Acts 3:1-26 - Miracle & Message
Notes
Transcript
Introduction
Introduction
Acts 2:43 describes the early church in this way…
43 Everyone kept feeling a sense of awe; and many wonders and signs were taking place through the apostles.
In Acts 3, Luke draws us into that experience, showing us a wonder sign performed though the Apostle Peter, a wonder and sign that left early believers in awe.
[READING - Acts 3:1-10]
1 Now Peter and John were going up to the temple at the ninth hour, the hour of prayer. 2 And a man who had been lame from his mother’s womb was being carried along, whom they used to set down every day at the gate of the temple which is called Beautiful, in order to beg alms of those who were entering the temple. 3 When he saw Peter and John about to go into the temple, he began asking to receive alms. 4 But Peter, along with John, fixed his gaze on him and said, “Look at us!” 5 And he began to give them his attention, expecting to receive something from them. 6 But Peter said, “I do not possess silver and gold, but what I do have I give to you: In the name of Jesus Christ the Nazarene—walk!” 7 And seizing him by the right hand, he raised him up; and immediately his feet and his ankles were strengthened. 8 With a leap he stood upright and began to walk; and he entered the temple with them, walking and leaping and praising God. 9 And all the people saw him walking and praising God; 10 and they were taking note of him as being the one who used to sit at the Beautiful Gate of the temple to beg alms, and they were filled with wonder and amazement at what had happened to him.
[PRAYER]
[INTER] Have you experienced the divine power of Jesus? Who gets the glory for your transformation? Will you repent and be forgiven, be refreshed, and be saved?
As we look at the miracle and the message of Acts 3, God is calling us to think about each of those questions.
Have you experienced the divine power of Jesus?
Who gets the glory for your transformation?
Will you repent and be forgiven, be refreshed, and be saved?
[TS] Think about THE MIRACLE in those verses we just heard…
Major Ideas
Major Ideas
#1: The Miracle (Acts 3:1-10)
#1: The Miracle (Acts 3:1-10)
[EXP] Peter and John are going up to the temple to pray at the ninth hour, i.e., 3 p.m.
The Jewish people had appointed times for prayer, and Peter and John were going to pray the afternoon prayer.
As they went, they met a beggar who was being carried to his post at a gated entrance to the Temple, a gate called Beautiful.
We don’t know exactly which Temple gate this was, but what takes place in this poor beggar’s life is indeed Beautiful.
He sees Peter and John about to pass through the gate into the Temple and begins asking them for alms, charity of some kind or another.
Peter and John hear him, and then Peter fastens his eyes on the man, and says to him, “Look at us!”
The beggar looks to Peter and John expecting to receive some bit of charity from them, but Peter says…
6 But Peter said, “I do not possess silver and gold, but what I do have I give to you: In the name of Jesus Christ the Nazarene—walk!”
Then Peter grabbed the man by the right hand—the man who had been crippled since birth—and raised him to his feet!
The man’s feet and ankles are suddenly strong! He stands upright! He starts walking like nothing was ever wrong! He enters the Temple leaping and praising God!
He received more charity that day than he could have ever hoped for!
The other people in the Temple know who this man is, and they are astonished to see him walking around praising God.
Acts 3:10 says, “…they were filled with wonder and amazement at what had happened to him.”
This is that sense of awe that followers of Jesus felt in the early church as wonders and signs were performed through the Apostles.
[APP] Make sure you notice what Peter said to the crippled beggar in v. 6, “In the name of Jesus Christ the Nazarene-walk!”
This man’s healing was a sign pointing to Jesus as the Messiah, the Christ. The power that healed him was not in Peter; the power was in the name of Jesus Christ the Nazarene!
In Jewish thought, a name doesn’t just identify someone; as one writer put it, “it expresses the very nature of his being. Hence the power of the person is present and available in the name of the person,” (Richard N. Longenecker).
Again, it wasn’t Peter that healed this paralytic beggar. Peter was just a conduit of Jesus’ power.
It was Jesus who healed this beggar as divine power went forth in His Name.
Have you experienced the divine power of Jesus?
[ILLUS] Maybe you remember the healing of the paralytic by Jesus in Mark 2. We probably remember best the fact that his friends carried him to Jesus and dug a hole in the roof to lower him down to Jesus, so he could be healed.
And Jesus did heal him! Jesus said to him, “I say to you, get up, pick up your bed, and go home,” (v. 11) and the formerly paralyzed man got up immediately.
But remember why Jesus performed that miracle. Before there was any healing of the body, there was healing of the soul as Jesus looked at that paralyzed man and said, “Son, your sins are forgiven,” (v. 5).
The experts in Jewish law scoffed because only God can forgive sins, but Jesus—knowing what they were thinking—said to the paralyzed man, “…so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins, I say to you, get up, pick up your bed and go home,” (vv.10-11).
Now, let me ask you an important question: When did the power of Jesus wash over this man who was healed?
Certainly it washed over him when Jesus healed his paralysis, but much more significantly, it washed over him when Jesus said to him, “Son, your sins are forgiven,” (v. 5).
The point of the paralytic’s healing in Mark 2 was so that people would know that Jesus had the power to forgive sins.
Likewise, the point of the healing of the crippled beggar in Acts 3 was so that others would know that the Jesus has the power to forgive sins.
I know we often pray for physical healing, but if we have been spiritually healed by Jesus by having our sins forgiven then we have already received the greatest healing imaginable!
The power of Jesus has washed over us not in a temporary way but in an eternal way.
Perhaps some of us are thinking that we or someone we love is in desperate need of physical healing. There is nothing wrong with asking Jesus for that, and He certainly has the power to do that, and He does still do that in the world today.
But the healing we all need most is the spiritual healing that comes when Jesus forgives our sins.
Have you experienced the divine power of Jesus?
You have if you’ve been forgiven.
[TS] Forgiveness is what Peter will point to in his MESSAGE to the awe-struck crowd.
#2: The Message (Acts 3:11-26)
#2: The Message (Acts 3:11-26)
Peter’s Proclamation (vv. 11-16)
Peter’s Proclamation (vv. 11-16)
11 While he was clinging to Peter and John, all the people ran together to them at the so-called portico of Solomon, full of amazement. 12 But when Peter saw this, he replied to the people, “Men of Israel, why are you amazed at this, or why do you gaze at us, as if by our own power or piety we had made him walk? 13 “The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God of our fathers, has glorified His servant Jesus, the one whom you delivered and disowned in the presence of Pilate, when he had decided to release Him. 14 “But you disowned the Holy and Righteous One and asked for a murderer to be granted to you, 15 but put to death the Prince of life, the one whom God raised from the dead, a fact to which we are witnesses. 16 “And on the basis of faith in His name, it is the name of Jesus which has strengthened this man whom you see and know; and the faith which comes through Him has given him this perfect health in the presence of you all.
[EXP] In essence Peter says, “It wasn’t us that healed this man! It was Jesus, the Messiah, the Christ—the One you rejected and crucified—the One that God raised from the dead. We have seen Him, and HE restored this man to perfect health!
Notice that Peter called Jesus the servant of God, the Holy and Righteous One, and the Prince of Life.
Peter’s Jewish audience would’ve understood that all these titles were titles for the Jewish Messiah in the OT, titles that Peter was now ascribing to Jesus—the One that they had disowned and delivered to the cross.
But although they had Jesus crucified, God raised Him from the dead. Jesus is alive! And that is why He had the power to heal this crippled beggar!
Peter wanted to make absolutely sure that Jesus got the glory for this man’s miraculous transformation.
We may think that Peter wanted Jesus to get the glory because later in Acts we read about a man who stole the glory of God and died as a result.
But Peter wanted Jesus to get the glory because it was in fact Jesus who transformed this man from lame beggar to leaping praiser.
And it was Jesus who transformed Peter from prideful boaster to humble believer.
[ILLUS] The ones who speak of God’s grace best are the ones who understand themselves as needing God’s grace most.
Peter understood just how needy he was when he denied any association with Jesus just before He was crucified.
He denied Him three times.
He denied Him even though he swore he never would.
Peter’s need for transforming grace was met when Jesus forgave him and reinstated him as an Apostle.
Jesus turned the prideful boaster was turn to a humble believer.
And Peter knew that Jesus alone deserved the glory.
[APP] If you’ve been transformed by the gracious power of Jesus, who gets the glory for your transformation?
In the New Year people embrace of the idea of “New Year, New You,” but if you would really like to be made new, you must come to Jesus as receive the forgiveness that He offers.
His transforming grace reaches much deeper than our crippled flesh; it reaches down to our dead souls and gives us life.
[TS] This is the grace in Jesus that Peter holds out when he makes his appeal to these people in vv. 17-26…
Peter’s Appeal (vv. 17-26)
Peter’s Appeal (vv. 17-26)
17 “And now, brethren, I know that you acted in ignorance, just as your rulers did also. 18 “But the things which God announced beforehand by the mouth of all the prophets, that His Christ would suffer, He has thus fulfilled. 19 “Therefore repent and return, so that your sins may be wiped away, in order that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord; 20 and that He may send Jesus, the Christ appointed for you, 21 whom heaven must receive until the period of restoration of all things about which God spoke by the mouth of His holy prophets from ancient time. 22 “Moses said, ‘The Lord God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your brethren; to Him you shall give heed to everything He says to you. 23 ‘And it will be that every soul that does not heed that prophet shall be utterly destroyed from among the people.’ 24 “And likewise, all the prophets who have spoken, from Samuel and his successors onward, also announced these days. 25 “It is you who are the sons of the prophets and of the covenant which God made with your fathers, saying to Abraham, ‘And in your seed all the families of the earth shall be blessed.’ 26 “For you first, God raised up His Servant and sent Him to bless you by turning every one of you from your wicked ways.”
[EXP] Peter says that despite the fact that God laid it out in His Word, the Jewish people had acted ignorantly when they rejected and crucified Jesus, the Messiah. But all hope wasn’t lost. They could now repent and be forgiven, refreshed, and saved when Jesus comes again.
Peter excitedly tells them that Jesus is the prophet greater than Moses that Moses talked about. The one God’s people must listen to or else perish. (cf. Deut. 18:19)
Peter excitedly tells them that these are the days that Samuel and all the prophets after him talked about—the days of the Messiah revealed and coming again!
Peter excitedly tells them that Jesus is the worldwide blessing that God said would come through Abraham!
And then I think with joy in his voice Peter says to them in Acts 3:26…
26 When God raised up his servant, he sent him first to you to bless you by turning each of you from your wicked ways.”
Like the Apostle Paul wrote in Romans 1:16, “(The Gospel of Jesus Christ) is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.”
What grace had come to these people as Peter appealed to them in the Name of Jesus Christ!
Because of who Jesus is and what He has done—and because of that fact that He is coming again—these people should immediately repent of their unbelief and sin and trust in Jesus for forgiveness of sins, refreshment in the Holy Spirit, and salvation guaranteed!
What about you, will you repent, be refreshed, and be saved?
[ILLUS] A guy once called in to the Dave Ramsey radio show to get a little financial advice. The guy explains that he has a lot of debt. He owes everyone a lot of money, so Dave asks, “How did you get in this situation?”
The says that he went through a hard time. He didn’t have any money to pay anyone with, so when bills came in the mail, he just tossed them into this closet in his house unopened—an “out of sight, out of mind” sort of thing.
Dave went on to give this man some advice, but there’s a lot of us who treat the return of Jesus like that man treated his bills.
[APP] You see, we hear about the return of Jesus, but we file it away in the back of our minds so we don’t have to think about. Because if we did think about it, we’d have to get ready for it. If we did think about we’d have to actually repent and follow Jesus.
What Peter said to this Jewish audience in Acts 3 is what God’s Word says to you today: you need to repent and follow Jesus as your Lord and Savior so you can be forgiven, so you can experience the refreshing that comes when you are filled with the Holy Spirit, and you need to repent and follow Jesus because Jesus is coming!
You sticking that truth in some closet of your mind so you don’t have to think about won’t stop Him from coming!
Will you be ready when He comes?
Will you repent, be refreshed, and be saved today?
Peter said these people were ignorant, but after His proclamation and appeal, they were ignorant no longer.
They understood the need to repent and believe.
And if we haven’t before, we also now understand the need to repent and believe.
We cannot claim ignorance.
What will you do with what you now about Jesus?
Believe Him and be saved?
Or reject Him and perish?
[TS] …
CONCLUSION
[PRAYER]