One day Peter and John were going up to the temple at the time of prayer--at three in the afternoon. Now a man crippled from birth was being carried to the temple gate called Beautiful, where he was put every day to beg from those going into the temple courts. When he saw Peter and John about to enter, he asked them for money. Peter looked straight at him, as did John. Then Peter said, "Look at us!" So the man gave them his attention, expecting to get something from them. Then Peter said, "Silver or gold I do not have, but what I have I give you. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, walk." Taking him by the right hand, he helped him up, and instantly the man's feet and ankles became strong. He jumped to his feet and began to walk. Then he went with them into the temple courts, walking and jumping, and praising God. When all the people saw him walking and praising God, they recognized him as the same man who used to sit begging at the temple gate called Beautiful, and they were filled with wonder and amazement at what had happened to him.

While the beggar held on to Peter and John, all the people were astonished and came running to them in the place called Solomon's Colonnade. When Peter saw this, he said to them: "Men of Israel, why does this surprise you? Why do you stare at us as if by our own power or godliness we had made this man walk? The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God of our fathers, has glorified his servant Jesus. You handed him over to be killed, and you disowned him before Pilate, though he had decided to let him go. You disowned the Holy and Righteous One and asked that a murderer be released to you. You killed the author of life, but God raised him from the dead. We are witnesses of this. By faith in the name of Jesus, this man whom you see and know was made strong. It is Jesus' name and the faith that comes through him that has given this complete healing to him, as you can all see. "Now, brothers, I know that you acted in ignorance, as did your leaders. But this is how God fulfilled what he had foretold through all the prophets, saying that his Christ[1] would suffer. Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord, and that he may send the Christ, who has been appointed for you--even Jesus. He must remain in heaven until the time comes for God to restore everything, as he promised long ago through his holy prophets. For Moses said, 'The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your own people; you must listen to everything he tells you. Anyone who does not listen to him will be completely cut off from among his people.'[2] "Indeed, all the prophets from Samuel on, as many as have spoken, have foretold these days. And you are heirs of the prophets and of the covenant God made with your fathers. He said to Abraham, 'Through your offspring all peoples on earth will be blessed.'[3] When God raised up his servant, he sent him first to you to bless you by turning each of you from your wicked ways."

The priests and the captain of the temple guard and the Sadducees came up to Peter and John while they were speaking to the people. They were greatly disturbed because the apostles were teaching the people and proclaiming in Jesus the resurrection of the dead. They seized Peter and John, and because it was evening, they put them in jail until the next day. But many who heard the message believed, and the number of men grew to about five thousand.

(Act 3:1-4:4 NIV)

If we were the kind of people who take notes when lessons were presented, then we would probably like, as a courtesy, an outline that we could fill in on the way. It would also serve as a useful tool to keep us all on the same page, and means of determining when I have seriously gone off track. Because it is going to be so easy to get off the subject in this section, I’m going to let you in on the general outline that I’m following so that we can all stay focused. Basically what I see here is three things: a miracle, a sermon, and 2 responses, one good, and one bad. If this were a movie, I’d try to build the plot and your excitement and spring the “WOW” finish on you at the end, but let’s not do that this time. Instead lets take a look at this event and I promise not to pretend I didn’t just read the whole story to you, or that you don’t have a copy open in front of you, destroying any attempt I could make of suspense.

In verse 43 of the last chapter, Luke says:

Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles. (Act 2:43 NIV)

So what we’re dealing with here is a time when the Apostles were doing many miracles and:

Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. (Act 2:46a NIV)

the Church was often going to the temple. We see later, in chapter 5, that

Day after day, in the temple courts and from house to house, they [the apostles] never stopped teaching and proclaiming the good news that Jesus is the Christ. (Act 5:42 NIV)

Armed with those bits of knowledge, we can only conclude that this event that we’re looking at here in Chapter 3 was not particularly significant because of the miracle or the sermon (thought the man healed my have disagreed with us). I believe what we’re looking at is a fairly typical example of what the Apostles were doing in the first years of the Church. So that brings up the question of why did Luke choose to detail this event and not any of the others? I think we can find the answer to that question beginning in Chapter 4. Peter and John went to the temple, like they always did. Peter healed somebody, again. He preached another sermon to another gathered crowd, but this time they got arrested and had to spend the night in jail.

So, let’s look at a typical day in the life of an Apostle of God and see what we can learn from their example. Item number one on the outline is a miracle, and if we’re going to call this a typical miracle, we would do well to look at it so we can see what was going on in those early days. First let’s take a look at who the recipient was.

Now a man crippled from birth was being carried to the temple gate called Beautiful, where he was put every day to beg from those going into the temple courts. (Act 3:2 NIV)

It is important to note 2 things about this man, he was lame to the point where they carried him to his spot at the gate, and that he had been that way since he was born. Also this man had picked, or had picked for him, a really good spot. In those days, there were not a whole lot of job options open to people who were lame. They did have wheeled chairs, but only the extremely rich would have had them, and they weren’t like our wheel chairs today at all, they would have required several strong men to make them mobile in any setting other than a smooth inside floor. The disabled were burdens. Nobody had enough to eat, and theirs was a mouth that couldn’t work. It was expected of them to go out and beg in order to earn their keep. At the same time, that worked in Jewish societies pretty well because of these things called alms. Alms were, and really still are, a part of the culture of the Orient. Taking care of the poor was seen as a lovely way to please God, especially in the culture that we find here in Judea under the spiritual leadership of the Pharisees. This guy had taken up a spot at the Beautiful Gate at the temple. This was the main eastern gate that separated the Court of the Gentiles from the Court of the Women. This was on the way into the temple proper, and as far as someone who was unclean was allowed to go. Prime begging real estate for all the goodie-goodies. And we see that expectancy show up in his actions. He saw Peter and John, and asked them for some alms,

Peter looked straight at him, as did John. Then Peter said, "Look at us!" So the man gave them his attention, expecting to get something from them.

(Act 3:4-5 NIV)

Expecting something from them. I don’t know why but this scene reminded me of something that Jesus said once:

"And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full. (Mat 6:5 NIV)

It seems like this beggar was expecting this sort of behavior because he looked up expectantly when they commanded his attention. In a culture of people who were all about the show and outer appearance, it was probably not an uncommon occurrence for people at the gate of the temple to try to be showy about how Godly and spiritual they were. I hear of this very thing happening all the time on TV. Talk show hosts and various other stars just throwing money around, which is good, but they’re filming it so the whole world can see what a generous, kind person they are. Jesus says that the publicity is their whole reward and they shouldn’t look at God for anything else. When Peter and John commanded, “Look at me,” this guy was probably thinking “Oh, goodie… that means I’m getting a bunch today.” But that’s not what happened. So, if we go back to the outline thing again, we see this man was so lame that he had to be carried to where he was located, he was like that since he was born, and he was totally not expecting what happened next.

Frankly it’s easy enough to “blah, blah, blah” over the miracles in the bible. Too much has been made of them and too many charlatans on TV have come along with so many phony miracles that you can get over stimulated. The other side of the coin is just as dangerous, because the bible really does not make much of these miracles at all. They are mentioned and then immediately there is a message from God afterwards. The message is really what God wants to emphasize, the miracle is just to get our attention. That is exactly what has happened here. The man who was lame from birth was expecting money. Peter grabbed him by the hand and lifted him up and he walked into the temple with them. Walked, leaped… all those things that he had never done before. Apparently even the knowledge of how to use those newly restored muscles came with the miracle, because it took me a few years to learn how to walk, and this guy just started doing it. And at some point, while he was jumping about praising God, the people in the temple finally recognized who this guy was.

As a regular at the temple people would have seen this guy day in and day out. This was where you came to pray and make sacrifices and you had to pass by this guy to do it. Some of them would have know his story and those few would have been tossed their information into the rumor machine that would have flashed over, producing nearly instantaneous knowledge to the whole crowd of people. Peter and John went back out to Solomon’s Porch outside with this guy was holding onto them. Everyone saw this, and followed them out. Now we’ve got a very attentive crowd, in fact my version says they were “greatly amazed.”

Peter’s response to this great amazement is priceless. While I would have been stammering over “yes God is good, and he’s blessed me greatly and I was just so sympathetic to this poor man…” Peter begins rather boldly,

When Peter saw this, he said to them: "Men of Israel, why does this surprise you? Why do you stare at us as if by our own power or godliness we had made this man walk? (Act 3:12 NIV)

Why does this surprise you? How’s that for a question? I guess it was an honest question, though. They were at the temple of the Most High God who had parted the sea. If that wasn’t enough, by this time, I’m sure everybody knew that Peter and John were disciples of Jesus, and how many miracles surrounded His ministry? And why do you stare? Were they trying to figure out how the magician did the trick? Now watch this, guys. We talked about this last week with another of Peter’s sermons. Watch how Peter just lifts Christ on high.

The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God of our fathers, has glorified his servant Jesus. You handed him over to be killed, and you disowned him before Pilate, though he had decided to let him go. You disowned the Holy and Righteous One and asked that a murderer be released to you. You killed the author of life, but God raised him from the dead. We are witnesses of this. By faith in the name of Jesus, this man whom you see and know was made strong. It is Jesus' name and the faith that comes through him that has given this complete healing to him, as you can all see. (Act 3:13-16 NIV)

Wow. Once again we see the contrast, Holy Jesus, evil man. The audience for this is equally amazing. These were devout Jews at the temple. They had come at the time of prayer bringing the evening sacrifices. They had given money to that beggar, and they had followed the Law just like their fathers had and just like their fathers had all the way back to Abraham. It would be the same crowd if we were to go into any of these old churches around the world that have gone completely apostate and preached a barn- burner. The subject matter, too, is amazing. “You delivered up and denied in the presence of Pilot,” do you know where they’re standing? The people who engineered that scene with Pilot and Barabas were the people who were in charge of that building. They were still around and these people were there on that day, too.

But then we see Peter’s heart.

"Now, brothers, I know that you acted in ignorance, as did your leaders. But this is how God fulfilled what he had foretold through all the prophets, saying that his Christ would suffer. Repent, then, and turn to God, (Act 3:17-19a NIV)

We went line by line through a sermon last week lets not do that again. Let me just lay out the points he makes.

Repent and Turn to God so that your sins might be forgiven. Repent and turn so that times of Refreshing may come from the Lord, and that times means Epoch, so we’re talking about an age of Refreshing. Turn and repent so that Jesus can be sent. But wasn’t he already sent? Yes, but He must be received by heaven until the times (epoch) of restoration of all things, which God has spoken has spoken of through prophets since the world began. How’s that for Christ centered motivations. Repent and turn to God so that the events described in Revelation might come about. Which would be a good idea for you guys, because Jesus was the Prophet Moses talked about in Deuteronomy, and God said that whoever will not hear Him shall be utterly destroyed. So how’s that?

When God raised up his servant, he sent him first to you to bless you by turning each of you from your wicked ways." (Act 3:26 NIV)

I’m not sure that would make a real good bumper sticker, but God came to bless you by turning you away from your wicked ways, so that you won’t be utterly destroyed on the last day.

Friends, how much like these Apostles are we? I haven’t healed anybody, sure… but I have had gathered crowds and microphone to boot. I don’t have a temple to go to everyday, but I do go to that place where people serve money 5 days a week. What testimony are we leaving this world with? God is great, but social acceptance is better? That the Bible is absolutely the truth and that I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me, except tell people that He is the Christ. I am preaching this to my shame. I am a coward when it comes to sharing my faith and considering what my God has done for me, that’s despicable. Peter stood up in the temple, in the place where the enemies of Christ called their office, and preached that they were the enemies of Christ and that they needed to change that. We can’t even accuse Peter and John of ignorance of these things, because it was from these people that they and the rest of the disciples were hiding when Jesus first appeared to them. Where is our boldness? Where has the church gone? Is our mission now potlucks? Not that potlucks are our thing, but where is the focus of most professing Christians? It is unfortunate that in the country at this time, the answer is not the Gospel and it should be. Christ has given us a message. That message has power and is backed by the Holy Spirit and Jesus Christ themselves. And we can see that it was of primary importance to Peter, so much so, that the miracle that he was a part of was only an opportunity to preach to crowd.

The enemies that Peter mentioned were there, and this time they heard and came over to see what was happening. The Sadducees hated Jesus and His followers because what they preached flew in the face of what they believed. Jesus was back from the dead, there WAS a resurrection, they were wrong and they thought to end that embarrassment by killing Jesus and imprisoning His followers. For their boldness, Peter and John got tossed in jail and we’ll look at what happened to them next time. For now let me close with this.

Today, the religious leaders in our country say that human intellect is the ultimate reality. They say that God is dead because He was never alive in any other location than in the imagination of men, and now because of they’re great enlightenment, we can finally hold a funeral for the Ruler of the Universe. Jesus rose from the dead, proving that He was that God that they say isn’t there. He has sustained His church through 300 years of a sustained attack by humanists, modernists and the philosophers of the West, and they are beginning to get frustrated. They have switched tactics from reasoning, to political action and they’re winning. They’re going to continue winning because the Church has conceded the only ground that it had to stand on and that is the reality of a risen Christ. When the mainstream churches lost that, the war was over… we are now merely negotiating with our victors where we might still be allowed to go. Could we please have some prayer in the schools… no, alright… what if the children lead it, OK for now… but we’ll be back in a year to contest that.

Already they have stopped pretending that they want anything else but the utter destruction of the church and the God it represents. It is not inconceivable that within our lifetimes, they will get the OK to commence with their plans. We need to figure out today, if we’re going to be able to still be a follower of Christ then, and pray that the Holy Spirit will begin the process of making us bold, today… while there is still time.

Let us pray: