Spirit-Empowered Witness

May 24, 2026|Spirit-Empowered Witness|Acts 1:1-11

JD Cutler

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Good morning church family. I think for most of us with kids Summer has officially started. In January we started going through the gospel of John and we have covered the first four chapters which is John’s first major section dealing with the beginning of Jesus’ ministry. We will pick up that study in August and cover chapters 5-10.

In the meantime, over the Summer I wanted us to focus on our mission as a body of believers, which you have heard me say many times is to make disciples who make disciples.

Over the last couple of years we’ve worked hard to define disciple-making, clarify our strategy, emphasize the values of a disciple, and align our ministries around that mission.

With all of that as our backdrop, I want to take us on a brief journey through Acts entitled Sent: Learning disciple-making from Acts. If you have been with us on Wednesday evenings you know that it took us almost 2.5 years to study through Acts, you may be wondering, how in the world are we going to take a brief journey through Acts?

We will be looking at Acts, and in particular the establishment, growth, and advancement of the early church as our framework for disciple-making, using some of the major scenes or events as representative movements.

My prayer is as we do this, we will all gain clarity on what it means to be a disciple-making church filled with disciple-making Christians.

This morning we will begin at the beginning of Acts, so if you have your Bibles, open to Acts chapter 1 at verse 1 where the gospel writer Luke picks up where he left off in his gospel as we look at Spirit-Empowered Witness

Let’s read the first 11 verses of Acts together this morning.

Acts 1:1–11 ESV

1 In the first book, O Theophilus, I have dealt with all that Jesus began to do and teach, 2 until the day when he was taken up, after he had given commands through the Holy Spirit to the apostles whom he had chosen. 3 He presented himself alive to them after his suffering by many proofs, appearing to them during forty days and speaking about the kingdom of God. 4 And while staying with them he ordered them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the Father, which, he said, “you heard from me; 5 for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.” 6 So when they had come together, they asked him, “Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” 7 He said to them, “It is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by his own authority. 8 But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.” 9 And when he had said these things, as they were looking on, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight. 10 And while they were gazing into heaven as he went, behold, two men stood by them in white robes, 11 and said, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven? This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.”

These verses mark a dramatic shift: Jesus’ earthly ministry concludes, but His ministry itself does not. He continues His work through His Spirit-empowered people.

He says elsewhere that it is for their benefit that he leaves them so that he can send the promised Spirit, here in Acts called the promise of the Father, the baptism and indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Up until this point, Jesus was physically present with them, he was instructing them, training them, in short he was discipling them. Now he commissions them, giving them their mission until he returns, and explains how he is going to continue working through them.

Don’t miss what Luke says in verse 1. His gospel records all that Jesus began to do and teach, implying that Acts records what Jesus continues to do and teach, now through His Spirit-empowered people. Luke is essentially going to describe the ministry of Christ in this post-ascension and pre-return age. It is in that in between that you and I have been born, both physically and spiritually as we were born again. We, as believers and followers of Jesus Christ, have been entrusted with the same mission that Christ gave his first disciples.

It would be hard to overestimate, then, just how important it is that we understand and engage in that mission with everything we have. To that end, this morning I want to look at four things that are required for us to do just that.

The first is…

I. THE MISSION REQUIRES PROPER FOCUS

Let’s look at verses 6 and 7 more closely.

Acts 1:6–7 ESV

6 So when they had come together, they asked him, “Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” 7 He said to them, “It is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by his own authority.

So when they had come together- We know from Luke’s account both in his gospel and in verse 12 of Acts where this was.  In Bethany on the mount of olives.  Jesus brought the disciples to the mount to essentially say goodbye to them. Over the previous forty days he had appeared and disappeared many times, but now, here at the end, they are given the overwhelming privilege of witnessing his final departure from them. 

Recognizing that something significant is happening and curious about what is to happen next, the disciples ask a question that has long been on their minds, but now is voiced plainly to their master.  Lord will you at this time restore the kingdom of Israel?

We know this was on their minds, because scripture tells us.  Luke 19:11-27 (ESV) The Parable of the Ten Minas 11 As they heard these things, he proceeded to tell a parable, because he was near to Jerusalem, and because they supposed that the kingdom of God was to appear immediately. 

In the parable, there is a man who is a nobleman, he is about to go into a far country to receive for himself a kingdom and then return, his servants are put in charge of ten minas between ten servants and their work is to engage in business until he returns. Once he received his kingdom, he returned and brought the servants before them to know what they had done with what he had entrusted them with. In this way, he is illustrating to them what is about to happen. After his resurrection, he is going to go away to receive his kingdom, leaving them his servants to conduct his business according to his will, until he returns. 

Now at this moment of his departure, he rebukes them for missing it yet again. 

It is not for you to know-Essentially, Jesus says, I have told you everything you need to know about the future, and if I have not told you what you want to know, you don’t need to know it. Have you ever imagined how this moment must have been for the disciples?  

Can you imagine how heavy this final rebuke must have landed for these men? You are still worried about the wrong things. Things that are not for you to know.

If this was true of the first century disciples, why do we sometimes act like it is for us to know? Why do we think that we should spend our time trying to speculate on when Jesus will return, if he is going to restore the nation of Israel physically, if he is, when and how is he going to do it, and when he is going to establish his kingdom?

Some Christians watch the news in Israel closer than they watch the news in their own backyard. They are more concerned with what happens there than what is happening in their own neighborhood. Any event that can be twisted into some supposed sign or assigned some out of context Bible verse, and many Christians become more consumed with speculation rather than obedience. For that, we deserve the same prophetic correction that Jesus gave his disciples, it is not for you to know the things that are solely under the direction and authority of God. 

Jesus says, it is not for you to know, but you…

You have a mission. You have a commission. You don’t need to worry about the restoration of the kingdom to Israel, you need to worry about what I have for you to do. Before Jesus left Earth for Heaven, one of the last things he said to his disciples is there are things you do not need to know.  Stay focused on what I have left for you to do.

God is in charge and I neither need to worry about it or know all the details. In His Word, by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, God has given us everything we need to know. When you or I are tempted to think that there are things beyond this book that we need to know, we need to come back to this correction and understand that Jesus has given us all that we need to know concerning the future events in the kingdom of God. 

We can become distracted from our disciple-making mission by speculation, timelines, and secondary debates. If we are going to fulfill the mission God has given us, we need clarity of mission and proper focus. But thankfully, Jesus doesn’t leave his disciples or us at that rebuke, he offers encouragement that we are not alone. Let’s pick up with our second requirement…

II. THE MISSION REQUIRES DIVINE POWER

Let’s look at the first statement Jesus makes after his rebuke.

Acts 1:8 “8 But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.””

Even with direct training from Jesus, even with an amount of authority and power he had given his disciples to proclaim the gospel, heal the sick, and cast out demons, he says that they do not have everything they need to fulfill their mission.

Think about that for a minute.

His message is not, okay guys, it’s about to get really hard, so you are going to have to try harder.

He says, you have been given an extraordinary mission, you are going to have to wait for power.

Why?

Because they don’t have the power necessary to fulfill the mission.

They had the right ingredients.

They were eyewitnesses to Jesus’ life and ministry.

They had sat at his feet for almost three years, learning and being discipled.

They had experience proclaiming the gospel from town to town.

Jesus was even giving them a clear mission strategy, start in Jerusalem and go unto the end of the earth.

But they didn’t have the power.

What is going to take Peter, for instance, from a man who denies Jesus before a servant girl out of fear to the man who defies the Sanhedrin in the name of Christ?

What is going to take the disciples who all fled when Jesus was arrested, men who hid behind locked doors after his death, and make them men who rejoice when they are counted worthy of beatings?

Not a change of personality. Not a new strategy. Not even training.

The only explanation is that they have been empowered by the Holy Spirit. They are operating in a completely different power than before.

That’s why we need to understand that the power of the Holy Spirit is a non-negotiable if we are going to make disciples of Christ who make disciples of Christ.

Without Him and his power, we may gather followers around a program, but we will not make disciples of Christ. They will be like the disciples of the Pharisees, religiously active but spiritually dead. Jesus says in his woes against them in Matthew 23:15 “15 Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you travel across sea and land to make a single proselyte, and when he becomes a proselyte, you make him twice as much a child of hell as yourselves.”

Disciple-making is supernatural work, it is the Holy Spirit working change within a person conforming them into the image of Christ. Does God use us in the process? Absolutely. Do we have the power to do it apart from God? Absolutely not.

We don’t need more discipleship programs, or better discipleship strategies, we need to be men and women who are asking God to work in us and through us by his Spirit. We need men and women devoted to prayer. Acts 1:14 “14 All these with one accord were devoting themselves to prayer, together with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus, and his brothers.” This is post-commission and pre-pentecost. This is the waiting period before Pentecost, and I think that’s important for us. Devoted to prayer.

Sometimes we can get so wrapped up in our plans that we can even forget to pray. Just this week a brother lovingly reminded me of a time that I did just that. And if we are going to be empowered by God we need to be dependent on God and nothing displays that better than devotion to prayer. We need to be empowered by God so that we can be used by God.

And, maybe that’s where we need to start.

Maybe we need to clarify what God working in and through us looks like.

I think sometimes we get an idea of what a powerful witness looks like. They are the Billy Grahams, right?

The charismatic extroverts brimming with confidence and able to share the gospel in such a way that men and women respond dramatically.

And while God certainly empowers men and women like that, he also empowers the quiet, introvert with the same divine power.

God’s power produces in us boldness, conviction, endurance, holiness, gospel clarity, transformed affections.

How he uses us may vary greatly, but those are the evidences of His power, not whether we are filling up stadiums.

The question then becomes, how? How do we operate in the power of the Spirit to make disciples who make disciples?

This brings us to the third requirement…

III. THE MISSION REQUIRES FAITHFUL WITNESSES

What is the result of this power that they are going to receive? …you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.

When we hear the word witness, we may be tempted to think only of evangelism. But Jesus’ commission was larger than that. Witness certainly includes proclaiming Christ, but Christ’s mission for His church does not stop there.

Evangelism is the beginning of discipleship, but it is not the end.

To understand why the mission requires faithful witnesses, we need to step back for a moment and look at the totality of what Jesus’s commission was for his disciples. For instance, compare Christ’s words here with His words in Matthew 28

Matthew 28:18–20 ESV

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.”

And we can see that immediately in Acts itself. In Jerusalem, the apostles did not merely proclaim Christ and move on. They gathered believers who are described as devoted to the apostles’ teaching, the fellowship, breaking of bread, and prayers. They are described as having all things in common and meeting daily in the temple and in homes.

So while witness in Acts emphasizes testimony to Christ, when we read it alongside the Great Commission and the pattern of Acts, we see that faithful witness is not less than evangelism, but neither is disciple-making exhausted by evangelism.

Let’s look a little closer at that word. The Greek word here is martys, originally referring to a witness, someone who testifies to what they have seen and heard. Later, because faithful testimony often led to death, the word became associated with those who bore witness even unto death, and was transliterated into the English word martyr.

When we read this alongside Christ’s full commission, we see that faithful witness includes telling people what Christ did and said, but also helping them become obedient disciples.

Notice two things.

One, they were not simply to live out their own obedience to Christ.

Two, they were not simply to tell others about Jesus and leave them to figure it out.

They were to intentionally engage people with the gospel as they lived their life in obedience to Christ and when others believed, they were to baptize them, or bring them into the visible church, and then teach them to live out their lives in obedience to Christ.

Let me say it this way, being a witness for Christ involves both what we say and how we live.

This, by the way, is exactly what we see as we follow the development of the early church though the book of Acts. Men and women who are faithfully living for Christ telling others about him and then showing them how to live faithfully for Christ. If either one of those things are missing, we are not being faithful witnesses for Christ.

When we studied the book of Acts, we talked about how the kingdom unfolds according to the the path Christ sets out here in his commission. It begins in Jerusalem, where the disciples are faithful in obeying Christ and preaching the gospel. Then it travels to Judea and Samaria as the disciples spread into further areas of ministry. Finally, through the efforts of mission minded men and women like the Apostle Paul, it reaches Rome, or what we might consider one of the ends of the earth from a Jerusalem perspective. From there it can spread to all of the places Rome had power and influence.

It’s important that we remember that this wasn’t just the apostles involved in this. In Acts 8 we find one of the first deacons, Philip, scattered by persecution preaching the word to the city of Samaria, bringing much joy in that city. In Acts 9 we find Barnabas taking a newly converted Saul and bringing him before the apostles. In Acts 11 we find Barnabas going and finding Saul again so that he could bring him to Antioch where they taught a great many people for a whole year. In Acts 18 we find a couple Priscilla and Aquila taking aside Apollos discipling him in the way and then encouraging him on his way, where he powerfully refuted the Jews in public, showing by the scriptures that Jesus was the Christ.

These are ordinary, spirit-empowered believers who are as involved in advancing the gospel as any of the apostles.

But lest we forget what caused these men and women to be faithful, Luke, the author, reminds us again and again, they were filled with the Holy Spirit.

With our focus in the right place, with our power coming from God, and our lives lived as faithful witnesses to Christ in word and deed, there is only one more requirement we need to look at this morning.

IV. THE MISSION REQUIRES ACTIVE OBEDIENCE UNTIL CHRIST RETURNS

There is something profoundly human, and almost humorous, about this scene. Jesus commissions his disciples, blesses them, and then he is lifted up and disappears from their sight.

What do they do?

Stand there gazing into heaven.

This was a miraculous moment in history, surely a painful experience for the disciples, and yet it becomes almost comical because as they are standing there, two men appear and say, why do you stand looking into heaven?

For what reason are you just standing here looking? Didn’t he already tell you what to do?

Here is the reality summed up for us in this moment.

While we are to constantly be ready for Jesus to return, we are not supposed to be standing still while we do it.

There is a fixed point in time that the Father has decreed where Christ will return in the same way.

This Jesus- this same Jesus, this Jesus whose glorified body you have seen and touched, this Jesus who walked with you, who taught you, who loved you.

This same Jesus… Who was taken up from you into heaven- into heaven. It is obvious that Jesus did not simply ascend up into the clouds, rather this was the way he chose to represent his ascension into heaven, where he now resides, waiting until the appointed time to return. This is the message of the New Testament.

Will come in the same way- In the same way seems to refer to the nature of his departure. He ascended bodily into heaven, he will return bodily from heaven. He ascended before witnesses, he will return before witnesses. 

Bodily, physically, before witnesses.

In the meantime, they and we have a mission that we have been called to actively obey until that day. There ought to be an urgency for us in making disciples. We have been given an enormous task to engage in and we know that it has a finite time to be done, because once Jesus returns the mission is over.

Once our king returns the time for making disciples will come to an end. But until that day, we have to remain diligent, unwavering from our purpose, relying on his power, and living as faithful witnesses to Christ. Day after day.

We are not called to passive Christianity.

There is a great tragedy being lived out in many lives of those who confess Christ. It looks like a Christianity that assumes, church attendance is obedience, that theological agreement is obedience, that waiting for the right time or lifestyle evangelism is obedience.

The question that should be pressed upon our hearts this morning is if I am just standing here, why am I just standing here?

What is keeping you from making disciples?

Is it a confusion of purpose?

Is it because we are thinking in terms of human effort and strategy instead of spirit-empowered living?

Is it because we are not living in obedience to Christ?

Is it because we keep our faith private?

Is it because we keep ourselves so busy with other things that we don’t have time for disciple-making?

What is holding our church back from making disciples?

This is not merely a call for a few highly motivated Christians. This is the normal calling of Christ’s church. Disciple-making is not just another ministry of the church. It is not a pastor’s job or a program’s job. It is the mission that should give shape to every ministry we do together.

Listen, there isn’t a program that Will and I can come up with that will make us a disciple-making church. With the best strategy and articulable mission statement we will not make disciples with programs.

Disciple-making is a spirit-empowered, collective mission that each of us must engage in if we are going to be a church where disciples are made. It is every believer taking seriously Jesus’ words in the Parable of the Ten Minas, ‘to engage in business till I come’ using the resources, time, and talents Christ has given us to advance the kingdom of Christ one disciple at a time.

My prayer is as we continue looking at the book of acts, God would ignite a passion in each of us to be the kind of faithful, kingdom advancing believers that we see in this book. The next time we pick up the story in Acts we will look at how disciples are formed in the ordinary rhythms of the gathered church, but until then…

Is it your purpose? Are you relying on the Spirit? Are you a faithful witness? Are you actively obeying Christ?

Let us pray.