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A message by
Rev. T. Franklin Harmon Associate Pastor
May 4, 2008
Scripture: Acts 3:1-10 The scene has been set. How many of you have ever been in a similar situation as Peter and John? Maybe you have seen someone at a freeway exit or someone sitting outside of a baseball game or outside a popular restaurant. Any place where there are a lot of people you seem to find other people asking for help. As you might expect being a church we get people stopping by looking for help from time to time. This last week I had someone stop by the church to ask for help. When I asked them how they heard about us, they told me that they stopped simply because they thought churches were places they could find help. It surprises me sometimes when I see people sitting and asking for money. It makes me wonder why we don’t see people sitting outside of banks asking for money or outside grocery stores asking for food. It is strange how people like the man in our scripture choose places where they feel they will get the best response.
Without showing your hands, how many of you have walked by or driven by that person, the person with a sign or a cup out asking for money? Have you ever found yourself not wanting to look at them because we don’t want to feel guilty? Or maybe we have become so accustomed to it that we don’t even notice people begging for help anymore. But for Peter and John ignoring this man wasn’t an option.
Our scripture lesson today takes place shortly after Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit came to Jesus’ followers and is one of the first stories of the disciples after Jesus’ ascension to heaven. Just to put it in a time frame, next week we celebrate Pentecost, so this event would take place a few weeks from today as Peter and John were entering temple for a time of prayer.
So again, this is very early in Peter and John’s ministry without Jesus being with them.Setting the scene a little further, how many of you have ever been to a retreat, renewal or a camp of some sort and had that feeling when you returned come back that you were ready to take on or change the world? If you have never gone, I would encourage you to. The feeling that you have is very difficult to explain unless you have experienced it. For those of you who have had that feeling, go back there for a minute. Think about the feeling you had, the determination and the ideas that you possessed. Take all of that and multiply it by one hundred and that might be where Peter and John were at this point in their ministry. Jesus had been crucified, but then was raised from the dead. He then proceeded to be with them for forty days. They then saw him ascend into heaven and, to top it off, the Holy Spirit descended on them. Talk about your all time spiritual high, this was it! So there was no way Peter and John could walk away from this beggar without doing something. Scripture tells us that this man, crippled from birth, was brought to the temple to beg for money during it’s busiest times. It would have been like seeing this man outside the sanctuary at 9:15 a.m. this morning as we entered for worship. We are told that he was asking people for money as they walked by. As Peter and John walked by, he asked them for money. Not really looking at the people he is asking money from, just looking for money, we are told that when Peter and John are asked for money, they both look straight at the man and Peter said, “Look at us!” So, the man did, expecting to get something, most likely money from the two men passing by. But, what Peter says next I think would put us all at the very edge of our comfort zones. Peter tells this beggar, “Silver or gold I do not have, but what I have I will give to you” (Acts 3:6). Never in my life have I passed by someone asking me for money and had the guts, nerve, audacity or faith to say something like that, but Peter does. Peter and John have no money, but they are willing to give him what they do have and this is what I want to focus on today — what Peter and John did give to this man.
The first thing I want to focus on is found in verse 7. Going back to verse 6, Peter says to the man, “Silver or gold I do not have, but what I have I will give to you. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, walk.” Then, the first thing that Peter gives this man is his right hand. For most of us the easy thing to do when someone asks for money is to walk by, the second easiest thing to do is to give them money and then walk by, but Peter doesn’t do either. Peter extends his hand in fellowship and Christian love to a crippled beggar who we are told in verse 10 that everyone recognized, but no one took the time to know. A simple hand shake and acceptance is the first thing that Peter and John gave this man. They did not judge him, they did not look down on him for what he was doing, they simply extended a hand and accepted him. Following on the heels of the hand shake, the second thing that Peter and John gave this man was their faith. Now they didn’t physically give this man their faith, we know that can’t be done, but they shared their faith with this man and he was healed. When we read this, it might not come to any surprise to us that this man was healed, but this was the first healing any of the disciples had done since Jesus had left them. So to tell this man, “In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, walk” (v.6), took a lot of faith on behalf of Peter and John.
Again try to imagine doing this. We have faith in Jesus like the disciples. Is their faith any greater than ours? But how many of us have ever done this? Many of us have a hard enough time believing in miracles today, so to be bold enough to think that we might be able to perform one like this is almost unthinkable. But with a hand shake and their faith that the power of Jesus could help this man, he was able to walk.
The last thing that our scripture tells us Peter and John gave the beggar was a new life. This man had been crippled from birth. He had probably been a beggar as long as he could remember. His friends or relatives would drop him off for a day of begging and then pick him up at the end of the day. Begging was his job and his life. After that hand shake and after they shared their faith, was this man’s life the same? No! Verse 8 tells us that he “Jumped to his feet and began to walk.” But that was only the beginning, because then it says, “He went with them into the temple courts,” and in one commentary I read, it said holding hands, almost as a little kid excited about seeing Santa Claus or getting ice cream, “walking and jumping, and praising God” (v. 9). This is the reaction of someone whose life has been changed, been changed by power of Jesus Christ.
Some of you might be sitting there thinking, “That was great for Peter and John, but not really relevant for my life today.” Others of you might be thinking the point I am trying to make is for you go leave here today and go find beggars and shake their hand, share your faith, and change their lives. If you are thinking that, you are missing the bigger picture. Our scripture isn’t just about beggars, it is about crippled people, not physically crippled, but spiritually crippled.
Last week Dave ended his sermon with the Great Commission, “Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always to the very end of the age” (Mt 28:19, 20). This is what it is about. Going out to the people where they are, and meeting them, extending a hand, helping them on their way, sharing our faith and sharing a new life with them. After Dave’s sermon last week, how many of you went out into the world ready to make disciples? How many of you actually went out and started making disciples?
You know, evangelism is a word that most people don’t like to say and fewer people like to do, but it is something that is vital to the lives of the lost and to the future of the church. PPC thinks that it is so important that we actually have a Membership and Evangelism committee, whose focus is to reach out to its current members as well as reach out and evangelize non-Church people. In reality this shouldn’t just be a committee of 4 or 5 people, it should be every member of this church and members of every church. Everyone should be doing evangelism. The ME committee should have more new ideas about outreach and volunteers than any other committee, because it should be something that everyone is doing. But unfortunately it isn’t. And by not going out, by not sharing what we have with others, we just walk by like everyone else going to the temple that day. Some of us might throw money at the problem and hope things will be different, but we still just walk by. Because we don’t want to take the time to disrupt our lives, we don’t want to get turned down, or feel inadequate about our own faith. We would rather let someone else do it.
In closing, I want to say this. Often times we look around at other churches, like EV Free, Rose Drive Friends, or even St. Joseph’s next door, and we get jealous of one thing or another. We wish we did this, or wish we had that, and we lose site that we are all on the same team. Our fight isn’t against other churches, our fight is with the wages of sin, which is death and separation from God. The only way we can continue to fight this fight is by giving all we have, by extending a hand, sharing God’s love, and then rejoicing in a new life if it happens, but we have to be willing to give all that we have.
Amen.
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