Sermon Tone Analysis

Salvation Divinely Illustrated

(Acts 3:1-10)

July 11, 2021

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.