Introduction

• Statler and Waldorf
  • Muppet Show
  • Sit in the balcony and criticize
• Funny, amusing but ultimately not very helpful
  • What makes people like that?
    • Insecurities and ignorance
      • Not confident in own abilities
      • Not fully informed as to how to assist
    • Christianity seems confusing or complex
      • Karl Bart wrote CD, 10 volumes
      • Bible is difficult, takes time
      • Service seems to cut into our free time
        • Commitment free
      • But it isn’t, not really. It’s easy.
        • Witnessing

Read Scripture

The Problem of Legislation, criticizing and mockery

• Problem – called to be witnesses, in our insecurities and lack of knowledge, we end up silent or, worse, legislative.
  • Enforced morality creates strong taboos
    • Forbidden fruit
    • Prohibition Era in America
      • Good idea, awful execution, creates forbidden fruit
    • Critical
      • Biblical warrant against it.
        • Doesn’t mean it isn’t wrong, it just means it isn’t our place to require things for others.
      • Doesn’t help
    • Mockery
      • When we assume the other side is filled with nothing but dolts, we intensify their dislike of us, and our revulsion of them.
    • We are called to be Witnesses

Witnessing

• It’s rather easy to do, isn’t it? You don’t need a degree or special training.
• You simply need to say aloud what you’ve known and experienced. Simple, right? 
• What it takes to be a witness
  • A Witness share what they know
    • Tell the truth
      • Acts 2:32—God has raised this Jesus to life, and we are all witnesses of the fact.
      • Acts 3:15—You killed the author of life, but God raised him from the dead. We are witnesses of this.
      • Acts 10:39-40—We are witnesses of everything he did in the country of the Jews and in Jerusalem. They killed him by hanging him on a tree, but God raised him from the dead on the third day and caused him to be seen.
      • Acts 13:30-31—But God raised him from the dead, and for many days he was seen by those who had traveled with him from Galilee to Jerusalem. They are now his witnesses to our people.
      • Acts 22:14-15—Then he said: “The God of our fathers has chosen you to know his will and to see the Righteous One and to hear words from his mouth. You will be his witness to all men of what you have seen and heard.”