Acts 03_01-10 Salvation Divinely Illustrated

Read Acts 3:1-10 – Gale Sayers was a great running back. But one day he took a pitch out just in time to see GB back, Willie Davis, slip his blocker. At the same time, LB Ray Nitschke arrived. Shortly, Sayers was lifted high in the air. Willie Davis had one leg; Nitschke the other. That’s when Sayers heard Davis say cheerfully: “Okay, Ray, make a wish, Baby!” Talk about helpless! Like the man in this account. He’s a real man; had a real name; lived a real life. But until this day it was bleak. He was lame and a beggar with no hope for the future – until he was suddenly and gloriously delivered.

Of course, Jesus, for all his miracles, left thousands untouched. But the miracles that did happen were about more than that person. They had meaning beyond themselves. They do a number of things, all aimed at turning people to God. They show the power of the King and give a glimpse of kingdom conditions; they authenticate God’s messengers. All great purposes. But they do one other thing as well – one this healing is particularly good at. Physical miracles also demonstrate spiritual truths. This one is no exception – beautifully illustrating hope of spiritual deliverance in Christ.

A few years after John Lennon was gunned down in NYC, his widow, Yoko Ono, took an ad in The New York Times, “One day we will be able to say that we healed ourselves, and by healing ourselves, we healed the world.” It was wishful thinking. Spiritually dead people cannot heal themselves. Hope must come from outside ourselves, which is the larger point of this healing.

I. The Human Condition

A lot of Jewish tradition carried over in the early church. So, here are Peter and John going to the temple to pray (usually at 9:00, 12:00 and 3:00). But as they approach, they are confronted with severe human need – a man lame from birth, laid by friends at the temple gate to beg – a permanent fixture.

So he targets the apostles for a handout. After 40 years, he hopes for nothing more. In a way he is Everyman! His physical inability represents the spiritual inability of the whole human race, tho most of us don’t see themselves this way. To us, we’re pretty good – especially compared to others around us. We are not wife-beaters, rapists or murderers. C. S. Lewis said, “Prostitutes are in no danger of finding their present life so satisfactory that they cannot turn to God: but the proud, the avaricious, the self-righteous, are in that danger.”

That’s what this man depicts. Without Christ, we are spiritually hopeless, “dead in trespasses and sins.” One sin would make it so. But we have hundreds every day. That’s why God gave the law – to show how short we really fall. We think we’re pretty good. Never killed anyone. Never committed adultery. Never robbed a bank. Yet Jesus says, “Let me interpret the heart of the law for you. If you hold a grudge, desire to get even, anger in your heart, you are as guilty as a murderer.” It’s not just what you do outwardly, but who you are inwardly that’s the problem.

Can you say you’ve never lied, never had a lustful thought, never hurt anyone, never missed a Sunday you could have been there, always honored father and mother, never cheated on a test, never coveted your neighbor’s car, his garden, his wife? Never even thought about those things. Do you love God with all our heart, mind, soul and strength, and your neighbor as yourself? The law lays us low fast. We are as unable to keep God’s law as that man was to walk. We’re that way since birth. Psa 51:5: “Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me.” Anyone teach your child to hit his brothers or say, “Mine!” or grab someone else’s toy? No – bc they were born sinners – now they’re just proving it.

On March 25, 2015, an Airbus A320 from Barcelona to Dusseldorf was cruising at 38,000 feet for a couple of hours. The pilot left the cockpit for a brief break. Co-pilot, Andreas Lubitz, locked the door and put the plane into a gradual descent into the craggy French mountainside that pulverized the plane. No one knows why. The black box recorder shows Lubitz’s breathing was calm the whole time. But toward the end, cries of terror from the passengers are heard as they realized their plight. For most of the flight, all seemed well. But they were dead from the moment the plane left the ground – just the fate Satan intends for every person trusting in human wisdom and effort to get them to God. Our only hope is to awake to our dire condition in time to call for help on the name of the Lord. Without that wake-up, there is no hope.

II. The Divine Intervention

So, if we are in a hopeless condition, is rescue possible? Yes – but it must come from outside. Divine intervention is needed seen in 3 parts here.

A. A Divinely Appointed Messenger – Had Peter and John not come on the scene, there would have been no healing for this man. But God sent a human intermediary to effect a divine intervention. Peter and John on their own could not have healed this man. But they could be human conduits through whom Jesus brings new life to this man. They bring God’s presence.

4) “And Peter directed his gaze at him, as did John, and said, “Look at us.” Why “Look at us”? Well, Peter and John were one possibility for help, but there were others. This man had one eye on them and one looking to others. He was asking for alms; what he really needed was legs! Others might give temporary help; only Peter and John could bring healing. They had something no one else had. They had Jesus. He was the hope. He needed to look there.

The same is true for the spiritually dead. They have only one way to God. That’s the truth we have to share as a divinely appointed messenger. We are not saviors, but we are messengers of hope. Thus Isa 52:7: “How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news.” Paul picks that up in Rom 10: 14) “How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? 15) And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!” Preaching is not limited to pros. All believers are preachers in this sense. We can share that Jesus died and rose again to provide forgiveness from guilt. Human instruments are God’s means of propagating that message. Without Peter and John, no healing for this man. Without you and me, no healing for someone around us with whom we are privileged to share good news, however God gives us to do it.

Peter and John were retired fishermen, but how God used them as He will us. It may be on a kitchen floor, / Or in a busy shopping store, / Or teaching, nursing, day by day / Till limb and brain almost give way; / Yet if, just there, by Jesus you are found, / The place you stand on is Holy Ground.”

B. A Divinely Authoritative Message – No money, but Peter and John had something else: 6) “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!” They couldn’t make this offer on their own. “Rise and walk” would have been crazy. But it had divine authority. They spoke in Jesus’ name. What was impossible for man was possible with God. It was a divinely ordained message.

When Gabriel told Mary she’d bear a child, she responded: Lu 1:34: “How will this be, since I am a virgin?” Gabriel answered she need not worry about the details, and he ended in Lu 1:37: “For nothing is impossible with God.”

And our divine message to spiritually dead people is “Rise and walk”. We can’t make that happen. But God can. Jesus’ friend Lazarus was dead and buried four days when Jesus stood before his tomb. He could no more rise and walk than I could fly. But when Jesus said John 11:43: “Lazarus, come forth,” out he came. The power is in the message bc it’s God’s. Jonah stipulated from the belly of the whale: Jonah 2:9, “Salvation belongs to the Lord!” He alone gives power to the message; we are merely little conduits of a great God.

C. A Divinely Abetted Movement – God gave healing power. But don’t miss this. V 7: “And he took him by the right hand and raised him up, and immediately his feet and ankles were made strong.” This man’s never taken a step in his life. “Rise and walk,” is impossible, even with help. But he reaches out, takes that hand, stands up and walks. He does the impossible, by faith in Jesus – a point emphasized by Peter in v. 16a: “And his name – by faith in his name – has made this man strong.” So with every person who is delivered from the power and penalty of sin. Jesus has done all the work, yet we must reach out in faith, take His hand and place our total faith in Him.

When Israel reached the Red Sea, God parted the Sea, but they had to walk thru – by faith. Jesus once met a man with a withered hand. So He just zapped his arm and healed it, right? No! Mt 12:13: “Then he said to the man, ‘Stretch our your hand.’ [What?! Impossible!] And the man stretched it out, and it was restored, healthy like the other.” What if he had not stretched out his hand? What if he’d said, “Are you kidding? Look at my arm. I can’t stretch it out.” Then what? Then no healing. As God gives us faith, we must exercise it. We must believe He can cleanse our broken heart, and amazingly, as we reach out to Him, we find Him enabling our faith. Think you can’t believe in Him? Of course, you can’t. Do it anyway and He will enable your faith. Jn 5:24: “Truly, truly I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes (has faith in) him who sent me has eternal life.” Believe in Him and He enables you to do just that. As we reach out, He gifts us with the faith to believe.

III. The Joyous Response

8) “And leaping up, he stood and began to walk, and entered the temple with them, walking and leaping and praising God. 9) And all the people saw him walking and praising God, 10) 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.” What a picture – “leaping up”, “began to walk,” “walking and leaping.” Ever try to get a child to walk? Doesn’t happen overnight, does it? But with this man, the healing is instantaneous. And once he sees what he’s got, he’s not walking. He’s jumping around like a young colt. God doesn’t do “half-way healing.” And He doesn’t do half-way regeneration. We’re either born again, or we’re not!

And when people are born again, there is inevitably great joy. Jesus says in Jn 15:11: “These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.” Trouble comes. But deep in the heart of every believer there’s a the joy of knowing Jesus that overwhelms any circumstance.

But particularly note end of v. 9. He was “praising God.” He wasn’t praising Peter; he wasn’t praising John. I’m sure he was beyond grateful for their entrance into his life. But he recognized the ultimate source of his healing was not the human instrument, but the unseen God behind the human instrument.

Why were we created? To be happy or to glorify God? I grew up thinking the two were at odds. John Piper had the same dilemma. He says, “Many who seemed to emphasize the glory of God in their thinking did not seem to enjoy him much.” But he came to realize that the greatest joy we can ever find is in glorifying God, and our happiness is a means of glorifying God. Jonathan Edwards wrote: “The essence of glorifying God consists in the creature’s rejoicing in God’s manifestation of his beauty. . . . The end of the creation is that God may communicate happiness to the creature; for if God created the world that he may be glorified in the creature, he created it that they might rejoice in his glory; they are one and the same.” The better we know God, the happier we will be and the happier we are the more God is glorified. Piper summarizes this way: “God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him.” When we praise, thank and worship God, we raise the bar on our own happiness. Don’t just thank Him for His blessings, thank Him for Him!

Conc – This man’s helpless condition reflects the spiritual reality of every person outside of Christ. But a divine encounter, which he responded to in faith, led to a miraculous healing and great joy and praise in his life.

Perhaps today is your day for a divine encounter to address the lostness of your life without Christ? Some missionaries in Brazil had a child, Matthew Huffman. One day at age six his temperature skyrocketed, and he began to lose his eyesight. As he lay in Mom’s lap being rushed to the hospital, he extended his hand into the air. She pulled it down, but he extended it again. This happened two more times before his mom asked, “What are you reaching for, Matthew?” He replied, “I’m reaching for Jesus’ hand,” and with those words he went into a coma from which he never awoke. He died two days later. But at death’s door, he knew for whom to reach.

Have you reached out to Jesus? Do you know He’s reaching out to you? He says in Lu 18:17: “Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it.” Your spiritual healing, forgiveness from sin, release from guilt – it could all be yours today. But you must reach out in faith, like the beggar, like Matthew, like a child – and receive Him. Let’s pray.

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