Sermon notes
Good morning, and welcome, on this Lord’s Day. It is the first Sunday of July, so today’s service is a little briefer than usual, as we prepare for our church meeting later.
There are two reasons we are in Acts 3 today.
The first is a forward reason. Next Sunday we come to Acts 4, which quotes directly from Psalm 2, the passage we looked at a few weeks ago. But Acts 4 assumes you already know what happened in Acts 3. So today is background, so that when we arrive at Acts 4 the ground is already there.
The second reason is closer to home. What happens in Acts 3 has a connection to where we are as a church at the moment, with the possibility, a good possibility, of a venue becoming a reality. There is something to learn here from how the early church responded to God’s blessing and to growth.
So, briefly, Acts 3.
Verse one. Peter and John were going up to the temple at the hour of prayer, the ninth hour. The Jews of that time counted the day differently to us. They started at six in the morning, not at midnight, so the ninth hour is three in the afternoon. It looks as though there were set times of prayer at the temple, services you could simply turn up to. Peter and John are going up to join one.
At the gate, a man lame from birth is being carried in, as he is every day, to beg. He cannot work, so he needs another way to live. He is asking for alms, not just money, but whatever will help him survive. Food. Clothes. Anything.
Think for a moment about where people beg, even now, in our own city. Somewhere prominent. Near a big supermarket. Outside a mosque. Outside a large church. Somewhere they know that many people, and maybe some willing to help, will pass by. It was the same then.
Verse four. Peter stops and says, “Look at us.” You can imagine what the man must have thought. Today is my day. He fixes his attention on them, expecting to receive something.
Think about that for a moment. If you have ever given something to someone begging, how often do you actually stop to engage them? Most of us give, if we give, and move on. For Peter to stop, to say look at us, is itself a signal that something is about to happen. The man must have thought, surely today.
Verse six. “I have no silver and gold.” Imagine the disappointment in that first half of the sentence alone. But then: “what I do have I give you. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk.” Peter takes him by the hand and helps him up, and the man is healed on the spot. He is walking. He is leaping. He cannot stay quiet, praising God where everyone can see him.
Here is one thing worth pausing on, and it is not the most obvious point in the passage, but it is worth making. Money is not always the thing we need most. The man thought his deepest need was financial. The apostles could see a greater need underneath it, and they addressed that instead.
We do the same thing, do we not. A child is struggling at school, and the answer we reach for is a better school, which usually means more money. A child is struggling at home, and we reach for more treats, better clothes, more things to enjoy. A marriage is struggling, and one spouse thinks, if only we had more, a new car, a bigger house, a nice holiday, then things would be good. Even at a national level, in a season of protest and a rejected finance bill, the answer we were offered was more tax, more money, so that the country could grow, could become, as we were told, more like Singapore.
I am not saying money is never needed. Often it is. But Acts 3 puts a question to us that we do not ask often enough: what is the deeper need? Every believer should recognise that in any situation, in any conversation, there is always a deeper need underneath the visible one, and it comes down, in the end, to two things. The salvation of sinners from the judgment to come, and the glory of Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour.
This healing pictures the first of those. Notice the language carefully. Peter does not say “get better.” He says “rise up.” Verse seven says the same thing again: “he took him by the right hand and raised him up.” Later, at the end of the chapter, verse twenty-six makes the picture explicit. God, “having raised up his servant,” sent him to bless us “by turning every one of you from your wickedness.” The rising up is resurrection language. It is a picture of what will happen on the last day for everyone who has trusted in the name of Jesus. Not healing for a season, but restoration for good, a new body and a new life that does not run out.
So let me finish where the chapter itself points us: to the name. There is a way we, individually and together, can change the world, and it is to proclaim the name of Jesus, to everyone, everywhere. Our own church’s motto says it plainly: all of Christ, for all of life, for all the world. There is no other name that gives hope, that brings salvation, that restores to life. When people are in need, this is the name they need. When people are in sin and feel the weight of it, this is the name they need. And even when life is going well, this is still the name we need, because there is no other name that brings a blessing that lasts.
In these two chapters of Acts alone, the name of Jesus comes up nine times. Across the whole book, more than thirty. That should tell us something about where the apostles put their weight, and where we should put ours, as individuals, and as a church.
Let us pray. Father, we thank you for your Son, in whose name there is life, salvation and resurrection. We find in him restoration for those of us who, like the man at the gate, cannot rescue ourselves. Let this name be near us, in us, and overflowing from us. We pray for the church in this land, that it would be found faithful in loving and proclaiming this name. We pray for those among us who are in need, who are sick, who are struggling financially, who are grieving. Draw near to us in the name of Christ, who endured so much and gave so much, and let that name bring the peace that surpasses understanding. Help us to be ambassadors of this good news, to our families, to our neighbours, and to the world. In Jesus’ name, amen.