Acts 1:8 - to be a witness/martyres

Short teachings from Hillcrest Church further exploring Sunday's teachings.

Transcript

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Hey, how are you doing? Hope you are well. Tim here, and we are uh diving deep into Living Scent. So I wanted to share a few comments on something that came up in the in the sermon on uh Sunday and maybe just kind of unpack it a little further so that folks kind of understood the connection. So in the message, uh Carlos shared uh that in uh Greek the word for uh uh the word for witness, it looks like the word um martyr, so martyres, martures. Uh there's it's actually it's this whole word group, marturion, uh martyr, martyres. It depends on like if you're a witness, if you're witnessing, um, if you witnessed, um, or even like uh in a sense, we don't really have a word for like um the testimony, so like the testifier, your testifying, or the testimony. Maybe we don't really have a word for witness, the the you know, in uh English for that, kind of the substance shared. So, and there's uh there's it's all this kind of um martyr uh word group in Greek. And um Carla just noticed uh that that is we, you know, in English we get our word martyr um from uh that Greek uh root. And I wanted to just kind of explore that a little bit more. One, I wanted to avoid the confusion. Um, you know, when Jesus says, uh, you know, Jesus says, um, you will be my witnesses. What he's not saying, so what he's not saying is you will be my martyrs. Um that's not uh what he's uh telling to the disciples. Now uh quite a few of these disciples, these apprentices of Jesus do end up um being killed for their faith in Jesus. But uh in the usage at that point in time, um this term Artures, it simply meant uh to bear witness, um, to to uh testify to um uh the truth of like fat like the events to test, you know, so they were gonna bear witness to the the fact of his resurrection, his life, death, and resurrection, and also to bear witness, to testify, to give witness to the fact, uh their conviction that he was the Messiah and King of the world. And so um, in one sense, they're bearing witness to um uh kind of observable events, in another sense they're bearing witness to their um kind of conclusions of what these events mean. Um, but in none of those senses does it mean dying, right? Uh so that's in in the original uses, this is what it means. And um and throughout, and we get we get this uh this idea uh throughout the New Testament of his followers bearing witness. And I think in the next episode I'll talk a little bit more about that, of how common uh that idea is that followers of Jesus uh they testify or their their walking-talking evidence of uh his his rescue and his lordship in their lives. Now, so what is the connection then to um what is the connection then to uh our English word martyr and the idea of someone um the idea of someone dying for their faith? Well, over what happens is over the next couple centuries, this uh um what happens over the next couple centuries, followers of Jesus who bear witness to his um rescue of their lives and who bear witness to him being their king, they uh do end up in the Roman Empire having to die for their faith. Because of their witness to Jesus, their witness of Jesus' kingship in their lives, they do die for their faith. And so uh you end up, it's kind of this evolution of this idea where the ultimate, the ultimate way someone could bear witness to Jesus rescuing them and being their king, is that that person would bear witness to the point of even dying, declaring the truth of their testimony, declaring the truth that Jesus is uh died and resurrected, declaring the truth that they are convinced that he is the Savior and Lord of the world. And um and so because uh uh because that was kind of the ultimate way one could bear witness, what ends up happening is that term martyr begins getting attached to the idea of bearing witness to the point of death. We actually see, we begin to see in some of the kind of the some places in the New Testament where it begins pointing in this direction just a little bit. Um I'll just point out a couple uh a couple places. So, like in Revelation 1.5, um Jesus is called. Let me just skip there. Revelation 1.5, Jesus is called, who is the faithful, uh, and this revelation is from Jesus Christ, who is the faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead, and ruler of all the kings of the earth. Um, and so there you see Jesus is the faithful witness. Of course, he's the witness who gave um his life in Revelation 2.13. And Revelation, of course, one of the latest books to be written in the New Testament, and so you begin to see maybe where this word is beginning to shift its meaning a little bit. Revelation 2.13. Um, yet do you did not renounce your faith in me, even in the days of Antimus, my faithful witness, who was put to death in your city where Satan lives. And so there, Antipas, um, this early Christian who lost his life for his faith in Jesus, is described as a witness who lost his life for bearing witness uh to Jesus. And so um what ends up happening is this uh this word that originally simply meant uh to give testimony to the facts of something, to give testimony to the conviction of the truth of something, it ends up shifting towards to give testimonies, to bear witness to the point of suffering and even dying for it. Um and I think there's something quite profound in that that um I mean a conviction, uh like a conviction is ultimately like the depth of a conviction, you could say, is measured by your willingness to suffer for it. It doesn't mean now, uh that doesn't mean you go out looking for suffering for it. I mean you can be you can be you can believe believe things wholeheartedly, and you never need to suffer for them. You don't you don't go looking for that pain. Uh but I do think one measure of the depth of a person's conviction is the depth that they're willing uh to suffer for the sake for the truth of that conviction. And we see this um and we see this trajectory trajectory in the in the New Testament that um these these uh followers of Jesus they bore witness to the fact of his death and resurrection and to their conviction of what that meant about who Jesus was, uh, who Jesus is, um, their place in the world, their salvation, um, and that they were willing to bear witness to that, some of them, not all of them, but some of them to the point of giving their very lives and the depth of their conviction. I mean, and and just you know, for the trustworthiness of the good news, I am deeply convinced by the fact that um it is actually uh many of those disciples who uh claim to be eyewitnesses of the resurrected Jesus actually ended up dying for their faith. That is deeply convincing to me of the um the trustworthiness of the resurrection accounts. And then even into the Roman Empire, um it was actually uh when you when you look at the history of the Roman Empire and the conversion of the Roman Empire uh coming uh to be Christianized, people becoming in faith. There's a famous saying, uh, the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church. That it was actually it was actually these uh pagan Romans seeing followers of Jesus who were willing to give their lives for faith in Jesus. That was one of the things that ultimately convinced uh thousands and thousands and thousands of Roman citizens uh and non-citizen slaves all sorts in the Roman Empire to give their lives to trust in Jesus too. So the the power of their witness uh came through their willingness to suffer for the truth of their witness. And so I find this uh convicting, compelling, inspiring, and deeply challenging. And um yeah, and it too is part of what it means to live since grace and peace.