Silver Street Mission

2004: January collection

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 All design and contents (c)
Peter R Green
2002

Christians will face hardship. But don’t be afraid. We are on the winning side. Yet we will only overcome as we find strength through the blood of Christ, and power as we testify to him.

ON A MISSION FROM GOD
  Should only professional Christians testify? I am a professional. I don't think that you have to be a professional to minister, but my very position tells you all, “Professional is better.”
  I really want you to see that professional is not better. I really want you to see that we can all be ministers of God.

  I love the movie, The Blues Brothers. It’s about two brothers, raised in a Catholic orphanage. The orphanage is broke and has to close down, and the two brothers are sad that their home is about to disappear.
  They go to an African–American revivalist church service, looking for some encouragement. The Spirit touches them, and calls them on a mission for God, to raise the money to save the orphanage.
  They get into all kinds of scrapes, but, in the end, they succeed, they raise the money; the orphanage is saved.
  It’s a fun movie, it’s not meant to be very philosophical. But it does have a message. God can use not very well–educated, not very “spiritual”, not very classy people to do wonderful things, if they try, if they stick at it, if they never let go.
  And that is certainly true of the Blues Brothers. Whatever obstacle comes their way, they are never shaken, because they are on a mission from God.
  This film is not on my list of what you all must see before the month is over. Some of you might find the language a bit strong. I’m just giving you an illustration.

  If you are educated, if you are classy, if you are more “spiritual” than most, you’d better do a good job, because you have all those advantages. If you are an ordinary Joe or Joess, you are the kind of person who has to depend on God to do it through you. And that means you are out front from the start.

  Peter, James, John, Andrew, were not professionals. They were fishermen. They depended on God for their testimony. Matthew was in finance; only Paul and John the Gospel writer were experts. Paul had Rabbi training, and John may have been a priest. Most early Christians were not the kind of people who got invited to black tie dinners.
  Yet they are the people who turned the Roman Empire around, not by force of arms, but by the power of the Gospel.
  And they are people like you and me.

CALLED TO BE WITNESSES.
  If you want to testify effectively, you need to know what the message is.

  Our message is Jesus and our experience of him.

  I preached on forgiveness of sins recently. Do you remember that sermon?
  I noticed something as I preached. You all noticed when I told of my vision of Jesus.
  You paid attention, because it was personal. It was my testimony, and people love to a testimony, a personal experience.
  To overcome the enemy, you need a testimony. And you have a testimony if the blood of Jesus has touched your life.

  I have been an expert witness in several Town Planning cases. Did I tell you that I got told off by our Barrister?
  I have a Masters Degree in Town Planning, and I enjoyed Planning law. I even knew a solicitor who used to phone me tor legal advice on planning matters. So once I gave in to the temptation and wrote a legal opinion in my planning report.
  At the court, the Barrister read my report.
  “Who wrote this?” he asked.
  “I did,” I replied.
  “Well, it is not your job to argue the law, it is your job to be a witness,” the Barrister said. “You tell us what you, as a trained and qualified Town Planner saw, heard and experienced, but we barristers make the case about the law.”

  He still used what I wrote, but he apologised to the court that it was in witness' report.

  On the witness stand, no one asked me about the law. They asked me how many times I visited the site, what I had said to the owner, what vehicles were there, what impact his business had on the area, but nothing at all about the law. I was there as a witness — to testify, not to argue a case.

  There are people who argue a case for Jesus. Theologians reason it all out, apologists communicate it to ordinary people. But you are called a witness, because everyone is called to be a witness.
  You don't have to explain kenosis. You mightn’t know what a premillennialist is. If you can’t explain the Chalcedonian Definition, you’ll get by. Those things are for theologians.
  Theology has a place, but the message is our testimony to what Jesus does.

  Someone criticised my preaching once. Well, lots of people have criticised my preaching, but this one objected that I use a lot of illustrations from my own experience.
  One reason I do that is that I want to be your model. What you know best is your own story, and the best bit of your own story is the bit about Jesus and you. But how do we start?

THE OCCASION OF TESTIMONY
  In the story of Peter with Cornelius, you might not clearly see the personal experience part, because it is mostly implied.
  When Peter preached at Pentecost, in Acts 2, or in the story about the healing of the cripple at the Temple in Acts 3, you'd have seen something much clearer.
  At Pentecost, Peter began preaching just to explain the experience that he and the others had had of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the church. The Christians had experienced it, the crowd had noticed it, so Peter told about it.

  But, at Cornelius’ house, Peter begins,

  This is because both Peter and Cornelius had experienced a miraculous work of God. Peter didn’t need to describe it again, because everyone there knew about it. He only had to remind them and explain it to them.

  Cornelius was not a Jew, but he was a man of prayer. An angel appeared to him while he was praying and told him to look for Peter. So he sent some men to find Peter and ask him to come and explain to them about God.

  A day or two later, Peter was praying and fell into a trance, where he had a vision which very clearly told him not to think of Cornelius and the other Romans as unclean, but to think of them as people God lovingly created.
  Just then, the men from Cornelius arrived. Angels, visions, dramatic timings — God was in this from first to last!
  With the cripple, Jesus did a healing miracle in the man, and everyone wanted to know how on earth it had happened. So Peter spoke.

  When I preach in Church, the occasion is that you have come to hear a word from God.

  When you testify at work or wherever you might be, you need a different occasion. Something has to give you the opportunity. It may be that someone asks you. Or it may be that you and your friend have shared an experience that you want to talk about. Or it may be that God has done something wonderful, and you have to share it.
  The more you can relate it to your own experience, the more people will want to listen and even respond positively.

  My father disliked Christianity for a long time, and mostly tried to pick arguments with me. But, when I told him about the couple of times I saw the power of Christ at work in people who declared themselves to be afflicted by demons, he had no answer, and he couldn't refute it. I don’t think he entirely believed it, but he knew I wasn't lying to him either, maybe misinterpreting the facts.
  That had quite an impact on him. I wish I’d done it more often.
  You have an opportunity if you look for it.

WHAT JESUS DID
  The second thing in the story is an outline of Jesus’ work and ministry. Peter says,

  We Christians are often in such a rush to get to the death and resurrection of Jesus that we forget that Jesus had a life on earth.

  When Peter preached at Pentecost, he went into a lot more of the Old Testament prophecies, because his Jewish audience needed to hear that it was all promised through the prophets, and that David had written about it in the Psalms and so on.   Cornelius didn't know so much about the Bible, but he had heard about this Jesus, and about the healings and deliverances he performed, and about the goodness of Jesus to so many people.

  Tailor your tale to your hearers. Some people want a Bible verse, others don’t. If you are sharing with a Jehovah's Witness, you will need Bible verses, because she has been trained to read the Bible in a way that keeps Jesus out of the picture. You need to use the Bible to bring him back in.

  But when I am talking with someone who doesn’t know or care about the Bible, I go back to the story of Jesus. Most people who don’t have a background with the Bible think it is an ancient holy book that you should kiss and put on a high shelf.
  But they don’t think of Jesus and his life in that way. So tell about Jesus.
  Martin Luther, the famous Reformer, used to say that, if you are called in to pray for someone's healing or deliverance from demons, you should always tell them about how Jesus healed or delivered, because that will create faith in the person that Jesus will do the same for them.

DEATH AND RESURRECTION
  But don’t fall into another error and never get to the death and resurrection of Jesus. Some people find it hard to talk about death or resurrection.
  It was just as hard for the early Christians. In Athens they mocked Paul when he spoke about resurrection. Greeks thought the death of Jesus was nonsense and Jews thought it was blasphemous to think that God could have anything to do with someone crucified.

  But don’t forget it!

  Here’s what Peter said:

  Here it is: the works of Jesus and the testimony of believers!
  Sometimes I like to tell about how prayer in the name of Jesus healed my brother when he faced potentially scarring surgery, or about how, from the day I was prayed for, my arthritis in my hip went into remission for about two years. Jesus is still very much active in his world! Testify to his life, his death and his resurrection. If he has touched your life, then he is still alive. You are a witness!

JUDGMENT
  The last part of Peter’s basic message is about judgment and forgiveness.
  He says,

  It is not popular to speak about judgment today, but we need to do it. It amazes me how positively people respond when I declare in the newsletters that God must judge the evil done by our leaders in these days.
  People don’t like hearing of their own judgment, but they long to hear of a God who is just and who deals justly with an evil world. That message inspires them.
  When the apostles preached about forgiveness, they often coupled it with judgment, because the promise of forgiveness is the promise of a way out of judgment.

  My grandfather Taylor was a Methodist who didn’t much like Baptists. He had had a nasty experience with Strict and Particular Baptists and thought all Baptists were like them. But he particularly disliked the rules and regulations they had down in Harris Street. He said, “I like the Methodist way, where all who want to flee from the wrath to come are welcome.”

  Well, that’s just the kind of Christianity we Baptists must declare. All who want to flee from the wrath to come are welcome.

  Judgment means that God will pour out his righteous anger, his judgmental wrath, on all evil–doers; salvation is to believe in Jesus and receive forgiveness of sins through his name.
  You can tell that to anyone!

CONCLUSION
  Jesus wants you as a witness, to shine his light into all the dark corners of this world. When he gives you a chance, tell about Jesus. Tell what he has done in your life and experience. Tell about his life and ministry. Tell about his death and resurrection, where he defeated death and hell. And tell about his coming to judge, and about forgiveness of sins to all who believe.
  These are they who...

  Are you one of them? Will you be one from today on? I pray that we all will,
AMEN

© Peter R. Green 2002. Permission is granted for quotation in full for non-commercial purposes provided that authorship is acknowledged and this copyright notice is displayed with the text.

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