Witnesses

But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. Acts 1:8

The only thing that made these disciples His ‘witnesses’ was the undeniable and indisputable Fact that they had been with Jesus. They walked with Him, ate with Him, and talked with Him. They were the closest people to the Son of God, so they could be trusted completely to pass on His message of salvation. They could be witnesses only after they had received the Holy Spirit. So Jesus puts two criteria on His message reaching ‘the ends of the earth.’ The receipt of the Holy Spirit, and that they must be first hand, trusted witnesses.

If you are called to perform jury duty, there are some things you would expect from the witnesses. They would have been there to see the incident happen, and they would have heard first hand what was said. Otherwise their testimony in unsure and open to question. The lawyers would have a field day tearing down the shallow account if the witness wasn’t there, and didn’t see or hear anything themselves. It must be first hand.

How do we rate as witnesses to the account of our salvation, and the truth of the gospel? How do we avoid being a second rate witness, and an embarrassment to the name of our faith and Saviour? Everything must be from a first hand experience, and when we are a child of God we are told in Romans 8:16 that “The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children.”  It has to be first hand and nothing else is good enough. In the same way, if we are going to criticise another person, situation, book, film, or anything else, we really should know about them first hand. We should have read the book, or watched the movie, or spoken to the source we critique. It is not good enough to speak the things we think might have been said, or the source might have meant. In our court of law, your testimony would not be accepted.

Neither will your friends accept our words of ‘wisdom’ if they come from our own thinking, and not through the facts of our first hand experience. If we are going to be disciples, we must act like the disciples. Their first hand witness turned the world upside down, and it is still going on today. Jesus master plan is for that first hand witness to continue. There is no plan B, so let us pray that we do our part fully and properly.