Sermon Tone Analysis

Rejuvenation and Revival at Lydda

(Acts 9:32-35)

March 13, 2022

Read Acts 9:32-35 – Wm Carey, “father of modern missions” failed his first ordination exam.

He was told, “Bro Carey, you have no likes in your sermons.

Jesus taught the Kingdom of Heaven was like a mustard seed, was like a hidden treasure.

You tell us what things are, but never what they are like.”

Well, we have one of the Bible’s likes today.

A vignette depicting new life in Christ!

A physical healing depicting what spiritual healing is like!

We last saw Peter at the Samarian revival in Acts 8. Now he’s engaged in an itinerant ministry of evangelism.

Travel was a constant for him as Paul mentions in I Cor 9:5 Peter often had his wife with him.

He was eventually executed in Rome.

But for now, he’s a few miles west of Jerusalem to Lydda which today is known as Lod and is just south of Israel’s Intnl airport.

He’s preaching the gospel and encouraging the saints in Lydda.

Philip had been there.

After his encounter with the Ethiopian eunuch, Acts 8:40: “But Philip found himself at Azotus, and as he passed through he preached the gospel to all the towns until he came to Caesarea.”

That’s all the towns along the western coastal region of Palestine.

Now Peter follows in Lydda and was used by God to create the beautiful pix of salvation we will now examine in detail – a physical illustration of a greater spiritual reality

The Wretchedness Peter Encountered

33 There he found a [certain] man named Aeneas, bedridden for eight years, who was paralyzed.”

“Certain” isn’t in your text, but it’s in the original, a reminder God seeks individuals.

He’ll leave the 99 to go find the one.

You’re here today bc He cares for you.

There are no accidents in God’s providence.

So, Peter finds Aeneas in wretched condition.

He’s bedridden for 8 years, physical and emotionally drained.

One of the hardest experiences of my life was watching my dad – one of the physically strongest men I knew – be felled by a stroke at age 83.

Six years of extreme disability followed – the last 3 completely bedridden, unable to speak.

Mom and Dad were unfailingly faithful, but it was tough sledding.

Hospice workers used to tell of other places they went where there was no faith, no hope, and the conditions were almost inhumane.

Peter had encountered a wretched physical condition.

But Aeneas’ physical problem is just the tip of the iceberg.

He doesn’t yet know Jesus.

He pictures for us the far greater wretchedness of those who are spiritually disabled – unable to respond to God because they are spiritually dead.

This has never been a popular message, and never more so than in our day.

In a relativistic society, it is pretty easy to create and “serve” a god of one’s own making who accepts the best you can do as good enough.

But this is not and never has been the God of the Bible.

His standard is His own character, and by that standard, we’re all wretched.

We’re “dead in trespasses and sins” (Eph 2:1), no ability to respond to God bc of sin.

Our culture has expunged sin from our vocabulary as tho denying it cancels it.

Secular psychiatrist, Karl Memminger spoke to this denial in Whatever Became of Sin?

There are many answers to that question, but the only true one is, nothing has happened to sin; something has happened to us.

We just don’t talk about it anymore.

It’s not politically incorrect.

But denial doesn’t cancel the truth.

Something is wrong with humanity.

We are not all we could be; we are not even what we want to be.

We are disabled.

G. K. Chesterton said, “Original sin is the only part of Xn theology which can really be proved.”

We prove it every day by the way we act, think and speak.

We can’t help ourselves.

Even the best of us.

Actor Lee Marvin once made a remarkable confession: “How did I feel when I saw myself on the screen?

I found it very unpleasant recently when I saw a film of mine called Point Blank, a violent film.

We made it for the violence.

But I was shocked at how violent it was.

When I saw the film I literally almost could not stand up, I was so weak.

I did that?

I am capable of that kind of violence?”

While we see ourselves as good people, we could all be pushed to vengeful violence and chaos.

Why? Bc it’s there deep in our hearts just waiting to exploit some wrong, some hurt, some slight, real or imagined.

The wretchedness Peter found is the wretchedness that lies in the deepest recesses of the human heart, a condition we can’t remedy.

We are unable and unwilling to meet God’s standard, and until we acknowledge that, there is no hope.

II.

The Rejuvenation Jesus Extended

So, met with such hopelessness, what does Peter do?

He offers Christ.

He is not, seeking his own fame and fortune.

He is instead using the gifts God gave His apostles as in II Cor 12:12 where Paul says, “The signs of a true apostle were performed among you” – gifts to authenticate his mission and message which Peter uses to say to Aeneas, “Jesus Christ heals [literally is healing] you; rise and make your bed” (34).

Jesus is Aeneas’ only solution.

And Peter is so sure of his own calling and of the power of Christ in his life that he says, “Even as I am speaking to you, Aeneas, Jesus is healing you.”

That’s a stunning statement.

It means first that Jesus is alive.

He could not be healing Aeneas that very moment unless He were alive.

The carpenter from Nazareth, was executed on a Roman cross in AD32 was, 10-12 years later, healing Aeneas of his physical and spiritual disability.

Dead people can’t do that.

So, once again, in the absence of the eyewitness testimony later gathered in the NT, Jesus provides a vivid illustration of His resurrected life.

All of Xn faith depends on that.

I Cor 15:17 “And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. . . .

20 But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead.”

Jesus is alive and well and working in Lydda.

And, this shows us Jesus cares.

He’s directed the most famous representative of His church to the bedside of one lost man offering him physical and spiritual rejuvenation he could to find nowhere else.

And He’s done it for one reason.

He cares.

He cares for the crowds, but He loves the individual.

You need to know that.

Jesus cares for you.

Karl Barth was asked by a journalist how he would summarize the millions of words he had published.

Without hesitation he answered, “Jesus love me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.”

We don’t have Peter, but we have the Word to tell us, Jesus cares.

Third, this shows Jesus is able.

No one else can give us eternal life and present us to the Father as a justified sinner.

Jn 5:24: “Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life.

He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life.”

The moment you cast yourself on His mercy, He is, even in that moment healing you.

Immediately.

Without delay.

And while physical healing may or may not immediately accompany spiritual healing, it is part of the package.