Acts: Be My Witnesses | Josh Harrison
Last week marked the continuation of our journey through the Book of Acts, with Josh guiding us through an exploration, not merely of what the Church did, but what the early Church believed about themselves, their purpose, and the world they were sent to transform.
For those accustomed to church as it is today—with its traditions, routines, and sometimes unexamined assumptions—this series acts as a kind of back-to-basics reset. What does it actually mean to be the Church in its truest sense? And how might the original vision for the Church reorient our present convictions and practices? As Josh contends, these are not armchair questions. They are vital, living ones, animating any authentic church planting effort—or, for that matter, the daily living of any follower of Jesus.
The Church’s True Beginning: Mission, Not Maintenance
It’s easy, Josh observes, for church communities to drift. Over time, we collect habits, structures, and perhaps even a kind of spiritual inertia. But why did Jesus actually come? A myriad of answers could be given, but one often overlooked is this: Jesus came to establish the Church—a community charged with both continuing his work and living as his body in the world.
Acts chapter 1, verses 1-11, is the focus. Here, the disciples, convinced that now—post-resurrection—was the time for Jesus to restore Israel and conclude history, find Jesus giving them a thoroughly unsatisfying (if not bewildering) answer: “It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority.” Or, to paraphrase Josh, Jesus says, “That’s none of your business.” Their anxious fixation is met with a gentle redirection. Jesus is indeed establishing his kingdom, but not according to the disciples’ timelines or expectations.
The Gift and the Mission
Instead, Jesus gives two things: a gift and a mission. The gift is the Holy Spirit—an idea which, Josh reminds us, was as mysterious and unsettling to the disciples as it might be to many of us. Without the Holy Spirit, the Church simply cannot be the Body of Christ. Programs, buildings, sermons, and strategies, for all their utility, are empty unless animated by the Spirit’s power. A. W. Tozer’s haunting line—if the Holy Spirit left, 95% of today’s church activity could carry on, but the early Church would have ground to a halt—is cited to drive home the point. Even our most vibrant forms collapse into a kind of spiritual performance art apart from the Spirit.
But the gift isn’t meant to make us comfortable or insular; it empowers the mission. And the mission is not simply to “do witnessing” but to “be witnesses”—people so marked by the reality of the resurrection that hope, not despair, becomes the air we breathe. As Josh puts it, “Every once in a while you see something so extraordinary that this is now my life. My life is now telling this story.” The resurrection is that event.
Witnesses in Motion
The call is not to rootedness but to movement. Witnessing starts wherever we find ourselves (“Jerusalem”) but radiates outward—crossing cultural, social, and even geographical lines: “Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” The mission is not a distant, specialist calling; it is the daily task of every disciple, wherever they are. When God moves us on, as he did with the first disciples, we simply keep bearing witness to hope wherever we land.
But it must begin here, now—in our families, neighborhoods, workplaces, friendships. Mission, Josh notes, is not just for “over there.” It is first for “right here.” Actually living out resurrection hope reorients our mourning, our use of resources, our relationships, and our vision for the future. As witnesses, hope is both our message and our manner.
Four Key Lessons from This Sermon
The Holy Spirit is Essential: The early Church lived with a day-to-day dependence on the Spirit. “Without the Holy Spirit, there is no Church,” Josh Harrison insists. All good things—programs, planning, even passionate worship—amount to nothing if we are not empowered by Him.
Our Business Is Not Control: Like the first disciples, we often fixate on our agendas, anxieties, and the desire for clarity or control. Jesus, however, reminds us that the future belongs to the Father—and our energies are better spent waiting in trust and focusing on the task he has actually given us.
We Are Called to Be Witnesses of Hope: To be a witness isn’t simply to recount facts but to live a hope-infused life in public. Our neighbors, seeing us live in light of resurrection, will ask where our hope comes from—it’s then that we are ready to give a reason (and not before).
The Mission Starts Here and Does Not End: Witnessing doesn’t require a plane ticket. It starts in the “six square feet” around you, but it will inevitably call for movement—outward, across boundaries, toward people not like us. The story of hope must not stay at home.
In all of this, Josh invites us to lay down what is not our concern and to walk boldly as Spirit-empowered witnesses. The kingdom comes through hope-filled, everyday people living the resurrection, wherever they are. That is, and ever will be, the work of the Church.
