This week we continue our journey through the Book of Acts by examining Chapter 3.
1) A Miracle: A Lame Beggar Healed (v.1-10)
Now Peter and John
were going up to the temple
at the hour of prayer, the ninth hour.
And
a man lame from birth was being carried,
whom they laid daily at the gate of the temple
that is called the
Beautiful Gate
to ask alms of
those entering the temple.
Seeing
Peter and John about to go into
the temple,
he asked to receive alms.
And Peter directed his gaze at him,
as did John, and said,
“Look at us.”
And he fixed his attention on them,
expecting to
receive something from them.
But Peter said, “I have no silver and gold,
but what I do have I give to you.
In the name of Jesus Christ
of Nazareth,
rise up and walk!”
And he took him by the right hand and
raised him up,
and immediately his
feet and ankles were made strong.
And leaping up he stood and began
to walk,
and entered the temple with them,
walking
and
leaping and
praising God.
And all the people saw him
walking
and praising
God,
and recognized him as
the one
who sat at the
Beautiful Gate of the temple,
asking for alms.
And they were filled with wonder and
amazement at what had happened to him.
This “time of prayer” was the last of the three daily
times of prayer (9 am, Noon, 3 pm). The early church continued to participate in
the customary times of prayer. One interesting observation is that two named apostles headed to the temple together and were used by God to pronounce
healing on this lame beggar. Why two of them? This glimpse of Peter and John ministering
together is in keeping with the ministry methodology established by Jesus when
he sent out the 12 and also the 70. Witnessing in pairs was normal for them
and meshed perfectly with the cultural expectation that required the testimony
of at least two witnesses to establish the truth of a matter.
The lame beggar was at the Beautiful Gate of the temple. Giving alms was highly regarded in the Middle East. However,
to beg you had to be deserving of it due to illness or disability (e.g., blind,
lame, leprosy) you couldn’t just panhandle because you didn’t want to work. Beggars
would then give a blessing in return and declare the praises of the one who
gave to him. In this case, Peter and John engaged him more personally than was
customary. They didn’t just throw a coin in his cup but he looked steadfastly at
him and got the beggar’s attention as well. The picture is one of an eye-to-eye human connection. The apostles didn’t avert their gaze in superiority or aloofness;
neither did they allow the beggar to remain distant by going through the motions
mechanically. This certainly led the man to expect to receive something. He got
what he needed, which far exceeded what he asked for.
I have always loved
this story because I have fond childhood memories of my Grandmother singing the
chorus based on the KJV translation of Peter’s words.
“Silver and gold have I none;
but such as I have give I thee:
In the name of Jesus Christ
of Nazareth rise up and walk.”
Each morning, during our summer visits to her home, my brother and I would wake to hear her singing this song while
using an old carpet sweeper, in the next room, that would squeak twice at the
end of each line, “Silver and gold have I
none [squeak, squeak]”! Go ahead and sing along!
Second, before we get
to all of the walkings, leapings, and praisings, we should notice that when the
man was told to rise and walk he did nothing. This is understandable since he
had been lame since birth. He had never been able to stand and walk…so why
would he think in a moment that he would be able to do so? We have probably done
the same thing ourselves. In his classic reference set, Word Pictures in the New Testament, Robertson
wrote, “Peter had to pull him up on his feet before he would try to walk.” We
too may have to be willing to grab the needy by the hand and help them to stand
before they will be made strong to walk, run, and leap.
When God moves personally
in power people will notice. Jerusalem was not any different. When the people
heard that the familiar lame beggar had been healed, they were “stopped in their
tracks” with wonder and “beside themselves” with amazement. When the Lord works
healing in our lives (spiritual, emotional, physical, relational) people
notice!
Our God is a miracle-working God!
2) A Message: Peter Pointed People to Jesus (v.11-18)
While
he clung to Peter and John,
all the people, utterly astounded,
ran together to them
in the portico called Solomon's.
And when
Peter saw it he addressed the people:
“Men of Israel, why do you
wonder at this,
or why do you stare at us,
as though by our own
power or piety
we have made him walk?
The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of
Jacob,
the God of our fathers, glorified his
servant Jesus,
whom you delivered over
and denied in the presence of Pilate,
when he had decided to
release him.
But you
denied the Holy and Righteous One,
and asked
for a murderer
to be granted to
you,
and you killed the Author of life,
whom God raised from the dead.
To this we are witnesses.
And his name—by faith in his name—
has made this man strong
whom you see and know,
and the faith
that is through Jesus has given the
man
this perfect health
in the presence of you all.
“And now, brothers, I know that you
acted in ignorance,
as
did also your rulers.
But what God foretold by the
mouth of all the prophets,
that his
Christ would suffer, he thus fulfilled.
The miracle produced a wonder beyond measure—it
was like the whole city dropped what it was doing and ran to the spot. This led
Peter to do a lot of explaining.
“Why do you wonder at this,
or why do you stare at us,
as
though by our own power or piety
we
have made him walk?
Peter and John took no credit for the miracle, but pointed people to Jesus, for it was Jesus’
name and authority that had healed the man. It’s as if Peter and John said, “We
didn’t do it!” They made it clear that it was not their power, nor their piety
(i.e. their godliness, merit, or spiritual maturity) that had accomplished the
miracle. They didn’t say, “I meant to do that!” Instead, they established that
it was the covenant-keeping God of Israel’s patriarchs (v.13) that had done it
despite the fact that the people and their leaders had turned Jesus over to the Romans, and
denied that he was their king. In Greek, this is a paragraph of emphatic pronouns. Perhaps we should read it with such intensity, “You, yes you!”, “he had decided, yes him”,
and “You denied him, yes you!” You killed the prince of life and asked for a murderer
instead. Yet God raised the Messiah—Jesus Christ—from the dead! This was the real
miracle of which Peter and John were witnesses.
Peter
perhaps softened his emphatic accusation of their delivering and denying Jesus
Christ by recognizing that they and their leaders had acted in ignorance. Jesus
had said this from the cross, “Father
forgive them for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34) and Paul would
write of this to the Corinthians (1 Cor. 2:8). It makes me wonder what things I do
because I am ignorant of the purposes of God in any given circumstance.
3) A
Mandate: Repent & Turn Back (v.19-26)
Repent therefore, and turn back,
that your sins may
be blotted out,
that times of refreshing may come
from
the presence of the Lord, and
that he may send the
Christ appointed for you, Jesus,
whom heaven must
receive
until the time
for restoring all the things about which
God spoke by the mouth of
his holy prophets long ago.
Moses said,
‘The Lord God will raise up for you
a prophet like me from your brothers.
You shall listen to him in whatever he
tells you.
And it shall be that every soul
who
does not listen to that prophet
shall be destroyed from the people.’
And all the prophets who have spoken,
from Samuel and those who
came after him,
also proclaimed these days.
You are the sons of the prophets and
of the
covenant that God made with your fathers,
saying to Abraham,
‘And in your offspring shall all the
families of the earth be blessed.’
God, having raised up his servant,
sent him to you first,
to bless you
by turning
every one of you from your wickedness.
In the final verse of this chapter, we find that God sent Jesus the Messiah “to you
first” [Why?] “to bless you...” [How?] “By turning every one of you from your
wickedness.” Chapter 4:4 tells us that many heard the word and believed,
bringing the number of men in the church to 5,000 (counting women and children
would probably have brought the number closer to 20,000 or more.
Silver
and Gold Have I None…
Let me conclude this post by asking three
questions that arise from this passage…
1. What is it that has you begging? This man had been lame from birth through
no fault of his own. Some of us are “lame” because of our choices, and some
because of the choices of others. Too often, instead of being transformed by
God, we just settle into the role of victim and beggar assuming nothing will
ever change. So what keeps us from being a giver instead of a taker? What are
the handicaps and disadvantages in our life? What are the physical, mental,
emotional, behavioral, economic, racial, and educational challenges we face?
This man had always been lame and considered a helpless
beggar. He had settled into that unchanging life. All he expected to receive was
what he had received in the past…a coin or two. It is one thing to be content,
it is another to lose hope. Where have we become settlers? What do we expect to
receive from the Lord? (See James 4:2b-3; Hebrews 11:6)
2. What am I willing to give to others?
Can we say with the apostles, “What I
have I give to you”? Such a concept did not begin with them but with a Trinitarian
concept of ownership. “The doctrine of the social Trinity, however, claims
that God’s owning is not grounded in self-possession but rather in self-giving.”[1]
If God’s ownership of all things is established
not by possessing but by giving, how should that affect the way we view that
which has been entrusted to us? We would then realize that we have it for this
very purpose…to give it to the one who needs it. In fact, what we have needs to
be given. Some gardeners grow their produce for the food bank, some who knit make "prayer
shawls" for those in the hospital, others repair bicycles, some can cook, while others
can pull weeds and mow grass really well.
Peter and John declared the authority of
Jesus over the lame beggar and he was completely strengthened and made whole. The
Greek word for “salvation” (sozo) is not unlike the Hebrew word for peace (shalom)
in its holistic effects. Here the apostles had the authority and compassion of
Jesus Christ to bring to bear upon the man’s condition and they did so freely.
3. What needs to change in my life? (v.
19-22)
In verse 19’s call for the people of
Jerusalem to repent and return do we see our own need for our sins to be blotted
out? The Greek word is exaleiphō, and the blotting out took place at the
cross of Christ. As it is written,
When
you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, God
made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, having
canceled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and
condemned us; he has taken it away, nailing it to the cross. (Col. 2:13-14)
If we have put our faith in Christ and been
led by his love to turn from our sins, we may still need to allow the Holy Spirit
to bring godly changes to our lives. So, is there something in my life that is delaying
the arrival of “times of refreshing”? Nazareth missed out on times of
refreshing because of their unbelief, their resistance to extending the
goodness of God to the nations, and in rejecting Jesus’ work in their midst.
God has given us all things in Christ so
that we might share his goodness with the world instead of keeping it for ourselves!
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