Faithful Witnesspdf
Faithful Witnesspdf
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  1. 1THE REFORMED WITNESS HOUR "Our Calling"Rev. Carl HaakFebruary 1, 2004; No. 3187Dear radio friends,Every member of the church has both the privilege and the calling to be a witness of the gospel of Jesus Christ. We are to do this by the very example of our lives, first of all, or, what the Bible calls, our conversation. The word “conversation” in the Bible reflects the truth that our life sayssomething. It says something about God. We read in I Peter 2:12, “Having your conversation honest among the Gentiles: that, whereas they speak against you as evildoers, they may by your good works, which they shall behold, glorify God in the day of visitation.” The world beholds the life of those who testify and confess the gospel. Our life must be a clear and shining witness of that gospel.Our witness is not only our lifestyle, but also our words. We are to speak and to leave behind us a witness, in our words, of the truth of God and of His Son, Jesus Christ. Every member of the church, both old and young, not just the minister and elders, but all the members are called of God to be personal witnesses of the truth of the gospel.We read, for example, in Isaiah 43:12, “ye are my witnesses, saith the LORD, that I am God.” Again, in Acts 1:8these words of the ascending Christ: “and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth.” It is, therefore, the privilege and the duty of every believer to be a witness of the gospel.Both of the passages in Isaiah 43and Acts 1that I have just quoted to you bring out the honor and the grace of God in making us His witnesses —witnesses of the gospel of His Son. They also bring out the calling or duty that all of us have as members of the church. The Scriptures teach us that the church on earth has the duty and the privilege from the ascended Lord Jesus Christ to preach the gospel. For this, Christ has given to the church the special office of the minister of the Word, or preacher and pastor, as we read in Ephesians 4:11and 12, that He has given to the church pastors and teachers, for the perfecting of the saints. Again, we read in I Corinthians 1:21that “it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe.” The idea there is not that the content of the preaching is foolishness. It is the truth of God. But many men
  2. 2would say, “What a foolish way of spreading forth the truth of the gospel —through preaching!” Yet, we know from the Scriptures that God has called the church to preach the gospel. This is the chief and primary way whereby God builds up His church. So the apostle Paul continues in I Corinthians 9:17to say that “a dispensation of the gospel is committed unto me,” that is, God had appointed the means through which He will accomplish His saving purposes, and that means is the preaching of the gospel committed to the church.But it is also true, and it is not in opposition to what I have just said, that Christ has also sent each member of the church to be a witness, a faithful witness, of the gospel, of all the things that we have seen and heard, as weread in Acts 4:20. As we have heard the living Word of God preached to us, so also that Word, living now in our heart, is to be our witness before the world. Our witness, then, is broad and all embracing. We are to witness not to some but to all whom God places before us —rich and poor, neighbor and stranger, those who are not Christians and perhaps even those who are Christians but need still to be shown the more complete way of salvation.Our witness must be faithful. It must be according to the truth of God’s Word. But we must also be faithful witnesses. We must use the opportunities that God has given to us, as members of His church, to witness of the gospel. For Christ has given to each member of the church also an office —the office ofall believers (of prophet, priest, and king). And it is in this capacity of believers that we have the commission to witness. When Christ instructed the church to go and to make disciples of all nations, He gave that great commission to the entire church, so that every member must face this calling as a solemn duty before God. Pastors and missionaries must make disciples by preaching and by baptism. And members of the church are also involved in making disciples by their witnessing. This is a privilege and a calling that is held before us in the Scriptures.Do you hold it before your eyes? Do you seek to be a faithful witness? Is this something that you grow in? Do you find a desire worked in you more and more that you be like the apostles, who in Acts 4:20(when they were commanded that they may not speak in the name of Jesus) responded: “We cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard”? As the hope of eternal life is within each child of God, so also that hope more and more must shine out of us in this world of darkness.
  3. 3To be a faithful witness of the gospel, then, is an important aspect of our Christian calling and life. We certainly have many things to do from our Lord. We must grow in grace personally. We must work diligently in our occupations. We must raise our family and bring up our children in the fear of the Lord. We must seek the things of the church and of Jesus Christ. And we are to be witnesses —not in addition to all of those things that I mentioned —but our lives must be lived in such a way that they are constantly giving a testimony before the world, before our children, before the church, of the Lord who has loved and saved us. And we must use the opportunities that God gives to us to speak of Him who is our God and our Savior.It is very crucial, as we consider our calling to be witnesses, that we do so under the authority of God’s Word. For the subject of evangelism and witnessing can, perhaps, raise certain red flags due to false ideas and methods so abundant today concerning evangelism and witnessing. Much of witnessing and evangelism today, throughout the church world, is tied to the false doctrines of Arminianism, that is, of “freewillism,” the false and unbiblical idea that it is the sinner who makes his decision for Christ and that Christ cannot save a sinner without the sinner first exercising his free will. There are also unbiblical methods employed today in what is being called the “user-friendly” church. And there is the idea that the church must conform itself to the world in order to attract the world into the church, thereby ignoring the majesty and glory of God and the reverence which is His due. There are emotion-based decisions. There is witnessing which proceeds from the idea that people must be pressed for a decision, that each Christian then becomes something like a salesman, to see if he can make a sale for Jesus Christ.There is abundant error. But error must not make us shy away from that which is right. Error must not rob us ofthe truth. We must not react to error by beginning to look at our personal call to witness with suspicion. Biblical principles must be brought to bear on our hearts. And out of those principles must come a heartfelt, warm, and faithful witness of the truth of our God.Each one of us is called to be a witness. “Ye,” said Isaiah in chapter 43, “are my witnesses.” And, again, our Lord and Savior said in Acts 1:8, “And ye shall be witnesses unto me.” The word “witness” in the Scripture has a legal connotation. A witness is one who, first of all, has seen something and knows something. Secondly, a witness is one who has been called upon to testify of what he has seen and known.
  4. 4The word is familiar to us in the court of law. The defense or prosecution will bring forth witnesses, that is, people who have firsthand knowledge, who have seen or heard. Now, placed upon the stand, they are given the legal obligation, the responsibility to speak and to say what they have seen. Failure to do so is punishable by the law. So also are we witnesses of Christ. That implies, first of all, that you and I, as Christians, as members of the church, have been given to see and know the things of the Spirit of God, the things of Christ. I Corinthians 2:12makes this plain. “Now we,” we read, “have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God.” A faithful witness of Jesus Christ is therefore one, and can only be one, who has received the grace of God unto salvation. That comes out very powerfully in the passage in Isaiah 43. In the opening verses of that beautiful chapter, God speaks of His eternal, His sovereign, His powerful love toward the elect. He says to them, “Sincethou wast precious in my sight,... I have loved thee.” And the passage goes on to speak of the fact that God, irresistibly, calls these unto Himself and gathers them from the east and the west and says to the earth, Give up and bring My saints, My precious ones to Me. Then God says in verse 10, By grace, you are the ones whom I have chosen. And I have chosen you that ye might know and believe Me,and understand that I am God. Before Me there was no God formed, neither shall there be after Me. I am theLORDand beside Me there is no savior. And because of all these, ye are My witnesses, that I am God.God is speaking here of the most basic, the most majestic, the most awesome of all truths. He is the livingGod. He is our God. And we know that because He has revealed Himself to us out of His love and grace. Now, because you have been given to know the truth that God is God, you are My witnesses, saith the Lord. You see, it is not something that, perhaps, you might or might not want to do. It is acalling. You are the witnesses of God.But more. A witness is not only one who has been made a witness by grace, but also one who has been empowered to speak by Christ. That is very comforting. Let us understand that. That is also brought out in Acts 1:8where Jesus is speaking as the ascended Lord and the One who promises to His disciples the Holy Spirit. Previously, throughout His ministry as well, the Lord had spoken of the fact that His disciples would be placed before the unbelieving world to leave a testimony for His sake. He said to them that at that time He would give to them a mouth and wisdom that all of their adversaries would not be able to gainsay or resist.
  5. 5Then, at the ascension, He says, “But ye shall receive power, after that theHoly Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and in Samaria.” The teaching of the Scriptures here is simply this: Christ has promised to give to each believer the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit empowers us, that is, gives to us understanding of the Holy Scriptures and convicts us of those Holy Scriptures, and therefore qualifies us to be the witnesses of Jesus Christ.The coming of the Holy Spirit upon the church does not refer to some unique blessing for a special few of the church in some baptism of the Holy Spirit so that now members of the church can speak in tongues. That is not the truth. But the truth is, the coming of the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Christ granted to the heart of each and every believer to convict him of the truth, to give him to believe the truth of the Holy Bible, to give him to know the Lord Jesus and His sovereign and eternal love, and then to empower him to speak of that love of Jesus Christ. The idea of the Holy Spirit today is that His blessings are something that you conjure up by some kind of emotional swaying together in a circle and then you get some type of special illumination of the Spirit. No, that is not the biblical teaching. The biblical teaching is that the gift of the Holy Spirit comes upon the heart of the believer by grace and illumines, makes known, the Scriptures to his heart so that now he is empowered to be a witness of God. God has given to us to know the things of His kingdom. He has convicted us of those things through the Holy Scriptures. He has given us to know that He is God, that Christ is His eternal Son now in the flesh, and that He is the only truth and salvation. We have received, then, the anointing of the Holy Spirit so that eachbeliever is a prophet in Jesus Christ. Thus, we have a spiritual duty, a calling, which God works in our hearts: we are to speak of the things that we have seen and heard.Christ is the true and faithful witness of God. Christ is the prophet sent of God to declare the truth of God. But we share, as members of the church, as true Christians, in the anointing of Jesus Christ. And we are made prophets so that we may witness and speak of Him. That is our calling.God, by His grace, has made each believer to be a witness both in his conduct (the way he lives) and in his words, to his neighbors and to his associates, of the truth of God and of His Son Jesus Christ. Ye are My witnesses. Ye shall be witnesses unto Me.
  6. 6The question is not, then, am I a witness, should I witness of my faith? That is not the question. You area witness. And, by God’s grace, you are saved in order that you might bea witness. The question is this: Am I a faithfulwitness, not only faithful in the content of my witness, but faithful also in the use of the opportunities given to me to witness? Am I faithful to my calling?God has given to His church the call to preach the Word, through the preaching of the gospel by one who is sent by the church, a pastor. That is primary in God’s saving purposes. And all of our witnessing, as we are going to see in future messages, must also direct those to whom we witness to the church. For the preaching of the gospel is the primary means of God in the sanctifying of God’s people. But God has also sent forth every believer and member of the church to be a witness, to speak of the truth of the gospel. Throughout all of our life, in our conduct and in our words, God has said, “This people have I formed for myself. They shall show forth my praise.”If you ask me, “Exactly, then, how do we perform this calling?” (in the coming weeks we are going to look at that more carefully), let me say at least a few things today.There are three things that we should hold before us. First of all, there is the need that we have to reach out to our neighbors and associates. Now a careful distinctionmust always be held before us. The Bible makes very plain that we are not to have friendships with the world, which would deny our witness or corrupt our souls. That is, we must not join with an unbelieving neighbor intheir activities. But our avoidance of such ungodly friendships must not take away from us our calling that, as we have opportunity, we are to witness to them. And any effective witness to our lost neighbor necessitates contact with him, which can be interpreted as genuine concern for his spiritual well-being and for him. It takes much effort to build bridges with such a neighbor and to bring the truth of God’s Word to him.Secondly, when such contact has now been established, we must know how to speak of the gospel and share our faith.That means that we must daily be studying the Scriptures ourselves and daily seeking to understand that glorious faith. Be involved inmembership ofthe church. And not just any church, but in that biblical, Reformed church, that church that proclaimswithout shame the majesty and glory of God in all things.
  7. 7Then, as we live in the Word and know the truth, we are to seek to explain that truth to the person with whom we have made contact. No one can take your place. That is your callingat that time. You may want, as you continue to witness and speak to them of the truth, to invite them to the church. You should begin, perhaps, by inviting them to a Bible-study in the church or, perhaps, to offer to study the Bible with them personally. Bring themto a Bible-study of the church, if they are willing to come, for sometimes, for one who has never been to church at all, to come to church is themost daunting thing. Then, as you seek more and more to establish that tie and to speak to your neighbor of the truth of the gospel, you invite them to come with you to the church. That is our goal —to get that person interested in coming to the church to hear the preaching of the gospel and to worship the living God.Then, as that person comes with you, you must show genuine interest in him. Sit next to him. Help him find the Bible text (he might not know the books of the Bible). Sit next to him and help him. Find the songs in the Psalter for him. And, afterwards, after the sermon, be willing to sit down with him to discuss with him what he has heard and explain it to him. And, under the blessing of God, as this person becomes interested in the truth, then you want to take him with you, perhaps, to a membership class in the church for formal training in the Word.Ye are My witnesses, saith God. Ye shall be witnesses of Me, says the Lord Jesus Christ.May God give us enthusiasm and may God give us a heart to be faithful to this calling.Father in heaven, we do thank Thee today for Thy Word. And we ask for its blessing upon our hearts. Thou hast opened the truth of the Scriptures by grace to us. Thou hast revealed to us the things of the Spirit of Christ. We pray now that as those things are known to us personally, we might respond with the apostles, “We cannot but speak of the things that we have seen and heard.” Bless, then, each one of us in our calling as members of the church to be witnesses of the truth. Amen.
  8. 8THE REFORMED WITNESS HOUR "Our Motivation"Rev. Carl HaakFebruary 8, 2004; No. 3188Dear radio friends,In our previous radio broadcast we began a series of messages on “The Faithful Witness,” that is, on the truth that each child of God is called to be a witness of the gospel of Jesus Christ, that every member of the church iscalled to be a witness, both in his life and in his words, of the truth of salvation. We saw at that time that the word “witness,” as used in the Bible, carries a legal idea, that of an eye-witness, and, therefore, of a moral obligation before God to speak of the things that we have seen and heard, and that this calling then belongs to our very salvation. When the Holy Spirit has opened ourhearts to the gospel of grace, He has done so not only for our own comfort and enjoyment, but He has done so in order that we might also testify to others of His grace to us. So the apostles could say, “We cannot but speak the things whichwe have seen and heard.”Today, we want to look into the motivation for our witnessing. This is very important. If our witnessingis to be faithful before God, not only must its content be correct, but the motivation for doing it must be correct in our hearts. And, again, only God can give to us this motivation. He does so by showing to us the truth of His Word —what that motivation ought to be. Then, through that Word, He writes it upon our hearts. From the Scriptures today, I hope to show you three things that motivate us to be faithful witnesses of the gospel of Jesus Christ in our lives and in our words. The motivation is not that we might be some type of super spiritual salesmen. It is not that we are going to pride ourselves in what we have done. But the motivation is found in three things. First. The glory of God. God is worthy to be known because of who He is.The question is: Do you know God? Have you seen His glory? Then you will desire to be witness of Him.Second. Our motivation must be the love of the neighbor. With the love of God in our hearts we desire the neighbor’s highest good. What is that highest good? That his sins be forgiven, and, if it be according to God’s will, he may be brought to Christ.
  9. 9Finally, the motivation arises out of the impulse of our own salvation. For the Lord said, “Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh.” Matthew 12:34.So, I speak to you today on the motivation that we are to have to be faithful witnesses of the gospel of Jesus Christ. That first motivation is a love of and a desire for the glory of God. There can be no other chief motive than that. In fact, that is the solemotive that must be behind every activity of a child of God. God is glorious. And the only good thing is to obey and trust and know Him and worship the living God. God is worthy to be known because of who He is. And it is right here that so often we must confess that our faith is shown to be weak and only a small beginning. We are not staggered as we ought to be by God. The reverence and the awe of God is conveyed to us throughout all of the Scriptures. I think especiallyof the prophecy of Isaiah. There God says in chapters 40-48, repeatedly, that “I am He —that there is no God before Me —yea, before the day was, I am He and there is none that can deliver out of My hand —I will work and who shall prevent it?” Read those chapters. I know of no other passage in the Scriptures that sets forth so beautifully the majesty, the immensity, the grandeur, the glory, the sovereignty, and the brilliance of the living God. Meditate upon those chapters often.We are not staggered as we ought to be by God. We must confess, in the light of those chapters, that our thoughts of God are far too puny and too human. That was God’s complaint through Isaiah to His people Israel. “Ye thought that I was altogether as yourself.” Oh, people of God, God is almighty. He is holy. There is no searching of His understanding. Bask in the light of the truth of God! For your motivationto witness, do not take your soul to some self-help book or positive-thinking book in a Christian bookstore. But bow down with loving awe and reverence before the living God revealed to you in the Scriptures. The more we know of God and the more we walk with God, the more spontaneous,vibrant and faithful will be our witness. The more we understand in the depth of our hearts the chief end for which we have been saved, namely, to know God and glorify Him forever, the more we will be willing and able to speak a word of witness. Are youafraid to leave a witness of the living God? Are you too busy? Is your mind so much on other things that you simply do not say anything when an opportunity is before you? Are you, perhaps, as a young person, embarrassed of your Lord Jesus Christ and ofyour God?
  10. 10What is the answer? Well, there can never be any change or improvement in us apart from this: Let us know our God! And let us, through grace, have zeal for His glory! I think of Daniel, as he stood before the king, in Daniel 5, when the king was offering to him all kinds of gifts if only Daniel would tell him if he was going to get out of the scrape that he was in, and of how faithful Daniel was as he stood before a powerful earthly king. He said to the king, “Let thy gifts be to thyself,andgivethy rewards to another;yet I will read the writing...Thou...hast not humbled thineheart...buthast lifted up thyself against the Lord of heaven. And the God in whose hand thy breathis,and whose are all thy ways, hastthounot glorified.” Daniel was able to leave a faithful, pointed, humble witness before that king because Daniel knew the awesomeness of his God.There is an example of this also in the book of Acts, chapter 17 at verses 16ff., when the apostle Paul was in the city of Athens on his second missionary journey and was alone. We read that Paul was waiting for his fellow workers to join him in Athens. But his spirit was stirred within him when he saw the city wholly given over to idolatry. When Paul was in Athens he saw the people of that city in all of their intelligence and sophistication, for Athens was the center of Greek philosophy. Yet, they were worshiping that which is no god. Here were creatures, men who had been created to worship the true and the only God, yet, in their pride and rebellion, they were making to themselves gods and worshiping them: Zeus, Apollo, Hermes, Athena. And it stirred the apostle Paul (it provoked him). What did he do? Did he find a group in the church and commiserate with them and say, “The world is getting worse. It’s a mess! Look at all of this sin. Why doesn’t God just send them all to hell?” Did he go sit in his living room and bemoan and say, “Look at all the lawlessness, the pornography, the juvenile delinquency”? Is that what he did? No. No, Paul went up to Mars Hill and he stood before the worldly-wise who, apart from grace, would laugh at him, and he declared the gospel. He said, “There is a God who made you, and you must stand before Him in the last day.” Then Paul declared to them very plainly that there was but one way of salvation —through the blood of Jesus Christ. What motivated him to do that? It was the glory of God that motivated him! Paul saw men, in their rebellion, seeking to bring glory to themselves, making godsafter their own imagination, living in all of their egotistical and proud immorality. Paul’s concern terminated in God and in the glory that was due to God. That was his motivation.That must be our chief motivation as well. The people who know their God, says the book of Daniel, shall do exploits. What was the motivation for Jesus Christ in speaking?
  11. 11This was it: My Father is greater than all! It is love for the glory of God that must propel us in our witness.Second,motivation must be love for the neighbor. We find this expressed in Romans 10:1, where we read, “Brethren, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for Israel is, that they might be saved.” Paul had expressed his concern for his kinsmen according to the flesh at the beginning of Romans 9.Then in chapters 9-11, the apostle showed the sovereign purpose of God, that in the rejection of the gospel by the Jews,the Gentiles might be grafted in. In chapter 9 of Romans, Paul traces the hardness of so many of the Jews to the gospel of Christ to the eternal predestination of God in election and reprobation. According to God’s eternal good pleasure, He foreordained who shall be vessels of mercy and who would be vessels of wrath. Out of one lump of clay, the mass of humanity, God had made vessels to glory and vessels fitted for destruction. Paul, then, in that section of the book of Romans is teaching that salvation is rooted in God’s eternal predestination. And that salvation goes forth according to God’s irresistible plan and purpose. Yet, Paul says, “My heart’s desire and my prayer to God for Israel is,that theymight be saved.” Now, is Paul’s desire contrary to God? No! Paul gloried in and preached the absolute sovereignty of God in salvation. But that truth of God’s absolute sovereignty did not mean that Paul did not desire, according to God’s own will, that his relatives, Israel, should be saved. We do not know whom God has eternally predestined unto salvation. We know that He has. To God belongs the issues of life and death. But who those are, those secret things belong to God. We know that He has chosen and He has willed that they shall come to Him through His Word. So, Paul’s heartfelt desire was that Israel, as it stood in its hardness, in its rebellion, in its pride, might by the grace of God be humbled according to God’s own will and that they might be saved. Predestination does not extinguish the flame of desire for the salvation of those who are in darkness.It gives us peace. It gives us encouragement. We go forthwith that Word knowing that God will bring out of darkness those whom He has chosen. Paul saw his own loved ones, the ones that he grew up with, the ones who now hated him as an apostle and saw him as an enemy and called him a turncoat; yet Paul, in the love of God, desired, according to God’s will, that they might be saved. He prayed for those who despitefully used him and persecuted him.What is the law of God? The law of God is: Love the Lord thy God and thy neighbor as thyself. These are the two great commandments.
  12. 12We are to have the motivation of the love of God, the glory of God, and the love of the neighbor. And the love of theneighbor in the love of God is to convey the greatest good to the neighbor. What is the greatest good that we could convey to our neighbor? Shall we tell him, as he moves next door to us, of the best place to have his bank account? Should we tell her of the good places to eat in the community? Shall we, over the fence, merely talk to our neighbor about the baseball team and who is going to win it all? Shall we, perhaps, speak of untold earthly things and leave it at that? Is that the best we can do for the neighbor? No. We must speak to our neighbor of the bread of life, of the knowledge of sins forgiven, of the only way to the Father, of the Lord of life, of the risen and reigning Son of God, and of the fact that this Son of God is coming soon. No, I’m not talking about the fact that we should, perhaps, make a sign of John 3:16and put it on our back as we mow our lawn and let that be our witness to the neighbor. But this: we are concerned about our neighbor’s soul, and that leads us to get to know the neighbor in order that we might have an opportunity to bring a witness and so that the neighbor has an opportunity to get to know you and ask you of the things that you believe and the things that you might tell him of the treasures of God placed in your heart. If we can see our neighbor day after day —he goes to work, we wave across the street at him —and feel no desire to explain to him the knowledge of Jesus Christ and feel no compassion for him because he does not know God, then how dwells the love of God in us?No, we do not do that because we think we are going to earn their salvation or earn our salvation. But we do that because God is glorious and we are to love the neighbor for God’s sake. We are to trust in the eternal purposes of God and we are to bring a word of witness.The final motivation will be that we will do this out of the impulse of our own salvation. The apostles said, “We cannot but speak of the things which we have seen and heard.” For Peter and the other apostles to be silent and not to preach of Jesus Christ would have been for them to deny what and who they were. A man speaks out of the treasures of his heart. He cannot help that. You are going to speak about the things that you love. That is why parents spend time visiting (young parents especially) and the conversation always turns to their kids. We smile about that and maybe, when we become older, we begin to resent that —they only talk about their kids, we say. But that is because parents carry their children on their heart. Likewise, when Peter was commanded that he not speak any more in the name of Jesus, he said to them: “You don’t know what you are asking. Don’t speak in His name? Hush up about Jesus? But
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