|
This is a text reader for the article below:
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
Sunday 10/19/25
Title: The Targets of our Testimony
Click for Message Video
Message Audio Player:
Podcast: Download (Duration: 1:29:33 — 47.9MB)
The Targets of our Testimony
Last week we finished up Paul’s letter to the Colossians and then closed out our time by beginning to look at what the scriptures tell us about the early church and the teaching of the apostles regarding our outward testimony to the world.
Being in God’s Kingdom not only has privileges but also also involves responsibilities. Many of Jesus’ parables were about our stewardship over these responsibilities.
First and primary among these regard our fellow Christians. This is not a secondary issue but a primary one!
Secondarily is our testimony before the world.
As I said last week, it is FAR easier to get modern Christians actively mobilized towards Christian conservative activism than in the work of the kingdom. In fact, I doubt very much that many Christians even know the difference between the two, even though work for the kingdom is the ONLY thing modeled for us by ANY spiritual leader in the entire New Testament!
However, training and equipping for kingdom work is one of the two primary things God instituted our sacred gathering for!
We are NOT here to feed only, but to be trained and equipped for kingdom work.
It IS important that we mature spiritually, but the deception of the enemy is to believe that we are growing in Christ’s likeness when we never engage in Kingdom work.
Our coming together for encouragement, instruction, community and impartation and reception of grace through one another is to have the ultimate effect of maturing us into Christ’s image and mobilizing us in kingdom work!
We are called and commissioned to GO OUT – to be emboldened, living witnesses before those who are OUTSIDE.
In keeping with this, we looked at several scriptures revealing the teachings and lives of the early church and these were the results:
- We were told that once the Holy Spirit came upon us we would BE HIS WITNESSES. It was NO accident that the Spirit was given on Pentecost (Shavuot) which represented the first fruits of converts into the Kingdom of God following Jesus’ resurrection. So naturally, connected with this event was Jesus’ command to GO OUT and BE His Witnesses.
- The love of the brethren expressed thorough daily communion from house to house, a communal economy among believers, public prayer in the temple courtyard and devotion to Jesus’ teachings ALL caused the fear of the Lord to increase inside and outside of the body. It served as a testimony to the lost who looked upon this with favor and God added to the kingdom daily!
- We were told to go be salt and light in the way we live our lives BEFORE the world and by having living answers to questions when we are asked about our hope in Christ.
- The believers we referred to as living letters TO BE known and read by all men.
- You are only required and in fact can only be a witness to what YOU have experienced – that is, what you have SEEN & HEARD.
Now this week we will continue by examining Paul’s encouragement to Timothy regarding his testimony and gift – 2 Timothy 1:8-12,
“(8) Therefore do not be ashamed of the testimony about our Lord, nor of me his prisoner, but share in suffering for the gospel by the power of God, (9) Who saved us and called us to a holy calling, not because of our works but because of His Own purpose and grace, which He gave us in Christ Jesus before the ages began, (10) and which now has been manifested through the appearing of our Savior Christ Jesus, Who abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel, (11) for which I was appointed a preacher and apostle and teacher, (12) which is why I suffer as I do. But I am not ashamed, for I KNOW WHOM I HAVE BELIEVED, and I am convinced that He is able to guard until that day what has been entrusted to me.”
1 Peter 3:8-17,
“(8) Finally, all of you, have unity of mind, sympathy, brotherly love, a tender heart, and a humble mind. (9) Do not repay evil for evil or reviling for reviling, but on the contrary, bless, for to this you were called, that you may obtain a blessing. (10) For “Whoever desires to love life and see good days, let him keep his tongue from evil and his lips from speaking deceit; (11) let him turn away from evil and do good; let him seek peace and pursue it. (12) For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous, and his ears are open to their prayer. But the face of the Lord is against those who do evil.” (13) Now who is there to harm you if you are zealous for what is good? (14) But even if you should suffer for righteousness’ sake, you will be blessed. Have no fear of them, nor be troubled, (15) but in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect, (16) having a good conscience, so that, when you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ may be put to shame. (17) For it is better to suffer for doing good, if that should be God’s will, than for doing evil.”
Make disciples – Matthew 28:16-20,
“(16) Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. (17) And when they saw Him they worshiped Him, but some doubted. (18) And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Me. (19) Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, (20) teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
As I told you last week I am calling on you to get involved. I know now that this is a large part of why we have not grown as a church.
As we have always been, I am not a fan of advertising. I think it attempts to rope people into becoming a member of a church – like a fan of a sports team. In fact, many churches have their own commercial logos, bumper stickers, t-shirts which all amount to the wearing of jerseys and an expression of team pride and there’s little resemblance to a testimony of Christ.
From my perspective this draws more attention to the church than to Christ. Also, it attracts many to the church with the greatest “curb appeal”, rather than to the place they belong.
So while we do have the website, small road signs outside our place of meeting and I will be making cards you can hand out as the Spirit leads (mostly for prayer or discipleship) – I don’t like to lure people into our church. It somehow lacks the relational component of the Gospel and seems more like commercialization.
What causes a church to grow as they did at the beginning was a life lived before the world.
By believers engaging with the lost and leading them to Christ at… which point they would already belong here since they came to Christ through you and YOU belong here.
It is natural and organic growth.
A secondary way is through discipleship.
Seeking out and finding believers who lack spiritual connectivity with the Spirit of God. Who need guidance, teaching, encouragement and investment of grace to move forward in their Christian life.
This was not something we see in the early church, since cities and towns were much different then, and there was only one church per city.
Today we have comparatively massive cities with many churches and countless attendees who are lost either in terms of their spiritual maturity or in regards to a real relationship with God in Christ to begin with.
I want you to GO OUT!
Seek God for this. Yearn for this!
Get before God in prayer and fasting, asking Him for avenues of expression for kingdom work.
Require it from Him!
I don’t even have to ask you if you’ve done this, because if you had – it would have already happened and I would not be under compulsion to press you on the matter.
Nearly every year as we approach years end I evaluate where we are and where we come. Often I come to this very place and have come to a conclusion not entirely dissimilar to what I’m describing to you today now only this time it is different. I will admit that in the past it’s been hard to get myself out of the way so that I might see clearly. So much of church growth is laid on the shoulders of the pastor and that is not an easy yoke to Shake.
The destructive bit is that it keeps too much of the attention on myself and what I am and am not doing in terms of preaching and living. But God has been doing a work in me which has caused me to get over this hump and see things much clearer.
I have been negligent in my encouragement of you towards Ministry.
To use a bird with their young as an analogy I’ve kept you too close to the nest and I’ve not picked you up and dropped you overboard so that you might start flapping before you hit the ground.
I mean I have encouraged you but not the way I should have from the pulpit. So I did press this on a few individuals.
Nancy was a good example of this.
She lived in an apartment complex, but she would sit on her little porch and talk to her neighbors.
She would engage with them and you couldn’t talk to Nancy long without hearing about Jesus.
She was bold enough to attend the bible study of some women from another church. To hear her tell it, they were astounded that she came, while belonging to another church and that her pastor encouraged it.
These believers, though admittedly far greater in number than we, we’re and are guilty of the same sin.
They only fellowship with Christians within their own church circle. The idea of seeking out fellowship and paces of hearing and sharing about Jesus outside of their congregation was as foreign to them as if an alien had landed in their church parking lot.
Nancy told me that she was able to share things in that group which blessed them. No doubt some of which challenged them with thoughts they had not heard before. And this was not only one way… she in turn was blessed by them.
She was able to impart to and receive grace from others. If that had continued, no doubt doors would have opened for more expressions of kingdom work!
THAT is what I am talking about, and inevitably you will engage with someone who needs a home church! Someone who needs something like what we have here – a small community of grace where they can learn, grow and go out from – to do MORE kingdom work!
This is a principle of growth used in business that works! Multilevel marketing works this way. If 1 person will go tell two people and those two each tell two more…etc.
Word of mouth does more to build a secular business than any paid advertisement and those who go, often return because it began in relationship. When there is a relational component, it connects with people. While we are NOT a business, we ARE a family and THAT IS relational.
The difference between the way this is typically encouraged in churches today and what I am calling on you to do are two major points.
- I want you to invite them to Christ – NOT church.
- I want those who follow you here, to have already met Christ!
Don’t bring them to church to have the pastor or others do you evangelistic work FOR you. You win the lost and they will follow you to where you get fed.
All of this can be accomplished by programs and pressure from your church or pastor and that will work, but what it produces is NOT living or alive! It is like an altar built to God, but hewn by human tools.
The only way Christianity really works, is when it is real, living and an automatic overflow of your own walk with and hunger for God!
Blessings!
Tri
