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ACTS 1:8
POWER!
 
“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.”
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When the disciples came down from the upper room, an impossible task loomed before them.
They were charged to announce that Jesus of Nazareth, a man executed as a common criminal, was in very fact the divine Son of God.
They were responsible to persuade others that Jesus, so humiliated in His death, rose on the third day from His grave.
They were also to declare that this Jesus was ascended on high from whence He was surely coming again to reign!
            Left to herself, the church was doomed to die as thousands of other abortive sects had died.
That she did not so die is due to the miraculous element within her.
That supernatural element, supplied by the Holy Spirit, is power.
Necessity compels us to conclude that the church is not merely an organisation, but that she is a living embodiment of divine power.
The church began in power and advanced in power.
So long as she possessed power, she advanced.
With diminution of power, she resorted to mechanisms of conservation.
Every return of the church to New Testament power has been marked by fresh blessing and new advancement, an upsurge in missionary zeal and bold proclamation of the Gospel of Christ.
During those periods when the church has retreated into scholasticism, monasticism, and institutionalism, the blessings that she tried to keep became as kept manna, full of worms and stinking.
There can be no doubt, as we look on the churches of today, that by-and-large we are in a period of conservation marked by institutionalism.
Amongst fundamental Bible believers is this odious retreat especially to be marked and shunned.
Institutionalism, the feeble efforts of puny man, has largely replaced the power of God in our churches today.
In times of distress, we turn to what we know best.
Thus, we resort to trickery, gimmicks, and outright deception rather than turn to the Spirit of God for the power needed.
Our modern state is accurately set forth in *2 Timothy 3:1-5*: “Understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty.
For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of godliness but denying its power.
Avoid such people.”
The saddest aspect of the Apostle’s description is assuredly that which attests: “having the appearance of godliness”—being religious, being churchgoers—“but denying its power.”
Society has many churchgoers—we have a form of godliness, but where is the power?
A crowd is not necessarily an indication of blessing.
Though the words may appear offensive, we need someone to remind us that without spiritual power we are just another group clamouring for a hearing in the modern forum.
How desperately we need the power of God for our ministries.
When we encounter a problem, our first impulse—and perhaps our last—is to turn to the denomination, to look to experts, to resort to promotions; there is no room for the Holy Spirit!
No room for God to work in power!
It appears to be an axiom of modern Christianity that the better our organisation, the less power possessed.
I fear that we have about organised the Holy Spirit out of our churches.
Dr.
A. W. Tozer, in a marvellous little booklet entitled “Paths to Power,” describes spiritual power with a five-fold definition:
 
1.
Spiritual energy of sufficient voltage to produce great saints;
2.            Spiritual unction that will give a heavenly unction to our worship and make our meeting place sweet with divine presence;
3.            That heavenly quality which marks the church as a divine thing;
4.            That effective energy which God has, both in biblical and post-biblical times, released into the church and into the circumstances surrounding her, which made her fruitful in labour and invincible before her foes;
5.
That divine afflatus that moves the heart and persuades the hearer to repent and believe in Christ.
Tozer has provided a marvellous description, capturing the observable qualities necessary to fully understand the supernatural power of the Spirit of God.
We cannot explain power; it must be experienced.
Neither can we observe power; we must confine our observations to the result of power.
I think it fair to state that most of us want nothing to do with a religion which can be explained; such would draw God down to the level of the ordinary and make Him no greater than man.
You and I need to do some experiencing of the power of God.
Each of us needs to experience the power of God in our lives.
*Biblical Power is Spiritual Energy of Sufficient Voltage to Produce Great Saints*.
The power witnessed in the Word of God resulted in the production of great saints.
They did not find it necessary to resort to commentaries, analytical concordances or the original languages to prove their spiritual pedigree; their lives proved their relationship to God.
The life of the believer is supposed to be testimony of his saved status.
For the most of us, there is nothing to distinguish us as saints.
Where New Testament power is manifest, the lives of the redeemed serve as proof of the claim to sainthood.
Look at the lives of saints in the Book of Acts.
“When they heard this they were cut to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, ‘Brothers, what shall we do?’
And Peter said to them, ‘Repent and be baptised every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.
For the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself.’
And with many other words he bore witness and continued to exhort them, saying, ‘Save yourselves from this crooked generation.’
So those who received his word were baptised, and there were added that day about three thousand souls.
“And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.
And awe came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles.
And all who believed were together and had all things in common.
And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need.
And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favour with all the people.
And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved” [*Acts 2:37-47*].
*/Then/*—the disciples cowered in a room fearing the wrath of those men who had crucified the Master.
*/Now/* there is a holy boldness where before there was timidity and fear.
*/Now/*—the same frightened disciples charge these people with the death of God’s Messiah.
This is true boldness!
Empowered by the Spirit of God these once frightened disciples boldly identify themselves as disciples of this despised Jesus, and if they did not so identify themselves their speech would betray them, for the same Spirit that had empowered Jesus now empowered them.
“When they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were uneducated, common men, they were astonished.
And they recognised that they had been with Jesus.
But seeing the man who was healed standing beside them, they had nothing to say in opposition” [*Acts 4:13, 14*].
The leaders were not alone in their boldness; each disciple, filled with the same Spirit, spoke with holy boldness and witnessed to the grace of God in Christ the Lord.
Consider the conditions set for the appointment of the first deacons.
“Brothers, pick out from among you seven men of good repute, full of the Spirit and of wisdom…  They chose Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit; and Philip, and Procorus, and Nicanor, and Timon, and Parmenas, and Nicolas a proselyte of Antioch.
These they set before the apostles, and they prayed and laid their hands on them.
“And the Word of God continued to increase, and the number of the disciples multiplied greatly in Jerusalem, and a great many of the priests became obedient to the faith.
“And Stephen, full of grace and power, was doing great wonders and signs among the people” [*Acts 6:3, 5-8*].
Holy boldness was not confined to a select few.
Rather the boldness displayed here is the heritage of each disciple of Christ and of all disciples.
“Those who were scattered went about preaching the Word.
/ /Philip went down to the city of Samaria and proclaimed to them the Christ.
/ /And the crowds with one accord paid attention to what was being said by Philip when they heard him and saw the signs that he did.
/ /For unclean spirits came out of many who were possessed, crying with a loud voice, and many who were paralysed of lame were healed.
/ /So there was much joy in that city” [*Acts 8:4-8*].
Paul, writing the saints at Corinth appealed to the anticipation of this power as he taught them in his first letter.
“When I came to you, brothers, [I] did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom.
For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.
And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling, and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God” [*1 Corinthians 2:1-5*].
The power of which I speak produced an Athanasius.
In the fourth century a.d., Athanasius defended the faith against the Arian heresy.
Arius, an eloquent man, had swayed the entire Christian world toward the declaration that Jesus was not very God.
Constantine, together with the whole Roman system, supported Arius in his error.
Athanasius, despite repeated exile, stood for the truth that Jesus is in very fact God in the flesh.
Together with a little handful of men, he prayed through the night, and on a day, Athanasius stood to defend the truth that Jesus is God.
He spoke in the power of the Holy Spirit, and the Nicene Council reasserted the faith that Jesus is very God in human flesh.
The power of which I speak produced a Savonarola who stood against the evil and corruption of ecclesiasticism in his day.
He turned one of the most influential cities in that day to righteousness, even though his boldness cost his life.
The power of which I speak produced a Bernard, that flaming evangelist of the Dark Ages, who spread the Word of God across the entire European continent.
That power of which I speak produced a Hubmier who stood for right in the face of severe persecution from both the Catholics and the Reformers, mightily influencing the reformation to move closer to the New Testament.
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