Clough Acts Lesson 9

How Early Christians Reached Their Generation – Acts 3:1-11

It’s been some time since we looked at the large scale picture of the book of Acts so in order that we start fresh in a new chapter let’s look at the overall outline of Acts. Acts is a book of transition; it is a book that begins with the kingdom and ends with the Church and because it is this gradual transition it is a book that cannot be used without very particular care; it cannot be used to establish norms and standards for the Church Age. This is why we have had people go into the book of Acts, take a few verses out of context and insist that the rest of the Church Age must be modeled exactly as it was in the book of Acts. To do this is a failure to interpret Acts correctly.

The outline of the book of Acts, given in Acts 1:8, where the witness will occur, in Jerusalem, in Judea Samaria and the uttermost parts of the world. The witnessing in Jerusalem deals with the first section, from Acts 2-7. It’s instructive to look at this section of the book of Acts, 2-7, because this section of Acts shows you how Luke analyzes the work of the Holy Spirit. First you will notice that the witnessing that is mentioned in Acts 1:8 and that occurs throughout the book of Acts is a witnessing not to our own subjective experience of Christ, though that’s true, but that’s not what is emphasized in the witnessing. The emphasis in the witnessing is on the resurrection of Christ as a historic fact. There is need, constantly, to go back and fortify ourselves that this is the main point of witnessing. For example, take an average textbook in the classroom. Does the average textbook treat the empty tomb of Christ on the third day with the same degree of validity as, say the life of Caesar Augustus? And obviously to ask the question is to answer it; show me a history book in an average neutral public educational classroom that treats the resurrection of Christ on an equal plain with every other historic event. Very, very rarely is it even mentioned in a history book today. So the witnessing in Acts is a theme that we have to come back to in our own lives constantly. The witnessing is a witnessing to the objective revelation of God in history and not necessarily what Jesus did for you personally. That may be confirmatory but that is not the gospel.

In this section, from Acts 2-7, we watch a certain progress. For example, in Acts 2 we have the day of Pentecost and sermon number one of Peter. In Acts 3-4, which is the section we’re about to begin, we have the healing incident and sermon number two of Peter. As Peter delivers sermon number two Acts 4 ends in the rise of the first persecution. So here you find something that Luke says and warns us twenty centuries ahead of time, if the Holy Spirit is going to work and He’s going to work effectively against the powers and the principalities of this world, expect this to happen again. Wherever the gospel goes out you will always have a counter attack; it may be physical, it may be ideological, it may be political. In the early days of the Church it was more physical; then we have Constantine coming along and absorbing the Church into the great world system and that did great damage to the Church. And then finally in our day you have a tremendous intellectual attack against the claims of the Word of God, so the attack against the gospel and against Christ will always be there. We just have to accept that and move on.

Then in Acts 5 we have the work or report on how the Holy Spirit purges the Church, the Ananias and Sapphira incident and how the Holy Spirit fortifies the Church against persecution from without. Finally in Acts 6-7 you have an increase in persecution, and of course the first martyr recorded in church history, Stephen.

So that’s the first block of material in the book of Acts. Notice how it’s arranged; notice how it starts out: with the resurrection and ascension of Christ and watch how it ends; in the persecution of the believers, a violent bloody persecution of the Christians. Now that is pictured as a basic normal view of history. Nowhere in history go forward, if it’s really going forward, and we’re not just talking to ourselves, if it’s really going to make a penetration into the enemy’s territory there must be a kickback. That’s one of the signs that the Holy Spirit is doing His work.

So while we caution you as we begin another chapter, we caution you not to make some of the specifics that we read here the norm and standard for the rest of the Church Age. While that is true it is also true that we can gain some principles, overall principles of watching the Holy Spirit work. Today we’re going to take the healing incident of the first part of Acts 3 to show you a model of how in general principles the Holy Spirit works in witnessing or in evangelism. Now all the details are not going to be true of the rest of the Church Age. But some of the details will be true, and those details are ones we want to pay attention to. If we’re Christians and we’re interested in following the resurrected Christ then we’re going to be interested in following the Spirit of the resurrected Christ and how that Spirit wants to direct our lives; we’ll stop putting His Spirit into a straightjacket and saying that the Holy Spirit must work in thus and such a way; rather let us look to Scripture and see how the Holy Spirit just wants to work if we’ll just let Him work this way.

Acts 3:1, “Now Peter and John went up together into the temple at the hour or prayer, being the ninth hour. [2] And a certain man, lame from his mother’s womb, was carried, whom they laid daily at the gate of the temple which is called Beautiful, to ask alms of them that entered into the temple; [3] Who, seeing Peter and John about to go into the temple, asked an alms. [4] And Peter, fastening his eyes upon him, with John, said, Look on us. [5] And he gave heed unto them, expecting to receive something from them. [6] Then Peter said, Silver and gold have I none, but, such as I have, give I thee. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk. [7] And he took him by the right hand, and lifted him up; and immediately his feet and ankle bones received strength. [8] And he, leaping up, stood and walked, and entered with them into the temple, walking, and leaping, and praising God. [9] And all the people saw him walking and praising God. [10] And they knew that it was he who sat for alms at the Beautiful Gate of the temple; and they were filled with wonder and amazement at that which had happened unto him. [11] And as the lame man who was healed held Peter and John, all the people ran together unto them in the porch that is called Solomon’s greatly wondering.”

Now this is one incident among apparently many that was summarized in Acts 2:43. Remember at the last of the previous chapter there was a short biography of the early church life. Certain things that were going on daily in that early church situation were recorded there and in verse 43 one of the things that was going on in the early church was the “fear coming upon every soul; and many wonders and signs were done by the apostles.” Now the “every soul” I said back then were the non-Christians, the people outside. Now how did they get the message? This incident is one incident in how they got the message.

First the setting of the incident; we want to look at the setting of the incident theologically and historically. Turn to Isaiah 35:6, the setting theologically for this incident. The Holy Spirit arranges it; Peter and John don’t. We’ll see numerous evidences of that in this text. If you are Greek students get your Greek text out and be prepared to watch the imperfect tenses in this particular portion of the text; it’s one of the most beautiful and edifying sections on the New Testament on the use of the Greek imperfect tense. But first the theological setting. Don’t read this incident as just a miracle story. Now if you come to the text and you have a mentality that looks at the Bible and says that’s a nice little Sunday School story, somebody was healed, so what, that’s the wrong way to look at it. There were many, many healings, but only this one is singled out by Luke because Luke is analyzing how the Holy Spirit worked something out for a particular manifestation of the resurrected Christ and one of the manifestations of the resurrected Christ had to be a proclamation of His Messiahship.

Now what were the signs of a Messiah? In the Old Testament for centuries God the Holy Spirit had prepared the people that when Messiah came to bring in Messiah’s kingdom, Messiah’s kingdom would have certain characteristics; there’s be no more war, there’d be the end of the problem or anarchy in the international community of nations, there’d be a world government, there would not be a world government until Messiah came. There’d be world peace, there’d be a transformation in the ecology of the planet earth. All these things were signs and symptoms of the coming of the King.

Now in Isaiah 35:5 one of those signs and symptoms is that, “Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped.” We saw that sign in the Gospel of John. But observe verse 6, “Then shall the lame man leap as an hart, and the tongue of the dumb shall sing,” so the leaping of the man as an hart, or as a young deer, will be a sign that the kingdom has come. It will be a manifestation that only Messiah is able to bring in these renewed physical conditions and therefore, people, that’s what the sign is saying, pay attention. Here is a healing that is not just a healing. Here is a particular kind of healing, a lame man, and a particular result of that healing, namely he is leaping around. That should recall in the minds of thousands of people in that temple, Messiah, the prophecy of Isaiah, “the lame shall leap as an hart.” That’s the significance theologically of this thing that’s about to happen.

Now on our way back to Acts we want to stop at Matthew 22:1 because there’s something else that is involved with Act 2 and it’s involved again with Acts 3 and it has to do with a little parable that Jesus spoke before He died. “Jesus answered and spoke unto them again by parables, and said. [2] The kingdom of heaven is like a certain king, who made a marriage for his son, [3] And sent forth his servants to call them that were bidden to the wedding; and they would not come. [4] And again, he sent forth other servants, saying, Tell them who are bidden, Behold, I have prepared my dinner; my oxen and my fatlings are killed, and all things are ready; come unto the marriage. [5] But they made light of it, and they went their ways, one to his farm, another to his merchandise. [6] And the remnant took his servants, and treated them spitefully [shamefully] and even murdered them. [7] But when the king heard of it, he was angry; and he sent forth his armies, and destroyed those murderers, and burned up their city.”

Now that’s a parable. It’s a parable of Acts, it’s a parable of Jesus’ ministry during His incarnation. Let’s look at it in detail. In verse 2, “The kingdom of heaven is like unto a certain king, who made a marriage for his son,” the marriage is the marriage feast and a feast in the Bible is akin to the millennial kingdom and the eternal state. It was a time of happiness. The Jewish people in the Old Testament were able to do something that fundies can’t seem to do and that is they enjoyed their God and a feast was a time when they enjoyed themselves. So traditionally in all the parables when you see a feast that’s what it’s talking about; it’s really a signal or a symbol of the coming kingdom. “The kingdom of heaven is like to s certain king,” that would be God the Father, “who has made a kingdom for his son,” that’s Jesus Christ. [3] “And sent forth his servants to call them that were bidden to the wedding,” so you have an invitation issue; “them that were bidden,” is the nation Israel. When was the nation Israel bidden to come to the wedding? Matthew chapter 10 and following, when Jesus commissioned the apostles to go out two by two into the villages of Judea, go all, He said, to the lost sheep of the house of Israel and proclaim to them that the blind see, the deaf hear, the lame walk, and that the kingdom is at hand. That was the message. Why proclaim that? An invitation, accept the king and then you can have your kingdom. So verse 3 is a parable of the first invitation; that first invitation extended from the commissioning all the way to the death of Jesus Christ, three years. That’s the amount of time taken up by verse 3. At the end of verse 3 what was the result? “They would not come.” They didn’t want to come, they rejected, and thus ends the first invitation.

Now verse 4 is a completely different invitation; when you read this parable don’t be sloppy. Verse 4 is not talking about the same invitation as verse 3. In verse 4 it says, “He sent forth other servants,” servants who were different, and he said, “Tell them who are bidden, Behold, I have prepared my dinner; my oxen and my fatling are killed, and all things are ready; come unto the marriage.” What is the second invitation? The second invitation is after the sacrifice has been killed; the sacrifice is Jesus Christ on the cross. All things have been given, and so we have, whereas here we have invitation number one, verse 3, here we have invitation number two, verse 4. Two invitations are given to the nation Israel; the first one—come; it’s rejected. The second one, more urgent, now I have sacrificed, now the food is on the table, come. The food on the table is a picture of the finished work of Christ on the cross. Now, he says, Israel, now would you come, and you can still have your kingdom. You see, the early chapters of Acts are simply a repetition of the Gospel. The Gospel, the kingdom is at hand; Acts, the kingdom is at hand for a while if you’ll accept it. This is why I say when you look at Acts 2 and you look at Acts 3 don’t read these as normal evangelistic sermons; they’re not! They’re kingdom evangelistic sermons, they’re sermons for a particular point, namely not only accept Christ but accept Christ Israel and you can have your kingdom. It’s the second invitation of verse 4.

But notice what happens, which confirms our interpretation. Verses 5 and 6 they made light of it and they went their way, some ignored it the whole Messianic movement. And in verse 6, others became so incensed by the Messianic movement that finally they slew the spokesman of the Messianic movement. How do we know that verse 4, verse 5, and verse 6 and post cross and not pre-cross. A very simple test. Before Christ died were any disciples killed for their testimony? Not at all. The slaying of the servant is a phenomena that began only after the cross. Christ was the first one to die, after Him came these others, and then the martyrs Stephen and so on. So what do we see in Acts? A playing out of verse 4, verse 5, verse 6, the kingdom invitation, the second time the nation Israel has been invited.

Finally verse 7, “And when the king heard thereof, he was angry,” when the King saw Stephen die in Acts 6 and 7, when the King saw the slaughters in the later chapters of the book of Acts where Christians were hacked to death, and later on under Rome, of course this was another persecution but basically in the early part of Acts when the Christians were persecuted, the king heard and He sent forth his armies, destroyed those murderers and burned up their city. That happened exactly to the day forty years from the death of Jesus Christ. For forty years the second invitation was given; the first one for three years; the second one for forty years, a period of grace. Why? Why was the nation Israel given a second invitation? Because of a prayer that Jesus prayed on the cross; everyone’s heard the prayer, few people ever think through what Christ was praying. Remember one of the last words of Christ on the cross? “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.” Now if you’ve ever asked yourself, as you ought to, what does He mean, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do?” “Forgive them for they know not what they do” must refer to not all sins, it must only refer to one sin, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do,” what have they done? They’ve crucified the Messiah, so there’s a particular sin leveled against the nation and when Christ is dying for the sins of the world He says Father, forgive this particular sin, and let not judgment come down upon Israel.

So as Christ dies He prays for an extension of the gospel of some forty years. Why forty? Two reasons: one, forty is obviously the repetitious number of testing in Scripture, but forty more deeply is the length of a generation. A generation long, a generation of length for a test, that the entire fabric of society can be covered with a test; in the course of one generation children will all become adults. See, by extending an invitation out forty years you can have a real statistical sample of how a society is going to go, because a person who was born here, grows up as an adult, will be at the age of accountability and maturity still while that invitation is being given. So why forty years in the Bible for testing? To purge a complete generation span in the social fabric.

So we have Christ praying then this prayer, “Forgive them,” forgive them and postpone this judgment, let them have another chance. Now the resurrected ascended Christ is about to carry out, under the Father’s permission, His prayer and that is the story of Acts. That’s what you’re going to see here in this incident.

So let’s come to Acts 3, we’ve seen the theological setting; we’ve seen the significance of why it is that it was a lame man that was healed, not a blind man but a lame man, because we must have a signal that Messiah is here and Messiah offers His kingdom; it must be a thorough going easily recognizable signal, a signal that would connote the giving of the kingdom. Now if we can get some little historical background so we’ll understand the Gate, in verse 1 it talks about Peter and John going up together into the temple, as you read that section you notice it comes to a gate called the Beautiful Gate. We know what that Beautiful Gate is and I want to show you a picture of it so it will help you as we interpret this portion of the Word of God, get a little background as to why the event occurred at this location. So far we’ve studied why the event occurred theologically; now we’re going to study why the event occurred historically and in the place it happened. This is a model done by Dr. Avi Yonah, that is outside of the city of Jerusalem today, on the west side, it is a scale model of the city of Jerusalem at the time of Christ. The Kidron Valley goes down here. [He shows slides] This set of pillars is built on a section of the temple left over and is called Solomon’s porch. That is where this episode in Acts 3 finally winds up. This is where in John 10 Jesus speaks. So in Acts 3:1 when John and Peter walk into the temple they are not going through this gate, they’re going through that gate. Let’s look closer at what that gate looks like; here is the Gate Beautiful; it was called Beautiful because it was made of bronze; everything else in the temple was gold gilded, as for example the door you see there which led out of this inner court into the next court.

Let me draw a picture; here’s the temple, the gate that goes in here is called the Gate Beautiful; this is the court of women, this is the court of the Israelites and in here are the Levites so you had three classes of people. The Gentiles were excluded. There was a sign over this door, a very famous one, Death to any Gentile that enters here. And no Gentile could ever enter this gate, it was excluded, a sign of the election of the nation Israel. That sign has been recovered in the debris underneath the temple mount recently so we now have that actual sign that was there. The gate has not been recovered. Then we go into the court of the women. John and Peter were on their way through this door up through that gold gilded door that you see, up the steps to get inside here where the Jewish men could get in, and everybody, men and women alike, had to come streaming through that first gate. The second gate was a gate where only the men went through. The first gate both men and women go through and it was that gate that God the Holy Spirit chose for this incident. Look at the setting; here at this gate sat the lame man; thousands and thousands of people would pass through the gate; the lame man, probably, since it was only six months before, had seen the Lord Jesus Christ Himself cleanse this whole outer area outside of the gate. The man knew about Jesus but he never trusted in Christ at a point in his life. And so though he had this background he continued to stay there by this gate. Both men and women knew this; the Holy Spirit prepares the situation so both men and women are fully cognizant of this man so that when the miracle is done both male and female will have an equal opportunity to trust. Peter and John would walk through this gate many times and on up into that area. After the incident goes on and they come back out through this gate the man is healed, they come over and the discourse ends over in the southwestern portion of this, Solomon’s porch, this enclosed area.

That’s the setting historically and archeologically. Now let’s look at the text. Hopefully this will fill your imagination with something to read in as we read the section of the Scripture. As I said, those of you with a Greek text in front of you, watch your imperfect tenses; imperfect tenses for those of you without Greek is simply action that continues in the past, not in the present, and Luke uses these in a very, very interesting way, and great good applications can come from it.

Acts 3:1, “Now Peter and John were going up together” not that they went up, but Luke wants us to see them, they’re walking up to that first gate you saw in the slide, at the same time they’re doing that, verse 2, “a certain man, lame from his mother’s womb, was being carried,” so watch this, two things are happening simultaneously; they’re not going to miss by five seconds, they’re almost going to run into each other. God the Holy Spirit has timed the situation to occur, like He can time things to occur in your life, the witnessing opportunities will be arranged by God’s sovereignty. So we have Peter and John going and the blind man going, not one before the other but both at the same time, both arriving at the critical location. And notice who it is, it’s Peter and John, the two best trained believers of that day. Who does God pick for the juicy witnessing opportunities? Believers who are trained to take advantage of the opportunities. Therefore you don’t need to arrange opportunities, you let the Lord arrange the opportunities. Watch how He does it here; Peter and John have studied, they’re equipped, Peter is trained to use at least 40% of his sermon to be the Old Testament. They’re not just any believer, they’re Peter and John, trained believers.

And so they come, and this man is said to be lame from his mother’s womb, another congenital defect, like we saw in John 9. Why this emphasis on congenital defects, like say a baby born with cerebral palsy, why is this emphasis in the Bible. For the reason that these narratives are given not just for the physical reasons, there’s a physical side to them but for the spiritual analogy. Here we have a man who has a congenital defect but that is a picture spiritual of something else that we all share. We all are congenitally defect spiritually; that doctrine is the doctrine of the depravity of man. We are all born dead spiritually; we are all born, as it were lame, and we all lie outside of the temple of God unable to go into His presence because we don’t have the strength to stand in His presence. Like this man, we stand on the outer gate of God’s presence, begging alms. See, this man, being a human viewpoint man, operating without the divine viewpoint, has no solution for his problem other than the resources of men. Trapped in his box, trapped with his congenital defect, what resources does he have but handouts? What either he himself can come up with or other men can come up with; he is limited in his repertoire to the resources of mankind and that’s the way we are; we’re born spiritually dead and have no resources other than what other people or we ourselves can generate.

Let’s see what happens, verse 3, he sees “Peter and John just about to go into the temple,” for the third time Luke tells us, the timing is important reader, the timing is important, I’m going to use an imperfect tense in verse 1, I’m going to use an imperfect tense in verse 2 in verse 3 to get the point across I’m going to use another construction in the Greek that emphasizes chronology and chronological sequence, they were just about to go through the door when this thing happens. The emphasis by Luke as he writes the text is on what we would call the “accident,” that just happened, the just sheer chance meeting of these people right at this location. [4] “And Peter, fastening his eyes upon him, with John, said, Look upon us.” Now I’m aware that some people who teach divine healing have said that this verse proves that how these early healing miracles occurred was that they kind of psyched these people out, “look on me,” there’s some sort of a hypnotic factor that’s operating here. Not at all… not at all! Do you know why they asked him to look at him, and it’s a word to mean look steadfastly upon him; not for hypnosis, not to release some sort of psychosomatic mechanism, not at all. The reason they asked him to concentrate is that they were at that gate you saw. Now if you were standing at the gate of that temple, outside the Gate Beautiful, how many people do you think are going by every minute? Well, if you figure there’s two or three thousand people in there, there’s probably a hundred people walking by in an average minute or so, it’s a busy thoroughfare, it is the main place in the temple. This gate is busier than any other gate in the temple. The gate that’s up above it where the men go in is decreased by 50% because all the women stop here. So 50% less people are going through this gate so where does the Holy Spirit choose for this miracle? The busiest place in the temple.

Now in the busiest place in the temple wouldn’t you imagine there would be confusion, there’d be noise, there’d be everybody yakking, yakking, somebody talking about hey, you know what happened yesterday, as they walked through into the gate. There’d be distractions and here’s a man who’s got his line on what is he going to get from all these people going through the gate. So before the gospel can be preached you have to have concentration, and a minimization of distraction. You cannot learn the Word of God in chaos. That’s what’s wrong with the open concept; nothing can be taught in a chaotic environment. So the looking here is not for hypnosis sake; the looking here is to just screen out all this confusion that’s going on and just pay attention to what we’re going to tell you, to get his attention. And to show and confirm that I’m right when I say that’s the reason for the word “look,” in verse 5 Luke uses an imperfect tense again, “He was giving heed unto them,” undivided attention, and it’s the inceptive imperfect which means the man began to start giving attention to him. They got his attention, that’s all Luke’s trying to say.

And now he looks up, with undivided attention, in his mind he blots out the hundreds of people that are going by, so the first way the Holy Spirit works, He has trained believers on the scene. The second way the Holy Spirit works, He arranges the situation and the timing perfectly, they literally ran into each other at the gate. The third way the Holy Spirit works, He expects the witnessing believers that are on the scene to control the scene enough so the Word of God can be taught. You cannot evangelize in a mob. Anarchy is not the environment for the preaching of the gospel and so the Christian will always be against anarchy. All right, he “expected to receive something from them.” They’ve got his attention but in his human viewpoint way he still thinks human resources, that’s going to be sufficient.

Now verse 6, “Peter does something here that we’ll miss if we don’t see and relive the situation.

“Then Peter said, Silver and gold have I none, but, such as I have, give I you.” Now in one way that’s a lie; Peter had silver and gold. Do you know why we know that? Because the church had been holding property in common at this time; the church treasury wasn’t very large but it certainly included silver and gold. Now that little remark tells us about the social action of the early Christians. They did not give financial aid to every Tom, Dick and Harry that needed it. They preached the Word of God to the society around them and those who responded received material aid. That was the way they worked. The reason that Peter and John did not give this man material aid was because that’s precisely what he wanted. Notice in verse 5, “expecting to receive something of them.” If Peter and John looked at him and said say, you know, we’ve got enough money here, why don’t we just give this, after all, God loves the world, He loves the sinners in the world, wouldn’t it be an act of love to provide this man with some funds so at least he might have an improved situation in life. That’s the way people would reason today but that’s not the way the apostles reasoned. It’s not an act of love to do that; as an act of love in this situation to totally shatter his viewpoint, he couldn’t be helped until his viewpoint was shattered.

So Peter says I don’t have this, “ but such as I have I give thee,” it’s a verb of possession. Peter is also saying something else about the early church’s charity. The early church had charity, not what we have. Charity, you see, is an act by which I, of my own free will, give what I own. That’s an act of charity. When you give of your choice to someone or some cause, that’s an act of charity. It is not an act of charity when the government confiscates it, turns around and gives it to somebody. That is not charity, that is social welfare, something else, but don’t eve confuse the two. One is a welfare program and the other is charity and the two are not the same; never to be confused, it is not an act of charity for some candidate running for office to say I have such compassion on the poor, I voted all your money for them. That is not compassion, if he had compassion on the poor he’d vote his own money for them, but not your money and mine. That is not an act of compassion.

Well, Peter had compassion of another sort, “such as I have,” I possess, it’s within my operating assets, “I give you. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk.” Now we have to stop and pause on the word and the significance of the name. At this time what would the name mean? Now sure, let’s not kid ourselves, this man knew the name Jesus Christ, he’d heard it; after all he couldn’t have stood in that gate with the thousands of people going in and out of that gate every day and never heard of Jesus of Nazareth. That man knew Jesus of Nazareth; he knew the name. So then what does Peter mean when he says “in the name of Jesus Christ” stand up? He means more than just repeating the name. He mean that the name carries authority now, “in the name of Jesus” is a challenge, if he were to explain it to us he’d say, beggar, the Lord Jesus Christ that you saw a few weeks ago in this court, He’s died, He’s risen again and He’s ascended to be at the Father’s right hand. We claim that this Jewish carpenter from Nazareth is now at the Father’s right hand and has authority to deal directly from the Father; do you or do you not accept that idea of Jesus Christ? That’s what the challenge is.

You see, the Arabs today still have this concept of the potency of a name. There’s a story that the Arabs tell, it’s kind of their ecology of how they explain why a camel looks the way the camel does. If you ever look at a camel head on, next time you see one, notice that he has a very snooty face, very snobby look, that’s the way they look at you, and the Arabs have a story they tell about why is the camel so snobbish toward mankind. As you know, most of the Arabs are Muslims and so they believe that Allah has 100 and some odd attributes. Well, they say here’s why the camel is snobby. The idea is that Allah has revealed 99 of his hundred name to man and given one to the camel and because the camel possesses one of Allah’s names that man can’t get hold of, that’s why he’s looking that way at men. Well, the story shows the Semitic mentality of the possession of a name gives power and that’s the point here, the name. It’s not just formula, like we’d say the name of so and so. Huh-un, this means the power and authority is wrapped up with the person of Jesus Christ, He says rise up and walk.

Now we see another evidence of the Holy Spirit’s marvelous sovereign arranging of a perfect situation. We’ve seen that He’s picked the two best trained men for the witnessing situation, He’s chosen the exact timing, He’s put the situation in the public thoroughfare where when it happens everybody is going to be what, what, what, what happened here, it’s going to get everyone’s attention. We have also seen how the Holy Spirit has worked it out and the details prophetically and so on, now we see one more last fact. Who did the Holy Spirit chose to record this fact for the rest of us that would live in the generations to come? A medical doctor by the name of Luke, a man who had asked questions when he heard of this miracle and say as a doctor I’m curious medically about what happened here, not just the miracle but I want to report some things that are significant to show more of God’s glory in this miracle.

This is why in verse 7 you have medical terms used. “And he took him by the right hand, and lifted him up; and immediately his feet and ankle bones received strength. [8] And he, leaping up, stood and he was walking.” Luke does several things to give us a point by point thing; actually this thing probably took, maybe eight seconds, very quick. It was all over in eight seconds. But verses 7-8 depict those eight seconds as it were in a time lapse film, so we can see very clearly what did God the Holy Spirit do in those quick eight seconds? The first thing he says that Peter, that’s the subject of the verb “took,” “Peter took him by the right hand,” now doesn’t that sound sweet, here dear sir, pick me up by the right hand, it wasn’t that at all. It’s the picture of a grab. Peter, what was his profession before he was an apostle? He was a fisherman; what did fishermen have to do; they didn’t have cranks to pull in their nets, they pulled them in with their arms. Peter had biceps like you couldn’t believe and so when he reached down, this poor lame person sitting at the gate, he just picked him up and so the idea is that Peter was physically lifting this man right off the sidewalk is what he was doing. But in these eight seconds or however long it took, all sorts of things happened and Luke slows the time frame down for us to watch. First thing he wants us to think of is Peter reaching down and starting to grab him up; it’s an aorist but it connotes that Peter began to do this. He reached down. [tape turns]

… lifting him up. Now as Peter starts to lift this man up off the cement, off the stones there at that gate, something happens and as the man is literally being lifted right off his feet, with his feet probably folded, in almost probably a fetal position since he was crippled from that time, all bent out of shape, what do you see. It took a strong man, Peter, to lift him up so everybody could watch those crippled legs start to straighten out, just like landing gear on an aircraft. It says that “immediately his feet and his ankle bones received strength,” that’s what Luke’s telling about, they just unfolded while Peter’s holding him up in the air, the most amazing thing to watch. But Peter hasn’t finished his lifting motion; we can tell that by the verb that Luke uses in the next verse, as he starts to lift him, he lifts him up high enough so everybody can see the feet start to unfold underneath, but then before Peter can lift him up all the way, the man leaps up standing. The motion starts out with Peter and winds up with the man on his own, he stands up. So in those very, very seconds of the miracle, Luke himself didn’t observe this, he must have gone back and said Peter, tell me about it, I want the details of what happened, and Peter gave him these details, so Luke could tell us the medical facts of the situation.

Not there’s some more details that Luke implies in this word the “feet and ankle bones.” The ankle and all bodily joints, and the medical terminology of the Greeks, you read this in Hippocrates writings and so on, emphasize the nerves. Remember that passage in Hebrews 4:12, “the joints and the marrow,” and we repeat that as the penetration of the Word of God. Well, the word “joints,” they would use that to say there’s where motion occurs; a bone doesn’t move, the movement is at the joint of where the bones connect and so when you speak of the joint you’re speaking of motion, and therefore you’re speaking of nerves and so often in the Greek when you’re dealing with joints, you’re really talking about the nerve structure. And this is medically significant because if you have a person of congenital defect, a person has never developed the ability to coordinate.

Now just suppose we had a cripple here in the front, and suppose we were able to inject some chemical that would suddenly give them full use of their muscles; do you realize that that person still couldn’t walk, even though they had full use of their muscles; even though the nerves had been healed, the nerve ending for transmitting impulses, all the synapse were fine; in spite of all that the person still couldn’t walk because you have to learn to walk, it involves a patterning of the brain through the spine down through the legs. All that was done in an instant of time; that’s what Luke is talking about here. He says the amazing thing was this man not only received his muscular strength, not only had nerve regeneration which we are told… the [can’t understand word] sheaf, for example, never regenerates. Here you obviously had nerve tissue regenerating. And then on top of it you had built in learning, learning that was telescoped within a second. It takes a child how long to walk, two years or so, fumbling around, finally getting the coordination started, maybe under intense physical therapy a person might learn to walk after a couple of months, but this is all collapsed down to fractions of a second, as God’s Holy Spirit works one of His great miracles. And now He does something else, he leaps up and he begins to walk, it’s an imperfect tense, the guy just starts out and there’s probably wonderment, hey, look at that, left right left, I can walk now. He doesn’t start leaping immediately; he could have, God made him so he could leap immediately but it’s such a fantastically new experience to walk. Think of it, all of his life this man has watched people above him, looking up at these people walking by, walking by, pleading that if I could only use my legs, and now he uses his legs, so it’s an utterly radical experience. And what does he do? The first thing he uses his legs for, he enters with them into the temple. He doesn’t turn around and walk out and talk to his friends, he goes to the temple because now another thing has happened to this man in those brief few seconds. Not only has he has his muscle, his nerve tissue and his coordination increased, he has had his soul made to one of orientation to grace so now he realizes that it’s not alms that he needs, it’s not the pittances passed out by humanity, it’s not human resources that he must rely upon, it’s God and His mighty essence that he’ll rely. So he enters “with them into the temple, walking, and leaping, and praising God.” See the word “leaping,” remember what we read in Isaiah 35:6, the sign of the Messiah’s coming would be that the lame shall leap. So we have the lame leaping.

And then, [9] “All the people saw him walking and praising God.” He’s praising God, not human resources, God’s resources. Notice it doesn’t say he’s praising John and Peter either, he’s praising God, his eyes were opened to the spiritual import of what happened. [10] “And they knew that it was he who sat for alms at the Beautiful Gate of the temple;” who knew in verse 10? The thousands of people that walked through that gate every day knew, see the efficiency of the Holy Spirit working out the situation. “… and they were filled with wonder and amazement” talking about what we saw in Acts 2. [11] “And as the lame man who was healed was holding Peter and John,” now they had gone in the temple by this time and gone back out to Solomon’s porch, they’d gone through the gate, gone up here, given thanks, had come out and had gone over to this area of Solomon’s porch, so they were now located over in here. That’s significant too because what had Jesus done in that very location but a few months before, with the great shepherd discourse? He proclaimed His Messiahship there and so that was the very location of invitation number one, Israel will you accept Me as your King-shepherd. And so the second invitation is given on exactly the spot of the King-shepherd, Israel, again, will you accept Christ as your King.

And so Peter begins his great discourse; it begins in verse 12 and runs to the end of the chapter. We’re going to deal with the details of that discourse next week but I want to show you some of the things that he says in a very abbreviated way in Acts 2:19-21. What is the essence of Peter’s second invitation? “Repent, therefore and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out,” not when “that,” purpose clause, “that the times of refreshing can come from the Lord.” See what Peter does; he makes the millennial kingdom contingent upon the response of the nation Israel to the second invitation. Israel, he says, from the very spot on Solomon’s porch, just as you heard six months before Jesus Christ make this announcement, I in the name of the same Jesus, proclaim to you the same message, accept him “that the times of refreshing can come.” You people of Israel, you had one chance and you crucified the Lord of glory but you did it in ignorance. You notice what he says in verse 17, “I know that through ignorance you did it,” he confirms what Jesus insisted upon at the cross, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.” Forgive them for the sin of the crucifixion. And so he says you people, you’ve had your chance, through ignorance…through ignorance you crucified Him, now you have another chance.

Notice what he says in Acts 2:21, “Whom heaven must receive until the times of restitution of all things,” that’s the terms of the Messianic kingdom, “the restitution of all things, which God has spoken by the mouth of His prophets,” so he is offering the kingdom once again. And we’ll see the response this has, the two-fold response, some believed and some reject.

Let’s tie it together and see what we’ve learned so far by way of application. We’re looking at people who are witnessing to the resurrection of Christ. They’re not witnessing to their own personal experience. They’re witnessing to Messiah and His claims, how did the Holy Spirit help them, how can the Holy Spirit help you and help us today evangelize. Here are some things. Going over what we’ve seen in the text we see the Holy Spirit picks trained believers. Want to be used in witnessing? Get trained, be ready so that when the Spirit opens the door you can go through it.

What is another thing that we’ve seen here? The Holy Spirit arranges the circumstances, He arranges the people, He arranges the time. It was not anyone but a lame man, it was not any time but just when John and Peter arrived that day that this happened, all fitting together. And then how did the Holy Spirit work on the unbeliever? How did He work on this man to get him to believe? He got him and he cut him off from the handouts, the reaching out for human resources, give me something, and Peter said no, I haven’t got anything, it’s not within the reach of human assets to solve your problem, you are a congenitally lame person; we would apply it today, you are a congenitally spiritually lame person, a person who was born dead, do you think I’ve got any assets that can help you? Can I help a dead man? Not at all; it takes God of the life to help a dead man. And so the Holy Spirit has to reorient a person to stop looking horizontally and start looking vertically. That’s how the Holy Spirit worked then and that’s how the Holy Spirit works now.

Looking vertically at what? At the resurrected Christ.

Let’s sing hymn 222 which commemorates the resurrected and ascended Christ.