Being a Witness

The great movement of Christianity seemed to have reached its tipping point at the moment the Jewish council attempts to restrain it by arresting Peter and John.  They threaten the Apostles, and charge them not to speak at all or teach in the name of Jesus; Peter and John contemn the threat, calling upon the council to judge whether it be right to hearken unto the council rather than unto God. The members of the council could not inflict punishment upon the two Apostles, on account of the people, who glorified God on account of the great miracle of the lame beggar who sat at the gate for so many years. Peter and John, being freed from custody, return to the other Apostles. They all give glory to God and pray for boldness to speak the word of God. After the prayer the place shakes, and they are filled with the Holy Ghost.

“And it shall come to pass afterward,
that I will pour out my spirit on all flesh;
your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
your old men shall dream dreams,
and your young men shall see visions.
Even upon the menservants and maidservants
in those days, I will pour out my spirit."  Joel 2:28-29

"Then I fell down at his feet to worship him, but he said to me, “You must not do that! I am a fellow servant with you and your brethren who hold the testimony of Jesus. Worship God.” For the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy."  Revelation 19:10

Barnabas and Paul (the letter mentions Paul in second place) are called “our dear friends” and “men who have risked their lives” for the gospel (Acts 15:26).

 

“People are drawing conclusions about your God and about your gospel and about your Saviour and about your Bible and about your way of life based on you.” 

“As a Christian, you may be the only ‘living Bible’ that some people ever read.”

 Dr. Ravi Zacharias: Being a Witness in a Multicultural City


 

 

Missionary Mandate

All the Gospels, when they describe the risen Christ's meeting with His apostles, conclude with the "missionary mandate": "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations,...and lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age" (Mt 28:18-20; cf. Mk 16:15-18; Lk 24:46-49; Jn 20:21-23).

This is a sending forth in the Spirit, as is clearly apparent in the Gospel of John: Christ sends His own into the world, just as the Father has sent Him, and to this end He gives them the Spirit. Luke, for his part, closely links the witness the apostles are to give to Christ with the working of the Spirit, who will enable them to fulfill the mandate they have received.

The different versions of the "missionary mandate" contain common elements as well as characteristics proper to each. Two elements, however, are found in all the versions. First, there is the universal dimension of the task entrusted to the apostles, who are sent to "all nations" (Mt 28:19); "into all the world and...to the whole creation" (Mk 16:15); to "all nations" (Lk 24:47); "to the end of the earth" (Acts 1:8). Secondly, there is the assurance given to the apostles by the Lord that they will not be alone in the task, but will receive the strength and the means necessary to carry out their mission. The reference here is to the presence and power of the spirit and the help of Jesus himself: "And they went forth and preached everywhere, while the Lord worked with them" (Mk 16:20).

John is the only Evangelist to speak explicitly of a "mandate," a word equivalent to "mission." He directly links the mission which Jesus entrusts to his disciples with the mission which He himself has received from the Father: "As the Father has sent me, even so I send you" (Jn 20:21). Addressing the Father, Jesus says: "As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world" (Jn 17:18). The entire missionary sense of John's Gospel is expressed in the "priestly prayer": "This is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent" (Jn 17:3). The ultimate purpose of mission is to enable people to share in the communion which exists between the Father and the Son. The disciples are to live in unity with one another, remaining in the Father and the Son, so that the world may know and believe (cf. Jn 17:21-23). This is a very important missionary text. It makes us understand that we are missionaries above all because of what we are as a Church whose innermost life is unity in love, even before we become missionaries in word or deed.

Something of a Surprise

 

Ill at ease in Herod's prison, John sent messengers to Jesus with a question: "Are you the one who is to come, or should we expect someone else?" (Matt. 11:3).

The question comes as something of a surprise. After all, John was one of the first to publicly identify Jesus as "the one who comes after me" (John 1:27). It was John who told Jesus, "I need to be baptized by you" (Matt. 3:14). John saw the Spirit of God descend on Jesus at his baptism and heard the voice from heaven say, "This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased" (Matt. 3:17).

If anyone had known the answer to this question, it would have been John.

So what are the criteria for being a Messiah? 

Model #1: Messiah as Designated Political Activist

A Messiah is a person anointed by the Lord to perform a task

Model #2: The Human Eschatological Catalyst

The Messiah is a Davidic king who assists God in bringing about world transformation in eschatological times.

Specifically this individual must:

• be the Davidic king of an independent Jewish state, having eliminated foreign domination

• judge humanity, rewarding the righteous and eliminating the unrighteous

• help usher in an era of universal peace reflecting the universal rule of God

During this time exiles will return from the Diaspora and the righteous dead will be restored to life..

Model #3A: Saviour of Humanity

A Christ is a dying-rising saviour God-human who saves those who participate in his suffering and death.

Model 3B: The Christ as Saviour Messiah

Phase One: Saviour
Christ, a dying-rising saviour God-human, saves those who participate in His suffering and death.
Phase Two: Messiah
Christ returns to destroy evil, conquer death, and reward the righteous with eternal life. The dead are resurrected.

Scripture indicates that Jesus was not denying His deity by referring to Himself as the Son of Man. In fact, it is highly revealing that the term “Son of Man” is used in Scripture in contexts of Christ's deity. For example, the Bible says that only God can forgive sins (Isaiah 43:25; Mark 2:7). But as the “Son of Man,” Jesus had the power to forgive sins (Mark 2:10). Likewise, Christ will return to Earth as the “Son of Man” in clouds of glory to reign on Earth (Matthew 26:63-64). In this passage, Jesus is citing Daniel 7:13 where the Messiah is described as the "Ancient of Days," a phrase used to indicate His deity (cf. Daniel 7:9).

 

There are many who would claim, then, that even if Jesus did fulfill the intended conditions, that He still failed to be the Messiah as He did not establish His rule and reign. Instead, He died the miserable death of a criminal upon a Roman cross. The Messiah is supposed to reign, to restore Israel, to rule the nations with a rod of iron. How could Jesus be the Messiah if He did not do this?  This objection comes from a partial understanding of what the Hebrew scriptures say about the Messiah. Over the centuries, it became the tendency in later Judaism to focus on the triumphal aspects of the Messiah, which is understandable given the suffering of the Jewish people during their dispersion among the nations. Of course, it is also the natural tendency on the part of anybody to want to focus on triumph and victory instead of suffering or sorrow, and later Judaism's concentration on the "this-worldly" understanding of the Messiah reflects this.

Yet, we need to understand that Hebrew scriptures themselves point out that the Messiah would fulfill BOTH roles - that of a suffering servant who bears the sins of His people, and a triumphant ruler who will exercise authority over the nations and who will rule His people Israel. The Messiah indeed does have a dual-role assigned to Him in the Hebrew scriptures, and this fact, in addition to playing a rather key role in Christian theology about Jesus, was ALSO well-understood by many of the Jewish theologians and Rabbis, both before and after the time of Christ.
To assume human nature, the sinless Saviour had to choose between the only two things available. He could of either chosen the Holy, unfallen nature of Adam, or the fallen nature of Adam and all of Adam's descendants. If He had taken any other kind, it would not have been human nature at all. 

Jesus rose again to sit with the Eternal Father, as one with the Father. It’s the greatest miracle God has ever performed. God’s Son who once was dead, has risen to new life forever. This great miracle is the joyous hope for humanity. Satan thought he was the winner. While Jesus hung on the cross outside of Jerusalem, Demons were roaring in triumph... only to realize to their horror that Jesus was the winner after all. Jesus descended into the demonic world and took the keys of death and life back from Satan's own claws. Jesus gave Himself to be killed, so that He could take away the authority of Satan over mankind.

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Mission of the Messiah

The scene itself is pretty straightforward.

The scene immediately follows the calling of Matthew, where Jesus tells Matthew to "follow me." Jesus is eating at Matthew's house with the other disciples, and "many tax collectors and sinners". Apparently some Pharisees are with them, too. The Pharisees challenge Jesus for willingly keeping company with "tax collectors and sinners", two despised groups. Essentially, the Pharisees are accusing Jesus of opposing the will of God. Jesus tells the Pharisees that they are misinterpreting the will of God. He says that saving sinners is of primary importance. By saying that He "came not to call the righteous, but sinners", Jesus: declares that He is the Messiah: Jesus equates God's words to Israel in the book of Hosea ("I desire mercy, not sacrifice", Hos 6:6) with His own words ("For I came..."), and identifies His personal mission with the promised saving mission of the Messiah.

1. Reminds the Pharisees that Israel's history is one of continually going astray (sinning), followed by God's saving action to restore her to righteousness (living in accord with the will & law of God).
2. Accuses the Pharisees of being self-righteous, since they see themselves as righteous when in fact all are sinners before God.

Jesus claims the words of God as His own: "I desire mercy, and not sacrifice" (Hosea 6:6). The Pharisees would have seen this as a clear and bold claim to be acting with the authority of God, and even to be God Himself.

Taking a few steps back - the earliest prophet to Israel, Amos, states the themes that recur throughout the prophets: condemnation of immorality, warning of coming judgement, and an appeal to turn back to God, and obtain mercy. God is both holy and loving. Amos was not a priest or a "professional" prophet, so brings a layman's objectivity and straightforwardness to his message.

Isaiah covers pretty much every topic in the Bible: God's holiness, warning of coming judgement, call to repentance, vision of future blessing, messianic predictions, the servant songs, and extraordinary poetry. 

Micah predicts judgement on Judah not just because the people have turned away from God, but also because of moral consequences of that apostasy. Emphasises the need for ethical behaviour in secular life as well as religious purity. 

Zephaniah is the first prophet in Judah after a gap of more than fifty years, and he warns of the coming Day of the Lord, emphasizing that Judah will not be exempt from the judgement due to the surrounding nations merely because of its history: God's people must seek Him for themselves, not rely on their ancestors' relationship with Him. Predicts the survival of a faithful remnant when God's judgement falls on Jerusalem.

The book of Habakkuk takes the form of a dialogue: Habakkuk asks God why He allows injustice to continue in Judah. When God replies that He will end it by means of the Babylonians, He asks God how He can use those even more unrighteous as agents of judgement. God replies that all wickedness will surely be judged at the proper time. Habakkuk concludes that he can rejoice in God whatever the circumstances.

Part of Ezekiel was written before the final destruction of Jerusalem: the theme of this part is that judgement will follow sin. The rest was written after this point, and the theme is that restoration will follow. The book is punctuated by complicated, confusing and occasionally terrifying visions, and by symbolic actions on the part of the author. The overriding theme is the glory of God.

So we see that the Day of the Lord, and the Day of Judgment were dealt with as the mission of the Messiah.

Surprising as this is, it is nevertheless exactly what Isaiah had declared earlier: "A voice of one calling: 'In the desert prepare the way for the LORD; Make straight in the wilderness a highway for our God' "(Isa. 40:3). It is what John the Baptist had in mind when he said, "After me will come one who is more powerful than I, whose sandals I am not fit to carry" (Matt. 3:11). When Jesus was revealed to John on the occasion of His baptism, John declared unequivocally, "This is the Son of God" (John 1:34).

The Lord Himself taught this when He eventually came--four hundred years after the age of Malachi. Jesus had returned to Nazareth after His baptism by John and His temptation by Satan, to begin His ministry, and He went into the synagogue of Nazareth on the Sabbath. He was asked to take part in the service and was given the scroll of Isaiah from which He was to read the day's lesson. He unrolled it, found the sixty-first chapter and read:

"The Spirit of the 'Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor" (Luke 4:18, 19; Isa. 61:1, 2).

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God pressed His purpose forward

God causes everything to work together for good to those who love God and are called by His purposes. Jesus stated God's eternal purpose in those verses we just read. The apostle John expressed it in John 20:31: "these have been written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing you may have life in His name."

The Apostle presents God's eternal purpose for our lives in Romans 8:28-30. "And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose. For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brethren; and these whom He predestined, He also called; and these whom He called, He also justified; and these whom He justified, He also glorified." The important truth in these verses is God causes it to happen. God caused all things to work together for the good of those who love Him and are called according to His purposes. It is not some haphazard evolutionary scheme. "In the beginning God . . ." It is not by accident that you are here today. If you know Jesus Christ as your personal Saviour it is not by accident or chance that you have come to know Him.

The task of missions may not be merely to win as many individuals as possible from the most responsive people groups of the world, but rather to win individuals from all the people groups of the world.  It may not be enough to define missions as leaving the safe shore of our own culture to do rescue operations on the strange seas of other languages and cultures.   Something may need to be added to that definition which impels us to leave one rescue operations to take up another.

Talking about billions of people might seem overwhelming, astounding progress continues to be made. In 1974, we were stunned by the revelation that 4 out of 5 of the non-Christians in the world were beyond the reach of same-culture evangelism. In the last three decades, that number has been reduced to 3 out of every 5 non-Christians. An easily remembered new insight is that you can roughly divide the world up into meaningful thirds.  One-third of the world would at least claim to be Christian; one third are non-Christians that live within reached peoples; the final third are non-Christians within unreached peoples.

In 1974, more than 60% of the world’s population lived within unreached people groups. Today, that has been cut to 40%. This has happened in just a few decades because missionaries have focused on establishing church movements in thousands of previously unreached peoples.   While this is significant progress, there is still much to be done.

The essential missionary task is to establish a viable indigenous church planting movement that carries the potential to renew whole extended families and transform whole societies. It is viable in that it can grow on its own, indigenous meaning that it is not seen as foreign, and a church planting movement that continues to reproduce intergenerational fellowships that are able to evangelize the rest of the people group. Many refer to this achievement of an indigenous church planting movement as a missiological breakthrough.

“Prayer is the most important activity a born-again Christian can perform. It should head your list of priorities, for certainly the world around us desperately needs prayer. Prayer will open the door for God to do a glorious work in these last days. Prayer will stem the tide of evil.” 

The gospel of the kingdom (Mt. 4:23; 9:35; 24:14; Mk. 1:14). This is the declaration in which Jesus Christ is to set up His kingdom on earth and is present physically to rule.


By “witness” Jesus meant that the “gospel of the kingdom" will be proclaimed in open view throughout entire communities. The gospel of the kingdom is Christ prevailing over evil, liberating people so that they can live obediently and freely under His lordship and blessing.  God wants a persuasive display of that kingdom victory exhibited in every people.  What better exhibit of God's kingdom than a community of people who are living under Christ's authority?  That's why we should aim at obedient disciplemaking fellowships of believers within every people.  While not the only way to glorify God, nothing puts Christ's lordship on display like a community of people dedicated to following Him and effectively pushing back against the dominion of darkness.

It is difficult to preach the Good News of the Kingdom of god in societies where the kingdom of man and woman is working so well. This is true with today's urban culture where man is so busy building up his own dream world.

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