Resurrection Ripples - 3 - Miracles

Scripture: Acts 9:36-43

Acts 9:36–43 NIV

36 In Joppa there was a disciple named Tabitha (in Greek her name is Dorcas); she was always doing good and helping the poor. 37 About that time she became sick and died, and her body was washed and placed in an upstairs room. 38 Lydda was near Joppa; so when the disciples heard that Peter was in Lydda, they sent two men to him and urged him, “Please come at once!” 39 Peter went with them, and when he arrived he was taken upstairs to the room. All the widows stood around him, crying and showing him the robes and other clothing that Dorcas had made while she was still with them. 40 Peter sent them all out of the room; then he got down on his knees and prayed. Turning toward the dead woman, he said, “Tabitha, get up.” She opened her eyes, and seeing Peter she sat up. 41 He took her by the hand and helped her to her feet. Then he called for the believers, especially the widows, and presented her to them alive. 42 This became known all over Joppa, and many people believed in the Lord. 43 Peter stayed in Joppa for some time with a tanner named Simon.

5/11/2025

Order of Service:

Announcements

Opening Worship

Prayer Requests

Prayer Song

Pastoral Prayer

Kid’s Time

Offering (Doxology and Offering Prayer)

Scripture Reading

Sermon

Closing Song

Benediction

Special Notes:

Standard

Mother’s Day

Opening Prayer:

God of comfort and compassion,

through Jesus, your Son, you lead us

to the water of life and table of your bounty.

May we who have received

the tender love of our Good Shepherd

be strengthened by your grace

to care for your flock. Amen.

Miracles

Impact

We look to Jesus's resurrection as a singular defining moment: a turning point in the history of creation. And for good reason. We wouldn’t be here today if Jesus had stayed dead. But sometimes, I have wondered what makes the miracle of Jesus' resurrection so different and much more important than any other miracle.

Jesus was not the only person to ever come back from the dead. He wasn’t even the first. Some people were healed and revived just at the point of death, and some of the skeptics have wondered if perhaps those people were pronounced dead prematurely. But then there’s a story of Lazarus that no one could discredit. Jesus brought him out of the sealed tomb after he had been buried. Those two miracles, the resurrection of Lazarus and Jesus, were so similar that we look to the first as a foreshadowing event, preparing us for the second one.

If they were so similar, what makes the resurrection of Jesus so much more important? We can get lost in the weeds, trying to pick out the specific differences and all of these miracles about Jesus and others coming back from the dead. However, when it comes to the importance of those miracles, one factor shows the resurrection of Jesus as the most important: its impact on our lives.

The resurrection of Jesus changed the trajectory of the world forever. His resurrection was a big splash in the water, like someone doing a cannonball dive in the pool, soaking everyone around them. But that initial splash was just the first wave. The waves rippled after that. But instead of fading out over time, the ripples grew bigger, reaching out further with each passing wave.

Those first ripples made those followers of Jesus into witnesses of him as they shared the gospel in the power of his Spirit with those around them. The next wave began transforming people like the apostle Paul from atheists and agnostics, and sometimes even enemies of Jesus, into disciples who would give their lives for him and follow him forever. Our passage today shows us that the next wave of those resurrection ripples empowers his disciples to do miraculous things, it reminds us that Jesus calls us to do the same work that He did as we follow him prayerfully and obediently.

Brought Into Their Stories

The unsung hero of this story is a lady whose name was Tabitha, but also known by the Greek name Dorcas. She was a Jewish lady who took care of widows. We can chuckle about her Greek name a little bit, but the fact that Luke tells us both her birth name and the name she used conducting business in the Roman empire tells us that she was well respected in the community, both among her Jewish immigrant people, as well as the Romans, whose country she lived in. She was probably bilingual, maybe born in that country, and knew how to succeed in both cultures.

I find it curious that it doesn’t tell us whether she cared for the Jewish widows or the Greek ones. Those two groups did not always get along well. Last week, we discussed the apostle Paul, who had a foot in both worlds, and how God used him to bring the gospel to everyone. This woman also had a foot in both worlds and used it to care for those left alone and vulnerable.

She made clothes for these widowed women. She may have had a clothing business. We don’t know exactly what kind of clothes she made, but they were very valuable to those who received them. And we can tell that because at the opening of this passage, Tabitha has died and the widows she cared for have gathered around her, mourning, and showing each other the clothes she had made for them, like you might see at a funeral visitation. I expect that whether the clothes were fancy and expensive or plain and practical, they were made with love, and these women missed her terribly.

Tabitha was a Christian and had told these widows about Jesus, the things he taught, and the mighty things he did. So when one of them got wind of Peter, the top disciple of Jesus, visiting the next town, they got the idea that maybe Peter could help them. You see, there is a story that had gotten around about a well-respected Jewish man in Capernaum, whose daughter was very sick. He sent for Jesus to come and heal her, and even though she died before Jesus got there, Jesus could still help. He sent everyone out of the room, except for Peter, James, and John. And then he told the young girl to wake up. To the amazement of everyone, she did. Just like Tabitha, the funeral guests had already arrived, and they were very confused when the young girl came out of the bedroom to greet them. Jesus told everybody to keep that little incident quiet. But you know how people are. Word gets around, especially about amazing things like that. These widows decided to bring Peter into their story and see what he could do for them.

Just Like Jesus

I’m sure Peter also remembered Jesus bringing that little girl back to life. Jesus often healed people with nothing more than a touch, and he could bring them back to life just by calling their name. He showed that the true power does not come from words or skills. It comes from a connection, a deep personal relationship with God.

Peter had seen and done many things by this point in his life. I don’t know that he ever fully got the hang of being a disciple and then an apostle, sent out to take the gospel to the world. But I think God redeemed Peter’s impetuous nature, turning that weakness into a strength as Peter followed Jesus through some strange situations. This particular situation was not so strange. Challenging, yes, but this was a place that Peter had been before. Tabitha was an adult woman instead of a young girl, and we don’t know what caused her death, but somebody thought she was taken before her time.

Like Jesus, Peter sent everybody out of the room, called her by name, and told her to get up. It makes sense that he performed that miracle just like Jesus did. But I wonder what he was thinking. How did he know if it would work?

Sometimes we veer off the path, trying to follow Jesus. We can veer off to the left and forget that Jesus told his disciples that they and we would do even greater things than he did. When we forget that he promised us those opportunities would come, it can leave us feeling like we must face those challenges alone. We jump in, try to control the situation, and then make excuses when things don’t turn out as well as we hope, or sometimes worse. We can veer off the path to the right when we charge into the world wielding Jesus' name like a weapon against anything that stands in our way. More often than not, things don’t work out the way we hope, and we face our failure that we’ve announced to the world as the will of Jesus, even if it wasn’t.

This might be one of the reasons why most people shy away from anything related to miracles when they’re considering their spiritual gifts. It’s messy, and it can put us in some sticky situations. But there is a faithful path for us to work with God and see those miracles in our lives. Just like any other gift from God, we use it faithfully by surrendering to him and following him one small step at a time.

When faced with challenges that do not have easy answers, we've often been told to ask ourselves, “What would Jesus do?”. But we don’t have to figure that out on our own. The better question to ask ourselves is, “What is Jesus doing?“. He’s not dead and gone. He’s alive, and his spirit is present and working among us. We follow him obediently, just as he taught us, that He only did what he saw the heavenly father doing. If we do that, we will participate in the miracles he is doing, whether we fully understand them or not.

The miracle of the Red Sea parting may have looked like Moses had magic powers, holding up his staff, and watching the waves pull apart. But it took 1000 small acts of obedience from the burning bush to the Red Sea to get everybody in place to witness that moment. Most of those other things he did obediently did not seem as magical or successful in the moment. For Moses, those many acts of obedience were much harder than holding a stick up in the air when God said, "Now."

Different Mission/ Here to Stay

The story of Tabitha coming back to life is a beautiful reminder from Luke that we, as disciples of Jesus, should do the same things He did. He entrusted His mission to us and continues it through us by the power of His Holy Spirit. We are His body, His physical presence here in the world today, but we are also very aware that we are not Jesus. While we share the work of inviting people into God‘s kingdom, we cannot atone for their sins as Jesus did. He remains the good Shepherd, and we are still sheep.

But that doesn’t mean we can’t work with our Shepherd to care for all the sheep. Those of you who have been daughters and are now moms know that no one can truly replace that person who filled the role of loving you first and best in your life. Some of you have graduated to grandparent status and found a new role in helping your children parent their children. You’ve learned that you can’t fully take over that role even when you know better. So you find yourself supporting and encouraging without actually being the one in charge.

We all do it together in church every week, especially when we have little ones with us or people who are less familiar with what to do in a church service. We lead by example. Most of the time, we don’t need to put on sheriff badges and enforce behavior. Instead, we show them how to behave as the sheep of Jesus, the good Shepherd, by being an example they can look to when they don’t know better.

When Tabitha met Jesus, she began living her life that way, as an example of who the sheep of Jesus are. Peter was transformed daily as a sheep that always stayed right in step with the good Shepherd. Granted, there were some early days when he acted a little more like a cat getting under his shepherd's feet and tripping him up. But eventually, Peter learned how to follow Jesus, and as Peter followed Jesus, other people followed him and were introduced to Jesus as well. Those widows followed Tabitha, who followed Jesus. They may not have all been Christians themselves, which would’ve made their grief so much worse when they lost Tabitha, the one they looked to as their shepherd. But they had an opportunity to see the true Shepherd when they were introduced to the love and power of Jesus through Tabitha, Peter, and the power of Jesus that worked through all of these sheep in this moment.

I said at the beginning that this passage was about Tabitha, because it is. John or James could've just as easily played Peter's role in this story. They were there that day Jesus performed the miracle in Capernaum. It could’ve been Phillip, Andrew, or any other disciples, because Jesus told them they would do greater things than he did. Tabitha was the hero of this passage, not because of a momentary miracle, but because she did something greater than what Jesus had done. She stayed.

Tabitha didn’t travel to make the same clothes for new people each week. She stayed and cared for the ones Jesus sent her to, and those he sent to her. Some of these women may not have met each other until the day of her funeral. It may have been Tabitha’s death that brought them all together in the same place at the same time. But it was her life that connected them to Jesus. Her constant love and care for them daily, grappling with the real challenges they each faced, and doing her best to introduce and keep them close to Jesus, and everything she said and did made all the difference in their lives. After Peter performed this miracle, and Tabitha was brought back to life, her ladies did not pack their bags and follow Peter like people did with Jesus. They stayed right where they were because they found the true love and power of Jesus in Tabitha. Death tried to take her away from the work that God had for her. But those resurrection ripples from Jesus through Peter gave her the power to stay.

I expect not many of you are called to be like Peter, traveling from place to place and performing signs and wonders. But some of you might. Many of you have been called to stay and put down roots among those God calls you to lead to him and care for. Some of you will experience miracles, which you may have already. Some days you will sit back and watch, some days you’ll be right there and step with Jesus, doing whatever he has asked you to do. And some days, the miracle will be you.

Few things make my heart happier than seeing people come alive as they live into God's call in their lives. In a couple of weeks, we will offer two classes on Wednesday night to help you discover how God has empowered you spiritually through your personality, skills acquired over the years, and personal experiences. We want to help you know who you are when living entirely in Jesus.

This is not a once-and-for-all kind of experience. We want to do this as a church family every year. It gives us helpful information and helps us serve one another better within our church and community. But the most important part of this is that it invites us to go to Jesus, our true Shepherd, and find out from him who we truly are and who he is making us to be.

Can you imagine what it would be like for our whole church family, all 100 of us, to share exactly who we are and who Jesus was shaping us to be? We could have genuine fellowship, knowing one another far better than our names, family connections, and one or two visible talents. We could help one another grow closer to Jesus more honestly and powerfully. And when we fell short or failed or experience a setback, we wouldn’t have to wait for a traveling apostle to be in a nearby town to invite in and fix our situation. We would all be following Jesus, we could come together and allow Jesus to restore a fallen and hurting disciple through all of us.

What is the miracle you are waiting for today?

Whose miracle is God calling you to be?

Many of us are waiting on a miracle. Many of you are experiencing miracles right now. And while we experience the ups and downs, and see the challenges before us in our lives together… as we connect ourselves directly with Jesus, we will find we have everything we need right where he has us, right here with him.

Closing Prayer

Lord Jesus, Good Shepherd over our lives. We thank you today for those who shared you with us. We thank you for the way You have loved us through their words and their actions. We know you are calling us to allow your love to flow through our lives. Today, we pray that the miraculous power of your resurrection will not stop at our feet but that your power will move through us in waves beyond our imagination or control. Give us the faith to follow you in a thousand small acts of obedience to prepare the way for the supernatural miracles you desire to bring into our lives. In your Holy Name, Jesus, Amen.