Introduction
I love the book of Acts. The story of
how the despairing disciples become empowered apostles is wonderful, an
inspiring story about God’s goodness and grace expressed in the lives of
ordinary people. At the same time, I am sometimes afraid of the book of Acts. I
wonder if I am supposed to do what they did, and if we are supposed to see
miracles such as this one in Acts 3. This morning
I will set the stage for looking at this passage, go through the text, and suggest
what I think it says to us today.
The
Book of Acts
(skimming chapters 1 to 5)
Acts
is Luke’s account, volume two. Volume one is “an orderly account” of the life,
death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. Volume two is the story of what
happened to the disciples he left behind when “he was taken up into heaven”.
Acts
1: Jesus spends 40 days with the disciples after his resurrection. This is an
important point. Sometimes we think that Jesus rose, met the disciples, and
ascended—all in the space of few days, but Luke (who is the most careful of the
Gospel writers with historical details) tells of an extended period of time. It
lasted long enough to make it clear that the resurrection appearances were no
mass hallucination. They took place in Jerusalem and in Galilee. They included
dramatic meetings and ordinary times of eating together. They made it clear
that Jesus is alive.
Then
Jesus tells the disciples to go to Jerusalem and wait for the Holy Spirit. In
Matthew’s gospel they had gone up to Galilee to meet Jesus. Similarly in John’s
gospel the events of chapter 20 take place in Jerusalem, and the events of
chapter 21 take place by the Sea of Galilee. Now they return to Jerusalem to
wait for the promised Spirit, after which, Jesus says, they will be his
witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the whole earth. This verse (1:8)
provides the outline for Luke’s description of the Acts of the Apostles. I have
heard preachers use it as an outline for our call to witness to Jesus.
Jerusalem is your home, and you move out from there. I suppose for us Jerusalem
is Winnipeg, Judea is southern Manitoba, Samaria would have to be Saskatchewan,
and Toronto may as well be the ends of the earth! But I think that this
equation misses an important point. Jerusalem is the city of God, and in this
outline it represents not the disciples’ home—Galilee was their home—but rather
it represents the place where they met God. Jesus might say to us, “Wait in the
emotional and mental and spiritual space where you met me; wait there for my
Holy Spirit; and then be my witnesses from there to the ends of the earth.”
In
chapter 2 this filling comes, and their witness begins. Chapters 3 to 5 gives
the miracle (and its aftermath) in which Peter and John heal the lame man in
the gate of the temple, followed by a sermon from Peter, who emerges as the
primary spokesman of the first believers. He states the message clearly in a
series of sermons: God sent Jesus to give you life. You killed him, but God
raised him from the dead. Believe in him and receive forgiveness and life. The
Sanhedrin arrests the apostles, and Peter repeats his message. They tell the
apostles to keep quiet, but they continue preaching and healing. The High
Priest and Sadducees put them in prison, but an angel frees them. The Sanhedrin
tells them to stop preaching, but Peter and the apostles reply, “You imprisoned
us, but God set us free. We will obey God rather than you!”
Chapter
Three
In chapter three we see what happens
when God’s Spirit fills the apostles and disciples. In verses 1 to 10, we learn
that the apostles continued to pray regularly in the Temple, and on one such
occasion Peter and John encountered a man lame from birth. He asked for money.
They gave him complete healing of his physical infirmity. He responded by
running around, leaping in the air. His actions are the more surprising because
he had never learned to walk in the first place. More than one miracle is
evident here.
This exciting stuff! Look at the lame
man. He expected maybe some money from Peter and John, but he certainly did not
expect what happened. Have you ever seen someone receive a physical gift? Mrs.
Shumba was a woman we met in Bulawayo in 2003. She had severe cataracts, so
that she was functionally blind. We took her to an eye clinic and paid for
cataract surgery, since she could not. They removed the cataracts and put
patches over her eyes and told her to come back in several days. When she
returned, they removed the patches. I will never forget her amazement and
delight: “I can see! I can see!” As we drove her back to where we were staying,
we heard her talking in the back seat of the car. She was reading the signs in
store windows, delighted that she could see again to read them. Her delight
gives me a bit of an idea of what this lame man may have felt.
In verses 11 to 26 Peter responds to the
astonishment of those who saw this event with a sermon, completely typical of
all his first sermons in the book of Acts:
·
God
glorified his servant Jesus.
·
You
handed Jesus over to be killed, but God raised him from the dead.
·
This
man has been healed by the same power that raised Jesus from the dead.
·
Repent
and turn to God “that times of refreshing may come from the Lord.”
·
All
of this fulfills the prophets and the covenant God made with Abraham.
Peter probably understood these “times
of refreshing” to mean that Jesus will return and that the end of all things is
near. He probably expected the second coming almost immediately. Although Jesus
had told the disciples that they could not know when the kingdom would be
restored, they probably thought he would return quickly. We are still waiting,
but Peter’s call to repentance remains, and he was certainly right that times
of refreshing—new life in Christ—comes only as we repent of our rebellion
against God and choose to follow Jesus.
Hearing
the Text Today
So what does chapter three say to us
this morning? Peter and John healed a lame man. Should we expect miracles of
healing in our church here? In chapter two there were other miracles. Should we
replicate those also in our church today? Peter preached a simple message of
repentance. Should we tell people around us that they also killed Jesus and
need to repent? The apostles got into all kinds of trouble with the religious
authorities in chapters four and five. Should we also have our leaders put in
prison and set free by angels so they can come and preach to us again? I’m not
trying to make fun of the text or of us with these questions. These are real questions,
and we look for real answers.
Notice that none of these events are
given as commands. Luke does not say to us, “Speak in tongues”, or “Heal
people”, or “Get arrested”, or anything else. There are various commands
throughout the gospels and in the book of Acts, but these are not among them.
Jesus commands us to love God and love our neighbour as ourselves (Mark 12: 30-31).
Jesus commands us also to love each other with his love (John 13:34). So clear
is this command of love that Paul calls it “the law of Christ” (Galatians 5:14
and 6:2).
There are other commands also. Jesus
tells us to take up our cross and follow him (Mark 8:34). Jesus also commands
us to make disciples of people everywhere (Matthew 28:19), which includes
bringing people to faith (baptizing) and nurturing them in the faith (teaching
obedience). Jesus also commanded the disciples to wait for the promised Holy Spirit
(Acts 1:5), which leads to empowerment for witness (Acts 1:8). Paul echoes this
command in Ephesians 5:18, “Don’t get drunk with wine, but be filled with the
Spirit.”
I see these commands clearly, but I don’t
know of any commands to do miracles or other “signs and wonders.” Promises of
such works, yes (John 14:12); commands, no. I have not looked carefully through
the whole New Testament, so I welcome conversation with those who may point me
towards such commands, but I see these as descriptions of life in the Spirit,
not as commands we must do. Jesus commanded the disciples to wait for the
Spirit. That is the command we should heed today also. Wait for the fullness of
God’s presence to fill you, and then live the life that God calls you to live. The
miracles of Jesus in the gospel accounts, and of the apostles in the book of
Acts, are descriptions of the kind of life that follows when you and I are
filled with the Spirit of God.
I remember an example a speaker at my graduation
from AMBS used. Life in the Spirit is like riding a bicycle with a tailwind;
life without the Spirit is like riding a bicycle into a headwind. I have done
both. Forty years ago I was part of a group of people who rode from Fort Dodge,
Kansas to Azusa, California on our bicycles. We aimed at 70 miles a day, but
our second day out we hit a steady 40 mile an hour southwest wind, the kind you
get in Kansas in the summer. WE rode 35 miles and it wore us out. The next day
the wind switched around, and a stiff tailwind blew us all the way into
Springer, New Mexico—about 105 miles. We made up all our lost time! Life in the
Spirit is like that: We can do amazing things when God is working in us.
“Far
Too Easily Pleased”
Most of us here this morning have heard
God’s call on our lives and responded. Like the disciples beside the Sea of
Galilee, we have heard Jesus say, “Follow me.” We have followed. We have
recognized that we are not good enough to be called followers of Jesus, and we
have confessed our weakness and our sin. God has forgiven us through Jesus’
sacrifice of himself on the cross. That’s a basic part of what makes the Easter
season we are in so wonderful. We are forgiven people, who have the new life of
Jesus within us. But once the glow of our initial encounter with Christ wears
off, we go back to work. Soon the everyday pressures of life combine with old
habits to reduce the impact of our Christian walk. We are saved, but that is
about all that we are. Jesus told the first disciples to wait for the promised
Holy Spirit, to spend time in the place where they met the risen Christ until
the Spirit of Christ filled them. I think that God is telling you and me the
same thing: Wait for God’s Spirit to fill you—expect more of God than a
one-time encounter.
Now, you have to be careful with this
idea. Some people are professional “wait”-ers. They seek God so much that they
never live for God, so that waiting for God takes the place of living for God.
With this caution in place I repeat: Wait for God’s Spirit to fill you; expect
more of God in your life. God rewards such expectant waiting and then we enter
the kind of life described in Acts 3. Then we can act in situations in ways
that meet people’s real and deepest needs. Then we can speak directly into the
lives of our friends and acquaintances in ways that genuinely help them. Then we
become witnesses of Jesus to everyone we meet.
I don’t think that the point of this
story is the miracle. Confronting the authorities—as happens later in the
chapter—is not the point. Experiencing the fullness of God’s presence in our
lives is the point. That is what God wants. That is what God promises.
We may experience miracles even today,
but we don’t need to look for them. We look rather for the fullness of God’s
presence in our lives. God gives us himself to encourage and strengthen us. I
remember the presence of God’s Spirit in 1990. In September we were in
Zimbabwe, trying to decide when to come home. We got a call from Lois’ parents,
who told us that Dad had cancer, and was given perhaps six months to live. We
came home in December, and he died seven months after that phone call on March
30, 1977. The encouragement came when we told my younger sister that Lois’ Dad
was dying. She said, “You know, I woke up one night,”—we realized it was just
when we got the news about Lois’ Dad—“and I knew you were trouble. So I have
been praying for you. Now I know why.”
This kind of experience is encouraging,
but in fact all such things are part of the fuller life that God promises to
those who wait expectantly for the fullness of his presence. How do we “wait
expectantly”? Since relationship with God is relationship with a person, I can’t
give you a formula. Prayer and Bible reading (alone and with others) are
important. I find silence before God especially helpful. We live with an attitude
towards God that says, “Show me yourself” in everything we do.
The trouble is that we are sometimes
satisfied with a sort of spiritual fire insurance—we think, “I’m going to
heaven and not going to Hell. Good!” Yes, it is good; but God has much more for
you and me than just a spiritual fire insurance. C.S. Lewis put it this way.
It would seem
that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are
half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when
infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making
mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a
holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.
Indeed, we are far too easily pleased.
We settle for a bit of life, and God wants us to receive the fullness of life
in Christ. Like the man lame from birth, we settle for asking for a bit of money
to get by, and God offers us something much more, which leads to the
extravagant spectacle of this man walking and jumping and shouting,
“Hallelujah!” I invite you to wait expectantly for God’s fullness, and when God
gives it to you, please, seize it and experience God’s life to the full!
Steinbach Mennonite Church, 10 April 2016
Text: Acts 3
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