The Church at Work with the Spirit
Acts 3:1-26
A. A Miracle of Healing
Some weeks – maybe up to 3 months – after Pentecost, Peter and John go up to the Temple for the 3 PM prayer time, and encounter a man born lame. Apparently his feet and ankles were twisted and deformed and he couldn’t walk (feet and ankles are what were specifically mentioned as being made strong).
When they speak to him, this needy man expects to get something from them, though he got far more than he expected.
Illustration:
Today, we are also surrounded by people who have serious problems, many which have been with them for a long time, and they have fixed their attention on us, and on the church expecting to receive something from us.
Some people have economic problems. More than twenty-six million Americans are below the poverty level. Most who have sufficient money are not using it wisely. One sociologist estimated that one of every three young families in America today are only one paycheck away from bankruptcy. A plastic surgeon said the most successful operation he ever performed was when he cut up his credit cards!
People also have emotional problems. A noted psychiatrist from the University of Louisville claims we are entering an era of depression, an ailment 20 percent of the United States population suffers from at the present time. With the growing emotional upheaval of our day, it is not surprising to hear that every eighty-six seconds someone in our world commits suicide. That is at the clip of about 1,000 persons a day.
People also have interpersonal problems. The emotional problems, in part, come from a lack of significant others in our lives with whom we can share and from whom we can gain support. The most serious interpersonal problem of our time is loneliness. Loneliness haunts senior adults, troubles young people, and plagues most of us in between.
Some suffer from intellectual problems. More than twenty million Americans cannot read or write; that is one out of every five adults. About 40 percent of the world’s population cannot read and write. Lack of knowledge is a serious problem for many today.
People of our day are also haunted by family problems. In the United States, marriages are splitting at the rate of about one million every year. The resulting problems between parents and children and the pressures with which we are confronted make us wonder what happened to the song "There’s no place like home."
In addition, there are also physical problems. More than ten million people will starve to death this year. Our hospitals are full, and our health care industry is being pushed to its limits. In many cases, we are contributing directly to our problems. A cartoon showed an older gentleman reading a paper in which the headlines cited high cholesterol levels and potential carcinogens found in various foods. The man said to his wife, "Everything you eat, drink, breathe, or do these days is a health risk! You’re only safe just sitting in your living room doing nothing!"
At that moment, the radio blared out, "This just in. Researchers announced today that tests conducted on laboratory rats confirm that just sitting in a living room doing nothing can cause lower back pain, fallen arches . . .”
The man at the Temple needed and received physical healing. I want to focus on 3 issues involved in this healing: 1) The Authority to Heal; 2) Faith in Healing, and 3) the Timing.
1) The Authority to Heal
Peter had healed many, both before and after the resurrection of Jesus. He said, "What I have I give you."
What is it that Peter had, and where did he get it?
First of all, Peter apparently had something in his personal possession that he could use at will, parallel to money, which he didn’t have at the moment but which he could have spent as he desired. It was healing power. It’s included in Jesus’ promise that you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you (Acts 1:8). Jesus had told Peter and the others that they could expect to do the works He did, explaining that the power of the Holy Spirit they would receive was the same power by which He did His healing miracles.
Paul explains in 1 Cor 12:9 that "gifts of healings" are given by the Holy Spirit to some members of the Body of Christ in the same way that others have spiritual gifts of teaching or administration or helps or prophecy. Peter probably had the gift of healings, as demonstrated in Acts.
But for a healing such as this lame man, a gift of healing is not always needed. For example, all Christians have a role of witnessing for Jesus, even if they do not have the gift of evangelist.
I believe that all Christians also have a role of praying for the sick. And even by using a role, a healing like this could have taken place.
Healing power does not reside in the person with the gift of healing, except to the extent that the Holy Spirit dwells within them. That is why Peter said, "In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth." This was a statement of authority – not Peter’s authority, but authority delegated to him by Jesus.
ILLUS.
When Jesus first sent Peter and the others out to heal the sick, He gave them the necessary power to do it (see Matt. 10:1). The Greek word for this power is exousia, which carries with it the meaning that the power is not inherent but delegated by a higher authority. It is similar to the power an ambassador has been given by the president. U.S. ambassadors, for example, would get nowhere in foreign countries by presenting themselves in their own names. Rather, they say, "I come in the name of the President of the United States." That is exactly why Peter said he had come, "In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth." [C. Peter Wagner, Acts of the Holy Spirit]
Note that in Acts 1:8, when Jesus says, "You shall receive power," He uses another common Greek word, dunamis. This word does imply "strength based on inherent physical, spiritual, or natural powers" according to The New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology. It implies that the disciples from then on would have the indwelling dunamis power of the Holy Spirit, but that this spiritual power could only be used by the authority given by Jesus. Invoking the name of Jesus is a declaration of the authority to heal.
2) The Issue of Faith in Healing
Now did the faith of this beggar, either in Jesus Christ or in divine healing, bring about his healing? No. The New Testament has examples of three different possible agents of the faith necessary for divine healing to take place, the sick person being only one.
When two blind men came to Jesus (see Matt. 9:27-31), He said, “Do you believe that I am able to do this?" When they affirmed that they did, Jesus said, “According to your faith let it be to you" (v. 29). They were both healed, and their personal faith played an important role. The sick person in that case was the agent of faith for healing. But this is not the only way it happens.
Another agent of faith is an intermediary. In Matt. 8, a Roman centurion once asked Jesus for healing on behalf of his servant who was paralyzed, perhaps much like the lame man at the Temple gate. In this case, Jesus congratulated the centurion and said, “I have not found such great faith, not even in Israel!" (Matt. 8:10). Not only did the servant have no faith, he may not have even known who Jesus was or that his master was asking for healing. Nevertheless, he was miraculously healed through the faith of an intermediary.
The third agent of faith is the person who does the healing. Unless we read things into the text that are not here, that is the case here. The agents of faith for the healing of the lame beggar were Peter and John.
We might hope that the beggar was saved, but if he wasn’t, he would not be the first to experience miraculous healing without becoming a committed disciple of Christ. John 6, for example, begins with many people following Jesus «because they saw His signs and wonders of healing (John 6:2). But before the chapter ends, Jesus has to say, "There are some of you who do not believe" (John 6:64). And, "From that time many of His disciples went back and walked with Him no more" (John 6:66). The fact that the beggar "praised God" really proves no more than that he was doing what all Jews are supposed to do when they go into the Temple, and that he acknowledged his healing came from Jehovah.
Healing by itself does not save. John in his Gospel called healings “signs and wonders” which pointed to something else – to Jesus.
Healing can open people’s minds to consider the gospel, but only a response to the gospel and personal faith in Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord can save. Whether the beggar did this we do not know.
True gratitude to God for what He has done for us results in obedient discipleship.
3) The Timing
If Jesus Himself had passed this lame man numerous times when going in and out of the Temple, and if Peter and John had seen him there day after day, why had no one healed him previously?
A key to ministering with divine healing is to be sensitive to God’s timing. Jesus said, "The Son can do nothing of Himself, but what He sees the Father do" (John 5:19). Jesus’ miraculous works were done according to the Father’s timing. Peter was obviously listening to the Holy Spirit and following His lead; just as His Lord had done and taught him to do.
On this particular trip to the Temple, Peter had extraordinary compassion on the lame man and a great desire to see him healed. Where did this desire come from? Presumably from the Father, "For it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure"-(Phil. 2:13). Why the Father chose this particular time, and not another, we may never know.
Our job is to listen to the Father; listen to the Spirit; listen for the “nudges,” the promptings, the directings of God, and then obey.
And note this: Because Peter was so sure of the timing of the Father, he chose not to pray a prayer of intercession, asking God to heal the lame man, which is the most common form of healing prayer. He spoke directly to the lame man and commanded him to stand up! When God speaks to us and says act, we need to act!
And so the healed man let everybody know he was healed. An impossible dream had come true! He testified by deed: walking and jumping! He testified by word: praising God! He recognized that it was God who had healed him. Peter did not seek or receive any credit. He didn’t pass the offering plate and take a collection for his ministry. The focus and the glory was on God.
The people in the Temple who saw it could neither ignore the power, nor doubt the power behind Peter’s use of the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth. They all had known this lame man and now they saw him whole. They were as surprised and amazed as the others had been three months earlier when they heard the tongues spoken on the Day of Pentecost. And they were just as ready as the others to listen to Peter’s explanation.
B. Peter’s Interpretation of the Miracle
Begin Where Your Audience Is
As he addressed this second group in the Temple, Peter took wise precautions to assure them he was still a true Jew. Phrases such as "men of Israel"; "the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob"; “the God of our fathers" knit him with the audience and helped them ignore the fact that he was speaking with an unsophisticated Galilean “hillbilly” accent.
His biblical text was from Moses, and he mentioned Samuel and the prophets. What had been happening over the past three months was the introduction to a new era in the history of salvation, nothing less than a new covenant. But as a good communicator, Peter began with the old covenant, which was known, and then moved to the new covenant, which, for the Jews, was as yet unknown.
The New Testament preachers recognized the importance of starting where the people were in their preaching. When Paul preached to the Athenians, he began with the altar to the unknown God (Acts 17:23). When Philip preached to the Ethiopian, he began with the Scripture of Isaiah where the Ethiopian was reading (Acts 8:35). In this instance, when Peter preached to the Jews, he began by referring to "The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of our fathers" (v. 13).
The church is responsible for bringing the gospel message in contact with human lives. When we shoot over our listener’s heads, it does not mean we have superior ammunition. It simply means we don’t know how to shoot!
However, they liked what they heard about this new covenant very much because Peter helped them understand the true power behind the miracle. He explains that it was not some power inherent in Peter or John, and Peter appropriately uses the word "dunamis" here (v. 12). (Remember that we get the word “dynamite” from “dunamis.”)
Peter does not mention the power of the Holy Spirit at this point because it only would have confused them. Some of them would have heard Peter say, "In. the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth." And they knew who Jesus was well enough to cringe when Peter reminded them, as he also did on Pentecost, that they were corporately guilty of crucifying the true Servant of God. He told them that Jesus had been raised from the dead, and that they should receive and respect Him now if they had not done so previously.
Many of them wanted to get in touch with the power of Jesus that they had seen with their own eyes. Peter, therefore, took the opportunity to make three demands:
1) Repent, 2) Receive Forgiveness, and 3) Join Us in Jesus and His Work
1. Repent
19. Repent therefore and be converted. . . 26. ... in turning away every one of you from your iniquities.
This is the same thing Peter said on the Day of Pentecost. They had to repent of killing the Messiah even though they may have been ignorant of what they were doing at the time (see 3: 17). Ignorance of sin does hot excuse it and erase guilt, particularly when the sin has done damage to others. It needs to be confessed.
[Say more on how sin blocks us from hearing and responding to God’s promptings.]
2. Receive Forgiveness
19. ... that your sins may be blotted out, so that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord.
Repenting and placing faith in Jesus Christ will allow God not only to forgive sins, but also to obliterate them. We ourselves may remember them later, but God refuses to. Peter was saying that God would ’not only forgive the people for crucifying Jesus, but that all the rest of their sins would be forgiven as well. They could hardly have comprehended fully that this would mean, for example, that there would be no more need to observe an annual day of atonement, but they could at least begin to understand it somewhat. The more they understood it, the more spiritual refreshing they would experience. Many of them received this as "good news," another term for the "gospel."
3. Join Forces for World Evangelization
25. You are the sons of the prophets, and of the covenant which God made with our fathers, saying to Abraham, "And in your seed all the families of the earth shall be blessed. "
This quote from Genesis 12:3 is the Great Commission in its Old Testament version. The "families" of the earth is a synonym for "nations" or "peoples." This was such a radical suggestion to the ethnic Jews (mostly Hebrews in this case) whom Peter was addressing, that I would imagine very few, if any, would have picked up the significance of Peter’s challenge. There was not much love in their hearts for the goyim, or Gentiles, and some would have preferred that God not bless them. [C. Peter Wagner, Acts of the Holy Spirit]
It is true today as well. I have heard of people who lump all Iraqis together – terrorists and our allies – and would just as soon all of them get blown up! How much better that our enemies become our brothers and sisters in Christ! That is God’s will!
But Peter would not have forgotten that God gave him and the others the power of the Holy Spirit, not just to heal lame beggars, but also to be effective witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and the uttermost parts of the earth.
Conclusion: Call to listen to the Spirit and join in God’s work; to give what we have to needy people – especially the presence and power of Jesus.
Resource: C. Peter Wagner, Acts of the Holy Spirit
