THE WITNESS
1 John
5:9-10 We accept man's testimony, but God's testimony is
greater because it is the testimony of God, which he has given about his Son.
Anyone who believes in the Son of God has this testimony in his heart.
The
court room was disturbingly silent. The jurors leaned forward in anticipation.
The courtroom observers sat with their eyes fixed straight ahead. The attorneys
and judge sat braced, like stone pillars awaiting the earthquake. The witness
was about to give the chilling details of the crime scene. He was going to give
facts that could not be discounted or disputed. He had been at the scene,
hidden in the adjacent woods. He and another had seen the entire event unfold
and were now ready to tell everyone the truth. The jury could not possibly
dispute their eye witness claims. The end to the trial was drawing
breathtakingly close.
In our struggle to present the Gospel as witnesses of
Christ, we are faced with a strange problem. First, we were not their at the
scene when Christ performed his miracles. We did not know the blind man before
he received his sight. The empty hands and growling bellies of the 3000 people
that had followed Christ to the hillside were neither seen nor heard by us.
When he was betrayed by a friend we were not reclining with him at the dinner
meal. When he was lead through the streets, carrying his cross, when he was
stripped, flogged and nailed to the cross we know no one who was there. We have
no tangible evidence or proof for these events.
Our second dilemma is that the written testimony
available about Christ is one of millions of books available to our audiences.
In our modern world truth is being presented by ways of television, radio,
internet, books, magazines, etc. People are bombarded with more information for
living than any people in human history’s past. Technology is threatening to
strangle the very necks of humanity it was designed to bring life to. How can
these dilemmas be overcome? What are we to do in presenting the truth to a lost
and wandering world?
The truth is not found in artifacts from the past nor
words written by mortal men. Our witness is God himself. Through us to a dying
world comes God’s expert testimony. God has placed the true testimony about
Christ in our hearts. We know the truth and it has set us free. We are the
witnesses whose hearts have been overwritten
by the finger of God to provide the silent, anticipating and stone
pillared world new life.
