Evangelistic Power

Evangelistic Power

Acts 1:1-11

After the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ, the disciples returned to Galilee as commanded by both the Lord and the angels. The final chapter of the gospel of John recorded the third time the disciples as a group, encountered the risen Lord. As we read last week, they had decided to go fishing but spent all night out on the water catching nothing. They caught nothing. They were unsuccessful on their own, but when the Lord showed up and they obeyed His command, their failure was turned into outrageous success! Through obedience, they caught so many fish that they couldn’t even pull them into the boat. They had to drag their nets to shore where they could more easily deal with such an enormous catch.

Now, I want you to remember this because it’s important—the disciples were successful because they obeyed. They were successful because they followed the Lord. They gave up doing things on their own and followed the His command, and their endeavors paid off. And you know, many times we try to do things just like the disciples did, we try to do things on our own as well.

As Christians who love the Lord, our great desire is to see the kingdom of God grow among us and around us. We want to do whatever we can to make it happen. We will create programs and begin ministries with the idea that if we can “tweak” them just right, people will start believing in Jesus, coming to church, going out on missions, and winning the world for Christ. We want to see the Church of Jesus grow, and we get excited about it, but all too often in our excitement, in our planning, scheduling, and working out all the logistics of what we want to do for the Lord, the Lord actually gets left out of the whole process. We’re doing it on our own, in our own power, and with our own understanding, and just like the disciples, we end up catching nothing.

When we look through the book of Acts, what we see is a story of success. It’s a story of the Church triumphant. We start out with a group of unlettered, uncultured people with limited resources. We see that the first disciples started out with little money, no prestige, no college, no seminary, no magnificent buildings, no printing presses, and no access to modern media such as radio, television, or the internet. They went out into the world and faced great obstacles and told the story of a publicly executed Jew. They faced the imperial power of Rome, the hatred and condemnation of the Jewish nation, and the intellectual sophistication of Grecian philosophy—and they turned the world upside down for Jesus!

They did so much with so little, but today, we do so little with so much! We do so little with so much, so I think that we should take a look and see how they did it and maybe we can discover some secrets or some truths about Evangelistic Power.

Act 1:1-11 The former account I made, O Theophilus, of all that Jesus began both to do and teach, (2) until the day in which He was taken up, after He through the Holy Spirit had given commandments to the apostles whom He had chosen, (3) to whom He also presented Himself alive after His suffering by many infallible proofs, being seen by them during forty days and speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God. (4) And being assembled together with them, He commanded them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the Promise of the Father, "which," He said, "you have heard from Me; (5) for John truly baptized with water, but you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now." (6) Therefore, when they had come together, they asked Him, saying, "Lord, will You at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?" (7) And He said to them, "It is not for you to know times or seasons which the Father has put in His own authority. (8) But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth." (9) Now when He had spoken these things, while they watched, He was taken up, and a cloud received Him out of their sight. (10) And while they looked steadfastly toward heaven as He went up, behold, two men stood by them in white apparel, (11) who also said, "Men of Galilee, why do you stand gazing up into heaven? This same Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will so come in like manner as you saw Him go into heaven."