping us. You know be in 53 nations, you know it's really encouraging us. Help us get into 54 and 55 as well.

Speaker 1: 15:36

Please continue to play these for your church, for your family, for your friends, for your neighbors, and I pray this is an encouragement to you. And again, please do contact us. Let us know how we can be praying for you. Redeeming the lost at iCloudcom is the best way to contact us here to program. You can contact us through our church as well Grace Baptist Tabernacle, wwwgbtministriescom. We're located in King, north Carolina. You'll also find service times and service locations there. Please feel welcome and expected to come and visit us in those times as well. We would love to meet you face to face and thank you again for being with me today and may the Lord continue to richly bless you. Amen.