Hallelujah! Praise the Lord! That last hymn says “He is in the room; God is in the room”; your room can be here; your room can be your home; your room can be your life; but whatever that room is, God is there; so if the enemy is telling you that you can never make it, say to the enemy ‘God is in the room’.
Daniel was thrown into the lion’s den, they thought he was alone but God was in the room with him and he came out to testify. I don’t know how many of you are in the lion’s den situation today, I want to assure you this morning that God is in the room and you shall testify in the mighty name of Jesus.
The three Hebrew men were thrown in the fire, it was as if the fire was going to consume them but guess what? He was in the room, the fire did not touch them, rather, the fire became AC for them.
You are going through fire this morning, it looks as if the fire will burn you, brethren, God is in the room and you will testify in the mighty name of Jesus.
If you are here this morning because of the circumstances of life and you are contemplating suicide, I want to tell you this morning, brother, sister, God is in the room with you, don’t give up yet. You are going through depression and you think all is over, I’m not loved by anybody, God is in the room brethren, you will testify in the mighty name of Jesus.
Father in heaven, we want to thank You; King of glory, we want to bless Your holy name; thank You Lord because You are in the room; thank You because You are in our lives; thank You because You are here already this morning, Father, glory be to Your name forevermore.
We come before You and not before any man and we say Lord, do that which You alone can do this morning; speak to us; let Your will be done in our lives; glorify Your name now and forevermore in the mighty name of Jesus.
Father, I pray that after this day, let there be none of us that if at any time that we have to meet with You that we’ll come with You empty-handed in the mighty name of Jesus. Let us all have souls to show for our sojourn here on earth in the name of Jesus; make us mighty and supernatural witnesses for You, in Jesus marvelous name Lord we have prayed. Praise the Lord!
We welcome everybody to church this morning and we acknowledge our God and Father as the only source of our life and I also appreciate this opportunity that I have to stand here, to minister this morning; please turn with me to the Book of Acts 1.
While we are looking through that, I would like to remind us and to also invite us to the prayer chain for tomorrow; the theme is “I Will Not Let You Go”. You know that statement was made by Jacob – I will not let you go until you bless me, somebody will be blessed. Tomorrow at 6:30 in the evening, and I’d also like to use this opportunity to just ask us if you have not registered on our website, to please visit the website and register.
Brethren, the Holy Ghost Congress is at hand and the theme is “Divine Repositioning”. David was a shepherd boy but one day he became a king; somebody’s level will change. Date is December 4th – 10th at the Redemption City, but you can also follow online through the various platforms.
And I would also like to talk about the 2023 Family Weekend; everybody is a member of a family, so the 2023 Family Weekend is here again starting this Thursday, 16th and runs through till 19th, next week Sunday, please make up your mind that you will be part of this, everyone is welcome, everyone is invited.
Acts 1:8, “But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth”. This morning brethren, by the grace of God, we’ll be going through a message that is titled “Supernatural Witness” ; by way of background, the explosive growth drive of the mission, the Redeemed Christian Church of God, is been on and continues and the objective is to go and touch the world in such a way that we’ll be disciples of as many people in the world, that out of this activity, by the year 2032, we will have over 40 million people as the minimum as members of the Redeemed Christian Church of God.
It may look something out of the world but it is possible by the grace of God, so let us key into it. I’m following an outline that is given by the national; this will be done in all the Redeemed Christian Church of God throughout this month of November, then I’ve added a bit to the outline, praise the living Jesus!
So by way of introduction, in that passage, before Jesus Christ was taken up, there was a word that came that ‘the Father will visit you and give you the Holy Ghost and then you can move on with it’, that’s Jesus Christ talking to the disciples, and indeed in line with His words, the Holy Spirit came and then the people received power and began to do things. But in our text of today, Jesus Christ knew that power was coming but He also had to tell the people the purpose of that power.
I will tell you the reason why He needed to tell the people the purpose of the power; look at me here, if I become the President of this country, you know that’s a higher level of power, chances are that I’ll start thinking of things I don’t think about now. Let’s take Joseph for example, he was a slave, when he became the Prime Minister in Egypt, chances are that at one time or the other he would think of inviting his former bosses – Potiphar and his wife, and say come, I remember on a particular day, you did not give me food, you starved me, for that, take six strokes of the cane; you know power can intoxicate, but Joseph didn’t do that anyway.
So Jesus Christ was saying here to us, before this power comes, disciples, come, this is the purpose of this power, so let’s read Acts 1:8 again, and when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, there will be power and this is what you need to do with the power; ““But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth”. If you are going to adopt that today; ‘and you shall be witnesses unto me’, starting from your home here in Lekki and your neighborhood; your local government, Eti-Osa, Lagos state, Nigeria and the whole world even as you fly across the globe, saying power would come and indeed power did come, praise the living Jesus.
So He told the disciples aforehand the purpose of the power that will come is to witness, and the reason for witness is so that the work that Jesus Christ started, the disciples will continue it, hallelujah!
The power that you and I (as children of God) received the day we became born again; the day you become born again, the Holy Spirit comes into you and you’ll receive that same power, but what many of us don’t even know is that you have that power in you. If you are a genuine child of God, if you are a Christian and you have the Holy Spirit in you, there is latent power in you, that you can lay hands on the sick and they will recover; that you can speak to the mountain and say ‘go’, and it will go; so many people do not know and they do not use it, but some even know, but they misappropriate or misuse or abuse the power, but Jesus Christ is telling us today, that power is to do with lesson, praise the living Jesus.
What does it mean to be a witness? According to Cambridge dictionary, as a noun, the witness is someone who provides or gives information in a court of law about a person or an event. You know judges, magistrates are wonderful people, they are very knowledgeable people, but you know they will not make pronouncement on any case without taking witnesses, and the reason for that is so that when they make a pronouncement, it won’t be controvertible, that this is what has happened, for this reason, I’m making this pronouncement.
The account of witnesses is very important. As a verb, if you look at a witness, it means to see, to hear and know by your personal presence, you can then say ‘I saw it’, so that which you saw becomes a witness; ‘I was there when it happened’, ‘I know this man because he lives in my neighborhood’, that is something you do. So in a simple language, as witnesses for Christ now, we are meant to testify to the world what we know about Jesus Christ; so you are meant to say to the world, ‘I know Him because I have an encounter with Him’, ‘I have received Him’, ‘I can testify of His goodness’, ‘this and this had happen in my life and I can tell the world about Him’, that’s all that He wants us to do – to witness about Him.
I know that in the world today, we have different types of witnesses, there are people who witness to things they do not know about and they do not see, that’s not what we were called to do; there are people who witness and exaggerate, like sales persons, ‘look at this product, it’s called something dol, it can take care of headache, leg ache, backache, hunger, even it can provide accommodation, say I witness to it because I’ve used it’.
A couple of weeks ago, I went to buy an equipment and I was looking for a particular brand, I didn’t see it, so the salesman convinced me and said buy this one too, I said no, I don’t know about it; he said I use it in my house, it’s very good; on his word, I bought it, when I got home, I found out what it was, that is not the witness that God wants us to do. He wants us to witness to the world what we know, what we have seen and experienced about Him.
For example, there was a man in John 9 who was born blind, before you know it, he had an encounter with Jesus Christ and he received his sight; when people saw him, an argument started, is it him? Is it not him? Long story short, they said let us go to him and settle this matter, and he said yes, I am the one, a man called Jesus Christ saw me, put something in my eyes and said go and wash and I just started seeing, that is a witness. When the lawmakers heard about it, they said it’s not true, call me the man, the man told them; call the parents, they told them; they said how can a man heal on a Sabbath day, it’s not a man of God, he’s a wicked man; he said all that I know is that once I was blind, but now I see; that’s what we are meant to go and do to the world, to say to them, ‘once, I was blind, but now I see’.
So very quickly let us look at what should then be the attributes of a witness; as a witness, what is expected if us, what are we supposed to do?
A witness is one who confirms a fact or gives evidence to validate that something really happened; you give evidence and say this really happened. For example, in the Book of 2nd Corinthians 8: 1 -5, but my focus will be on verse 3; Apostle Paul was saying to the people that these people of Macedonia, I know them, they are Christians, they are good people.
Verse 3, he said ‘I bear record’, that is a witness; I bear record that indeed, they are Christians, that’s what we are meant to do, evidence of what we know or what we have seen, praise the living Jesus!
What else should a witness do? A witness must have an encounter with the person that he or she is to witness about. Like I said earlier, some of those salesmen have never used those products, but they would come and say ha, this is the best product in town, if you don’t buy it now, you miss, never used it. You know a few times you go to the supermarket and say which one should I choose, and the girl tells you that take this one and you’ll say why, she’ll say that’s the one I’m using, can you afford it? But a witness in this case must witness about your encounter with Jesus, praise the living Jesus.
In the Book of John 11: 45 & 46, when Jesus Christ got to the tomb of Lazarus and raised him out from dead, there were people there apart from Mary and Martha who saw this and these same people went out. 45 Then many of the Jews which came to Mary, and had seen the things which Jesus did, believed on him. 46 But some of them went their ways to the Pharisees, and told them what things Jesus had done. They went to say it because they had encountered it, praise the Lord!
What else should a witness do or what else is an attribute of a witness? One or more witnesses are required for a fact to be established, 2nd Corinthians 13:1, the Bible tells us “This is the third time I am coming to you. In the mouth of two or three witnesses shall every word be established”; so you can imagine if there is no witness out there to the world, how would they believe? We need to go out there, we are more than two here, we are more than three, we need to go out there and tell the world about our Savior.
Number four attribute: a witness bears testimonies of his or her own experience or encounters; he bears testimonies of what he has experienced, John 12: 17 -19, similar to the other one; after that verse 11’s encounter, verse 17 says “The people therefore that was with him when he called Lazarus out of his grave, and raised him from the dead, bare record”; they bear record all over the place and said this is the Savior.
We have heard testimonies here, we have seen things happen, we have heard the word and we confess the word but many people keep it to themselves, we are expected to take it out to the world.
Number five: Jesus Christ is a faithful and great witness, as a matter of fact, the greatest witness is Jesus Christ, because Jesus Christ came to witness to us about the Father. The disciples came up to Him and said, show us the Father, and He says, if you have seen Me, you have seen the Father because everything that I do is what the Father tells Me; He’s saying I’m a witness of the Father, so He’s our greatest witness, and then when He was leaving this world, He handed the baton to us to continue, but are we continuing is the question today.
Number six: a witness is an ambassador of what the person he or she is witnessing about lived for. If you are witnessing about someone or about something and you don’t believe in it, you are not a good witness. Somebody who is not saved, who is not born again and when we are doing neighborhood evangelism is carrying tracts and going about, somebody in your neighborhood will see you and say you, among them? I doubt it. So you must witness about something that you yourself believe in and you live it, you must be an ambassador of the person that you are witnessing.
2nd Corinthian 5: 18 – 20, the Bible tells us that God calls us into the ministry of reconciliation; He has called us and we are meant to call other people because we are already there; and verse 20 says now we are ambassadors for Christ, let’s go out there and represent Him.
Number seven: a witness is to deliver others from their problem. Believe me brethren, anyone who does not know Jesus Christ has problems, he’s in darkness, praise God! And what a witness is meant to do is to go and shine the light of God into that darkness so that the people may see that they indeed are in darkness and come into light.
Proverbs 14: 25, the Bible says “A true witness delivereth souls: but a deceitful witness speaketh lies”. When you are a true witness, you tell them Jesus Christ did this for me, the person would be like is it possible? Let me tell you, there are many people who think that their cases are so bad that nothing can be done to make them better and they believe this because the devil makes them believe it, but if somebody now goes and says once upon a time, I was like you, my case was even worse than yours but God found me, God delivered me and today, I am redeemed, you too can be redeemed; what do you think will happen to that person? He would say do you mean it? You’ll say try it and you will see it – a witness delivers people from their problems.
The next part of the outline says who are we to witness or who are we witnessing about? I talked about the salesman; I’m also a salesman in a way, so nothing against salesmen. There are many adverts all over the place that testify of how good a certain product or service is, and what many of these people are doing is just to save their organizations or save their jobs, I’ve been there.
In 2004, the Central Bank Governor then, Professor Charles Soludo, came up to say all banks must capitalize to 25 billion naira minimum – capital base; at that time, most banks had less than 1 billion, so they needed to raise funds and the owners could not bring the additional from their pockets, where would it come from? Going out all about to look for funds. I went everywhere in the western region looking for funds, I was witnessing for my organization saying this is the best bank, put your equity here, you will get a better return; that was witnessing – even on Sundays, even in the market places; many of us would do that in the secular, why would we not do it for Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior?
The person we are meant to witness is Jesus Christ, Acts 1:8 tells us that clearly, and the witnessing first and foremost brethren, is not about a denomination of a church, it’s not about Redeemed is better than this or that, first and foremost, we witness Jesus Christ, it is when the soul is won that you’ll direct them to where they will fellowship, but many of us, we’ve not even cut the fish, we are already cleaning it, you will say ‘come to Redeemed, come to Redeemed’; first win the soul.
Why should we be His witness?
You have experienced Him, at the minimum, you have heard about Him and you believed what you heard because once upon a time, somebody witnessed to you.
In Acts 22: 12 – 15, the Bible tells us about a certain man called Ananias; Saul then, was sent to meet him and part of what he was saying to Saul – after contending, Saul received his sight and he was told that Saul is meant to be a witness (verse 15), For thou shalt be his witness. So when Saul had that encounter and he knew that he was called to be a witness, Saul never closed his mouth. Out of the 27 books in the New Testament, Saul wrote 13 and those books are all about witnessing about Jesus Christ.
Brethren, we have all been saved for a purpose, let us go out there like Saul and witness Jesus Christ and not close our mouths because we have experienced Him.
Number two reason why we must go out there to witness: because we have a divine command, Matthew 28: 19 & 20, the Bible says ‘Go ye therefore into the world and teach them” – ‘go’, ‘teach them’ and ‘make disciples of them’; it was a command, it wasn’t a debate, should we do it or should we not do it. And if you know that you are indeed a child of God, a Christian and you have such a command, would you not rather obey it? Because the Bible says you are My own if you obey My commandments. We have been commanded to go out there to win souls, so let us go and obey this divine commandment.
Number three reason why we must go and witness: all of us, Christians (Christians in this term means born again, not Christian by religion), our primary ministry is the ministry of reconciliation, 2nd Corinthians 5: 18 – 20; God reconciled us to Himself and then asks us to go out there and reconcile others and commissioned us as His ambassadors.
The Bible tells us also in the Book of 1st Peter, it says once upon a time we were in darkness, but He brought us out of darkness into His marvelous light, then we should go forth and show forth His light. So we have a ministry of reconciliation, if you are not doing that, you are not fulfilling your mandate as a Christian.
Number four: to witness, which involves preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ has been entrusted, not to everybody, only to those who have been commissioned, only to those who have been born again, who have been redeemed, 1st Thessalonians 2: 1 – 4, but our focus is on verse 4, “But as we were allowed of God to be put in trust with the gospel”, not everybody is put in trust of the gospel, even so we speak; we have been entrusted with the gospel of Jesus Christ, let’s go out there and speak because if we do not speak, there’s no vacuum in nature, you’ll find people who do not have this trust – preaching the gospel and misleading people.
Brethren, this morning, the task before us, the explosive growth drive which in a way is derived from the great commission to grow from where we are today, about 3 million to 40 million by 2032, we must witness to everyone around us about Jesus Christ.
The harvest is ripe indeed, laborers are few and this harvest is wasting away, the devil is having a field day. The King’s business requires haste, let’s start now; the power to witness has been given unto us, you have it in you, the boldness and the power to pray for the sick and they will recover, it’s already there if you are a child of God and you are living right with God; we must be deliberate about it, witness at all times, witness Jesus to everybody, witness Jesus under every circumstance and everywhere; all we need to do is as simple as sharing testimonies about Jesus Christ.
I will give you an example: many years ago, I was in a training program, so we were meant to talk about some personal things; so what I remembered to talk about then was that my father had stroke and his life was under threat, and I remembered going to God and said God, please, heal him; I didn’t stop at that, I said at least, give him 20 more years to live so that we’ll know that he’s healed. That was ten years after the incident; you know I didn’t know what I was saying, after that session, one of my colleagues came to me and said are you sure? Did this happen? I said yes, my father; he said okay, he would try it too, that his father also has a similar issue. You never know, all you need to do is just to share the testimony of what Jesus Christ has done for you, and if you are too shy, just say ‘Jesus loves you’, and the person would say, do you mean Jesus loves me with this my wretchedness? Then that gives you an opportunity to talk about Jesus Christ.
I would like that we put tracts on the way out when we are going out from this service so that we can pick as many and used it in addition to our various platforms that we have, praise the living Jesus!
As I conclude, Jesus Christ is the original witness, He witnessed the Father; the disciples testified of Jesus Christ; the disciples received the Holy Ghost and after that was the birth of the church. Brethren, the growth of the church came from witnessing; in Acts 2: 37 – 47, after Peter witnessed, just told people about Jesus Christ, chronicled the things about the life of Jesus Christ, 3,000 people gave their lives to Jesus Christ.
Then in chapter 3, after healing the man who was lame, who was at the Beautiful Gate for 40 years, there was commotion and questions everywhere, he had an opportunity also to reel out the chronicles about Jesus Christ, 5,000 people gave their lives, that was how the church grew. Brethren, we must grow, we must witness about Jesus Christ and the Lord has already given us that boldness.
There is a power that comes with being a child of God and that is the in-filling of the Holy Ghost; this makes the words of ordinary men like us to become powerful words; this makes just the prayer that you think is ordinary but is backed up with power, because you have the in-filling of the Holy Spirit, however, if you do not have Jesus Christ, you cannot have the Holy Spirit in you; if you have never accepted Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, you can’t have the Holy Spirit, you can’t manifest His power.
So before we pray and close, if you are here this morning, you want to be part of our great commission, I invite you to come and accept Christ as your Lord and Savior, that is the beginning and then you can have the Holy Spirit in you and begin to manifest this power as well. And by the way, if you refuse and say you don’t want to be part of this, be it known to you also brethren that even what I’ve been saying in the past few minutes is also a witness; on the last day, this account will be brought up and say on a certain day, Jesus Christ was witnessed to you, you did not accept. You don’t want to be condemned on the last day…
[Altar call]
We are going to pray and say Father, I receive boldness to step out and witness Jesus Christ to the world around me in the mighty name of Jesus. I receive the boldness, the boldness to step out, the boldness to witness Jesus Christ to my world, I receive that boldness now in the mighty name of Jesus. I receive the boldness in the name of Jesus, thank You heavenly Father, in Jesus mighty name we have prayed.
We are going to pray and say Father, make me a true witness… before we take that prayer point, it’s loaded, it’s saying when I go out and say I’m witnessing Jesus Christ, people will not laugh at me and say who are you, that I will indeed be Your witness. Father, please make me a true witness for You; make me a true witness for You Lord, in the mighty name of Jesus. Father, please make me a true witness; thank You heavenly Father, in Jesus mighty name we prayed.
