You Shall Receive Power

Acts 1:4-8. This sermon was preached by Pastor Marty Bonner on Sunday, May 17, 2026.

Next Sunday is Pentecost Sunday, so we are going to focus on why the outpouring of the Holy Spirit was so important following the resurrection of Jesus.

Let’ s look at our passage.

Power to be a witness

These are the last moments that Jesus is with his disciples before ascending into heaven to sit at the right hand of the Father.  He had earlier given them the mission of taking the good news about his work of salvation to the ends of the earth (Matthew 28:18-20).  Yet now he makes a stipulation about this.  He commands them “not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the Promise of the Father…”

We should notice that Jesus wants us to receive this promise of the Father before we go about the mission he has given us.  It is clear that he is referring to the promise of the outpouring of God’s Spirit upon all believers.

Of course, the very next words out of their mouths are about the Kingdom being restored to Israel.  Is it now, Lord?  Jesus tells them that the Father is not giving that information to them.  They need to focus on receiving the Holy Spirit and accomplishing the mission Jesus has given them.

Notice that the Holy Spirit will give them power, and they will be “my witnesses.”  There are many ways in which the Holy Spirit empowers us.  One of these ways is to make us a powerful witness of Jesus.  In this sense, we are a particular kind of evidence for Jesus, a personal witness.

There are a couple of ways that we are his witnesses.  The first is that we are his witnesses because we give testimony about him.  He is the object that we have witnessed or the content of that to which we are testifying.

The world would not know who Jesus is, what he has done, and why it is so important, without someone who knows about it going to them and telling them.

This is Paul’s point in Romans 10:13-15.  He takes an Old Testament truth, “All who call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved,” and reverse engineers it.  How can people call upon the Lord and be saved if they don’t believe in him?  How are they going to believe in him if they haven’t heard about him?  How will they hear about him if no one tells them?  How can someone tell them if they haven’t been sent?  Jesus is the beginning of this whole series.  He sends all of his disciples to go to the world around them with the good news of his salvation.

They needed to wait because the Holy Spirit was going to be poured out on a particular day, the Feast of Pentecost.  Why that day?  Pentecost was a celebration for the harvest so far and the harvest to come.  In this case, Jesus is bringing in a spiritual harvest of people from Israel and the nations who will hear the good news, believe, and come into his kingdom.

We are also his witnesses in the sense that we belong to him and are doing a work for him.  In fact, Jesus is witnessing to others through us.  This spiritual dimension to our witness should not be overlooked.  It goes beyond you and me.  This witness is more than what we say and do.

When we share God’s terms of salvation with a lost world, it really is the Lord Jesus working through us to draw people to himself.  God can lead us, but He also works beyond us and in ways that we cannot see.  I may be nobody, but some people can only be reached by a nobody who shares the greatest somebody in the universe with them.  Can you be God’s nobody and trust Him to do what you cannot do?  This is part of the empowering of the Holy Spirit.
Jesus truly is sending us with a task, but He is also truly working with us and through us by the Holy Spirit.  The answer is not to shrink back and say that God will do it.  Nor is the answer to try and do it all by yourself.  We must give our all to this mission but also trust the Holy Spirit to do His part.  The job is too big for us in ourselves.  We need the presence of the Holy Spirit in our life to do this.

We are to give witness through what we say

One way in which we are witnesses is by our active vocal testimony.  The Holy Spirit can give us boldness to speak when we are afraid.  We see this with the apostle Peter who was afraid to stand with Christ on the night of his betrayal.  Later, a Spirit-filled Peter would boldly speak in the temple compound, calling his people and Israel’s leaders to repentance.

The Holy Spirit can also help us with giving us the things to say.  The preaching and teaching of the apostles was written down so that we can hear these inspired words.  Yet, the Holy Spirit can give us specific leading in what to say to people.  We need to learn to listen to Him and boldly speak it.

The Holy Spirit can also help in the heart and the mind of the person who receives our testimony.  You may feel His presence and working, but then again, you may not.  The main thing is to trust that the Spirit is always helping even when you don’t see it.

There is a part of our testimony that is not so much ours, but that of the original eyewitnesses to Jesus.  This cannot be reduplicated.  No one alive today can give testimony to seeing Jesus.  Yet, we can pass along this eyewitness testimony.

Tens of thousands of people witnessed the life, teachings, and death of Jesus.  Over 500 people witnessed that Jesus was alive after his death and burial.  Acts 1:3 speaks to the infallible proofs that Jesus gave to these people.  Some of those proofs were simply that he was alive.  Some of those proofs were that he was more than a mortal.  Jesus showed Thomas the crucifixion marks on his body.  They touched him.  He ate fish.  Jesus was not an apparition or spirit.  Yet, he was more than a mortal man.  He appeared and disappeared in their midst when they were locked in a place.  He ascended into the heavens in front of their eyes.  These eyewitness accounts were written down so that they could be verified and used to test others who claimed to have testimony about Jesus.

By the beginning of the 2^nd century, the last of those eyewitnesses were dying.  This is why the Bible is so important.  It is an eyewitness record of those who were there.  This is also why the Bible is so attacked in our day and age.  The devil doesn’t like the Bible.  People who love to sin don’t like the Bible.  Even my own flesh turns away from these words without the help of the Holy Spirit.  It is important that we have the help of the Holy Spirit to share the testimony of these Apostles contained in the New Testament.

However, you don’t have to be an eyewitness to experience the spiritual truths that Jesus has made available to us.  We are the spiritual offspring of those original disciples.  Just as the words and work of Jesus transformed their life, so our lives have been transformed by that as well.  Salvation is not simply a legal distinction.  It is a living experience where the Spirit of God transforms our heart and mind.  We go from being a people in slavery to sin to being a people living out the righteousness of Jesus.

The Holy Spirit helps our witness by fueling the transformation of our lives.  This personal transformation also gives zeal and passion to our testimony as well.  In short, we bear witness to the saving power of Jesus.  Jesus truly saves those who believe in him.  He saves them from their sin and failures.  Of course, we see some of that happening right now.  Some of it we will see happening in the future (I’m not perfected yet).  Yet, we are following the Perfect One who is the perfecter of our faith.  Only you can tell the testimony of what faith in Jesus has done for you.  We need to seek the help of the Holy Spirit to empower transformation from the inside out.  Then, we need to share it with others.

We are to give witness by what we do

Our witness is not just by our words.  In fact, we must be careful that our life is not discordant with our words, or the words of our Lord Jesus.  Hypocrisy only interferes with our ability to witness for Jesus.

In this sense, people will see our lives.  Our actions and overall life will testify for us.  Both verbal testimony and demonstration testimony are necessary in our lives.  We cannot do one and neglect the other.

This is why the Bible records the experience and subsequent lives of those who believed in Jesus.  Peter became a man with a spiritual backbone.  Saul of Tarsus became a follower of Jesus who would put his life in jeopardy in order to bring the good news about Jesus to those who had never heard.

This is part of the testimony in their day and age.  Yes, they said things, but their actions and lives powerfully underscored these words.  When Stephen was stoned for giving testimony to the Lord Jesus, it may have scared some people away from following Jesus.  Yet, he was only the first of many who gave testimony with their lives that Jesus was worth losing your physical life.  They faced persecution, torture, and death.  When Saul of Tarsus became a Christian, it shocked everyone.  Some Christians feared that it was a ploy to discover who they all were.  Unbelievers believed that he had gone mad.  However, no one could counter the claim that Saul of Tarsus was no longer who he used to be.  The evidence of his life before and after spoke volumes about the kind of man he used to be and who he became once he believed upon Jesus.

1 Corinthians 6:9-11 says, “9 Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, 10 nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, will inherit the kingdom of God. 11 And such were some of you; but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God.”

There is real power working in this.  Many of these Corinthians used to be caught up in various types of sin.  If Jesus had remained in the grave, we would not be reading these words today.  If no one’s life was ever transformed by these words and the Holy Spirit who works through them, we wouldn’t be here today.

A transformed life is our biggest testimony.  It is God’s will for you to be transformed by the truth of His Word and the power of His Holy Spirit.  Thus, we need to expect this, desire this, pray for this, and cooperate with the Holy Spirit as He empowers this in our lives.

We need to pray for the Spirit’s leading in our daily lives.  What are the ways in which I need to be transformed to become more like Jesus?  Only a person who is in the Bible, in prayer, and wrestling with their sinful flesh by the help of the Holy Spirit can give testimony of a life that is being transformed.

May God help us to rest in His gracious work of transformation in our life and to know His peace day by day.

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