“The Acts of the Holy Spirit"
Acts 1:1-11

“But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.” [Acts1:8]

Not only does this verse outline the book of Acts but all the New Testament and the Church.

“But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you.”  Jesus taught this to His inner circle of disciples in His Upper Room Discourse [ref. John 13-17]. The Holy Spirit, which had yet to come upon the disciples, was the prominent theme. “I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you.” [John 14:8] And then Jesus described the indwelling of the Spirit [ref. John 14:19-31].

“…and you shall be witnesses [martys] to Me.”  martys is where we get our English word martyr. The first Apostles were martyred for what they saw. It was the unique witness of that first generation of disciples who saw the risen Lord. 

Jesus appeared to hundreds of people in His resurrected body over the course of 40 days, and many of those witnesses were martyred for their faith. They witnessed Jesus die on a Cross, placed in a tomb, and raised on the third day.

Our testimony today in this time of the church is a changed life. After Jesus returned to heaven, a new life began, and the witness is a Spirit-filled life. It is more than Christian lingo, and obvious in this book of Acts. Paul, 

Cornelius, Lydia, the Philippian jailer, and Timothy are only a handful of the changed lives recorded in the Acts of the Holy Spirit.
…in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”  This is the threefold outline of Acts:  Chapters 1-7 records the spread of the Gospel in Jerusalem; chapters 8-12 to Judea and Samaria; and chapters 13-28 to the rest of the world, which continues to our day as Spirit-filled missionaries take the good news of Jesus to the ends of the earth. You cannot read the book of Acts and not come away with a Spirit-filled desire for missions.

The Acts of the Holy Spirit compels us outward to share the Good News of Jesus!