JUN 2 2024 | Acts: The Dawn of the Church S1E2 | Eyes on the Surprise

Sea Change Church · JUN 2 2024 | Acts - The Dawn of the Church – S1 Ep 2: Eyes on the Surprise
Acts 3:11-16
Automated transcript. Not reviewed for accuracy.

Amen. Amen. You may be seated. Amen. Amen. Amen. Acts chapter 3 verses 11 through 16. While the beggar held on to Peter and John, all the people were astonished and came running to them in the place called Solomon's Colonnade. When Peter saw this, he said to them, Men of Israel, why does this surprise you? Why do you stare at us as if by our own power or godliness we had made this man walk?

The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of our fathers, has glorified his servant Jesus. You handed him over to be killed, and you disowned him before Pilate, though he had decided to let him go. You disowned the Holy and Righteous One and asked that a murderer be released to you. You killed the author of life, but God raised him from the dead.

We are witnesses of this. By faith in the name of Jesus, this man whom you see and know was made strong. It is Jesus' name and the faith that comes through him that has given this complete healing to him, as you can all see. This is the word of the Lord. It was a beautiful day, so let it get around the beautiful day. It was a beautiful day. Good morning.

Welcome to church and all you that are online. Great to have you today. If you have your Bibles, open up to Acts 3. Second week in this passage, second week in this series on the dawn of the church. We're seeing the church explode in the Middle East here at this time in the first century, what God is doing. We're gonna follow that journey for about eight weeks here.

Now, we skipped ahead. This is a little bit of a prequel. We skipped ahead and did the journeys of Paul, as you remember, last summer. We're back now. This is the prequel. We're kind of doing it Star Wars style. And we're the second week in this story. We've been in some pretty powerful stories as of late. The woman at the well took us about three weeks to get through.

It's a long passage. This one as well is gonna be another week after this. And Pastor Joshua opened this series last week with a great job talking about this man who was healed. And if there's any probably meaning of this word, I want you to write the word on the top of your notes, healer. If you want, you can add God as a healer. I was, as I normally do, trying to extricate from the passage, they call it an exegesis, what the main idea of the passage is.

What is the main thing that God's trying to say? And I'm looking and I'm looking. And then I realize it kind of hits you in the head with a baseball bat, right? It's kind of like God heals this guy. This is the passage, and this is the truth of this scripture that I want you to own. I want us to own the fact that God is a healer. He was a healer then.

He is a healer now. And God is still in the business of healing. And he's not forgotten you. He's not forgotten the heart that needs healing. He's not forgotten the infirmity that needs healing. He's not forgotten the lameness that needs healing, whatever that could be. And we see it here in this story. There's two points today. The first one, we want to keep our eyes on the giver.

We want to keep our eyes on the giver of the gift, not the gift. Even when he heals us, sometimes we can get focused on that means of healing. That thing that brought the healing becomes the most important thing to us. And actually, the giver of the gift, the healer gets left behind. Where are your eyes focused? Remember in this passage, his eyes, the beggar, the lame man's eyes were focused on what he thought he was going to get.

He was going to get some silver. He was going to get some gold. That gets exchanged. He gets a healing. And then his eyes shift again. We'll talk about that shift and how it probably wasn't in the right spot. So the first thing is eyes on the giver. And when it comes to healing, whether you've been healed or not, post or pre, we want to keep our eyes on the same destination.

God is a healer whether you've been healed. God is a healer even if you've been healed. We want to focus on that. So the first one is eyes on the giver. Second is expect the expected. That is a turn of phrase there. Expect the expected. We see an expectant group of believers in the first church. If there's a word that you could write, many words you could write over the book of Acts, expectation is one of those words.

And the longer we follow Jesus, the easier it is to stop expecting. Let me say that again. The longer we follow Jesus, the easier it is to stop expecting. I see when people burst out of the gates in a new life in Christ, they are all about expectation. You want to have some believers around you, some brand new believers around you. Yeah, they're going to stumble, stub their toes.

But they have an expectation and an excitement that you see there. So those are the two things we're going to look at. Go to verse 11. Let's dive right into this passage. Eyes on the giver. While the beggar, circle beggar, held on to Peter and John, circle held on. Those are two key things. All the people were astonished and came running to them in the place called Solomon's Colonnade.

We were just there about a year ago. First thing, I want to look at this word beggar. This is out of the 1984 and a lot of the NIV. A lot of the translations will use the term beggar. It's actually not the word that is used in the Greek. The Greek user word is kolos, and it means one who is lame. Although oftentimes when we have an infirmity, especially in the third world or in the first century, when you had an infirmity, you couldn't work.

And if you were lame, it meant that you would become a beggar. And so it was used a little bit, you know, back and forth. You can kind of use that term, but the actual word is not beggar. What I think is interesting, what I think we need to know as we are looking for healing in our own life is God never wants you to change your identity from one needing to be healed to a beggar.

We are not beggars before God. You never need to beg God for an answer. Oh God, I beg you, I beg you. We're not beggars. We are children of God. And like a child goes and asks their father for something, and sometimes they say yes, sometimes they say no, sometimes they say wait. God is a father who loves you and gives in due time, and if he doesn't give an answer, his grace is sufficient.

That's what Paul says. He has a thorn in the flesh, but he says my grace is sufficient. And if you are in the business of negotiating with God, he's not a judge that can be bribed. He's not partisan in any way. God is a father, and he is looking to care for his children, and he will care for you, and if he chooses not to give you the shiny thing that you want, the thing that you most, think you most need, his grace is sufficient.

So if you are begging God, and recently you've been begging God for something, I want to encourage you not to be a beggar. There's no place in Scripture where we're called to be a beggar. We are children of God, and so we see that that word was used there. The next thing I want to look at this word, this lame one, it means one who is lame, and I think it's interesting that it doesn't say Ted, the man who was lame, in the Scripture.

It doesn't say Mike, the one who was lame. He actually had lost his identity, and if you were to ask the people of the day, hey, do you know that person who sits at Solomon's colonnade, who's had this infirmity, you would just say, oh, you mean the one who was lame, the one who has this infirmity. His firmity had become his identity, and it's interesting that it doesn't, you know, Paul gets a name here, John gets a name here, but his infirmity had become his identity, and that is really, really interesting because sometimes we can allow that to happen, right?

There's something about you, and it becomes bigger than who you are. It becomes bigger in your life, a broken heart, a diagnosis. It becomes bigger than who God has made you to be in your eternal identity, and this word kolos, this word the lame one, means one who is not on steady footing. It means they walk with a limp. They have an impediment. They have to hold on to other people to get where they're going, and they're being slowed in the way in which they are going there, and it actually becomes a definition.

What I thought was really interesting in this usage is never let a current condition become your definition. Never let your current condition, which might change, become your definition. Oh, I'm just the one who has the anxiety. I'm just the anxious one in the household. Oh, I'm the problem child. Everyone has to care for me because I have this infirmity, or I'm getting up there in years, and now they just have to care for me, and I've just become a nuisance and a burden, and whatever the thing is that it is, never let your current condition become your definition.

You are a child of God. You are a daughter of God, a son of God, and we need to continue to understand who we are. You are not the beggar. You are not the one with diabetes. You are not the one with the foot that isn't healed, and you can no longer keep up, or you're a burden to those around you. That is not who you are. You are a child of God. He knows you by name, just like he knew this man by name, and to God, he wasn't a lame one.

He wasn't a beggar. He was a child in need, and so that definition, when it comes to a journey with healing, it could be infertility, whatever the thing is that you need to heal, you need to touch from God. You need to break through from God. Do not let that become bigger than who God has made you to be. Do not let that become bigger, because when you do, you just become, your emotions become a pawn that the enemy can use in his own way.

No, that might be true, but my name is, put your name here, a child of God. This is my identity. So he was seen as that. And I'll tell you, once he was healed, it probably became the man who was healed that God worked in, and people knew who that was. Go to verse 11 again, verse B. What I think is really interesting, as we read this, while the beggar held on, I said held on, to Peter and John.

All the people were astonished, came running to the place, that's actually 11a, in a place called Solomon's Colonnade. Remember when he first got healed, what did he do? He started doing the Gollum dance, you know what I mean? Like at the Inferno there in Mordor, he was jumping around, doing all that, just super happy. I think it's interesting, he was like this from birth.

So people have been carrying him, walking him, he's been holding on to people his whole life. He gets healed, he has a few minutes of being free, and then what does he do? Goes and holds up. The last thing I want to do, after spending my whole life, having to hold on to somebody other than God, to get me where I'm trying to get, is to go hold on to somebody else again.

But that's where he ends up, that's what he knows. Now, it might have been for safety, because of fear of the Jews, but I doubt that was happening at the moment, because there was so much positive energy, that was happening with this healing. Maybe it was just because, hey these guys healed me, and they're the ones that brought the healing, and like I said at the beginning, we need our eyes on the giver, not on the gift, or the means from which the gift came.

I've seen believers, get into a program of whatever it is, anonymous this, anonymous that, right? Or they find some new way that God uses, and God is gracious enough to use different things. It could be a book, it could be a pastor, it could be a best friend, it could be a church, it could just be this thing that God uses as a conduit for the healing.

John right here, and Peter, are just conduits. They don't have any healing power in themselves. Anybody that has a gift of healing, does not have a gift of healing, oh I touch it, and I touch you, and you're healed. They're a conduit that God says, I'm gonna use them as a conduit, that's all they are. If you know electrical work, a conduit is something that energy goes from one place, to the other, but it's not the destination, or the origin of that.

They're just a conduit, right? And I've seen so many believers, myself included, who God uses something to heal them, and all of a sudden, that becomes the thing. All of a sudden, you're anonymous this, and there's no problem with the anonymous programs. Those are amazing. We've done them here. They're awesome, right? But all of a sudden, that becomes the thing.

Oh, I've got my big book, and the big book has biblical things in it, and look, I'm part of the program, so I get that. But we begin to hold on to something, and I guess the key point is, what are we holding on for the healing? You change your diet, whatever it is, all of a sudden, or it's a person, we start holding on, and that's the whole thing, is what are we holding on to?

What I think God is calling us to do is to hold on to him. Use the tools. Use the conduits. But if you are going to get true healing, the healing that you need, while it might come through the conduit of a doctor, it might come through the conduit of a new book, or a therapy you go to, or whatever thing it is, or a person, realize it's a conduit. And there is a giver who brings healing to you, and keep your eyes on the prize.

One of the best things you can do if you're a sports person is keep your eye on the ball. You take your eye off the ball, you have no idea what's happening, you get lost in the game. We see Peter and John are really good at not allowing people, and the apostles, at making them a god. It is really easy to look for our next god. We all have our next god we're looking for, and they build up slow.

I just realized I had this thing, I kind of built it into an altar in my life. I didn't realize it took years. Just a little pebble at a time, a little brick at a time. Pretty soon you don't even know it's been a slow walk into a god in your life, and to cast it down. If you go on to Acts 14, I think it's in your notes, 14 and 15, you have Apostle Barnabas and Paul, when they heard after they had done some healing and some miracles, and this is their reaction as being this conduit.

But when the apostles, Barnabas and Paul, heard of this, they tore their clothes and rushed into the crowd, shouting, men, why are you doing this? We too are only men and humans like you. We are bringing you good news, telling you to turn from these worthless things to the living God who made heaven and earth and sea and everything in them. They tried to turn Paul and Barnabas into gods, and we just have a tendency to do that.

We want something that seems tangible, but we serve an everlasting God, an eternal God. This man had put his attention from the gold to Paul and John. What I have found is that our attention is oftentimes the architect of our actions. Your attention, what you are attentive to, the thing that you think about the most, is oftentimes the architect of your actions.

And so he all of a sudden was putting these guys in a position that if they would have been the type of people that would have allowed it, they could have easily started the cult of John and Paul. They could have easily started this, and people would have seen what they did, but he was giving glory to the Father. Even Jesus himself did this. Jesus himself kept pointing to who?

Jesus would heal somebody, Jesus would do something, and he'd say, hey, not unto me, but unto the Father. Look unto the Father. This is who the Father is. Go to verse 11, and we're gonna go to the second point. Expect the expected. I like that turn of praise there from 11b to 12. All the people were astonished and came running to the place called Solomon's Colonnade.

When Peter saw this, he said to them, men of Israel, why does this surprise you? Why do you stare at us as if our own power or our own godliness we had made this man walk? I love that. I love the testimony. Testimony. They are building a testimony. They are testifying to who God is. Let me just say that again. Men of Israel, why does this surprise you? Why do you stare at us as if by our own power, our godliness, we had made this man walk?

That's a dumb question, isn't it? Why does this surprise you? What do you mean, why does it surprise me? Because this guy has been being carried his entire life. We've known him since birth. He's been lame since birth. He's up dancing a jig, an Irish jig, you know, in front of everyone. That was a good Irish jig, by the way. As far as jigs go in La Jolla.

I'll put it up there with the top five. Of course they're astonished because God has done something unfamiliar to them. It's interesting with Peter. Peter spent enough time with Jesus. He spent enough time after Jesus and seen Jesus raised from the dead and been to the tomb where all of a sudden the unexpected became the expected. That's huge. That is a shift.

That is a turn of heart. That is huge. When you become the believer and you'll know them when you meet them. It's kind of a handful. It can actually become more of a movement within a body. But when people begin to expect the expected, they expect God to work. And so it makes sense that he would say to them, why are you so astonished by all this? Of course, this is the living God of Israel.

Like David said, who is this Philistine, this uncircumcised Philistine to taunt the armies of the living God? I will go and I will strike him down because he expected the unexpected. I think when we lose fascination, and I love that word. This word came to me and I've just been mulling on it. Certain words, God uses words, they have the power of life and death.

And the word fascination, when we lose our fascination, we lose our fascination of who he is and what he can do. And even if he doesn't do it, it doesn't change the fact that I know he can. When I pray for healing, I used to pray, like I thought, oh, faith means I just need to concentrate a little harder. Faith is not concentration. Oh, okay, I can believe it.

Have you ever done that? You ever prayed for somebody? Okay, oh, I feel, I believe they're gonna be healed. Oh, wait a second, I'm doubting it a little bit, doubting it a little bit. No, here it is, here it is again. I can feel it welling up in me. What is that? That's works. Faith is saying, I never lose, I never lose the belief that if God wants to heal you, who can.

That's just, that's easy. It's easy for me to believe that if God wants to heal you right now, he can. Whether he's going to or not, that's not up to me. I'm just here for prayer creation and he can do the editing and the distribution duties. That is what God is doing. And so he begins to expect the expected because he had spent that time. Verse 12, and he says, why do you stare at us if by our own power or godliness we had made this man walk?

I love the fact that they just keep playing down who they are and the power that they have. It's all about Jesus. And I've found that believers who walk in God's power doubt their own. Believers who walk in God's power, they just walk in the, God's power is around them. They're just a conduit. They're just in the light of it. They just hang out in God's power.

They don't own it. They don't dish it out like a Holy Spirit fireball. You know what I mean? They just, they understand that God is powerful. They believe God can heal when he wants to heal. They're not surprised by the unexpected to most but the expected to them. And they just hang out in God's presence and his power and they just wait for him to work and they look for opportunities because it says in the scripture that God has prepared good works in advance for you to step into and oftentimes those good works take God's power and it's more power than you have.

Believers who walk in God's power doubt their own. It's interesting when it comes to healing or moving forward in God, sometimes we doubt God would want to heal us because we're not perfect. Right? If I just had a little more willpower, if I could just stay away from that thing or that crutch or that thing I'm holding on to just a little bit more, if I had a little more willpower, if I could just clean myself up a little bit more, God would love me.

Let me just assure you God is not waiting for the cleaned up perfect version of you until he can get to work in your life because that version doesn't exist. We are all sinners and we are all separated from God but through his love and grace, it is grace that he reaches out to us to say it's not about your willpower. God's not looking for your willpower. He's waiting for your willingness.

He is not waiting for you to just get a little stronger, to try a little harder. That's in your willpower is power of the will. What he wants you to do is just, you can have it and I'm turning it over. I'm done with it. And you will know when that happens. This little idol, it was a good thing that I had. And last week, I was just, up, one in the morning. Many of you have that.

Up one in the morning is up till 2.30 in the morning and I'm just wrestling and I'm giving it to God and it ain't going away. You ever done that? I'm giving it to you. God, I gave it to you. I'm giving it to you but it ain't going away. I feel it. It's still there. And I got to this one issue and he's like, you gotta give that up. And I thought, and it had to do with pride.

Like if I give that up, it's a pride thing. I gotta give that up. And I gave that element up of it and all of a sudden, it was like, and I felt it go. I had to fight. I had to wrestle with that thing but I finally had the willingness to say, I'm gonna let that go and I slept like a baby the rest of the night. This whole week, my Fitbit tells me I sleep like a baby.

You're like, I had a baby for a while. They don't sleep very well. So, I never understood that. It's that right? Babies just wake up every two hours. I don't want to sleep like a baby. There's a practical takeaways for you. God wants that willingness to let that over, let it go. Trying to make your own healing happen. The first take, the practical takeaway is you gotta let it go.

It's a battle to let things go. Your willpower isn't gonna solve it. They call that an AA, they call that a dry drunk. Just, I'm not drinking. I am, let it go. I don't know if I need it again. You know you haven't let it go. But you haven't drank for a year. But they call it dry drunk is what they call that. You can do that with a relational as well. Oh, I haven't dated, but in your heart, you just haven't let it go.

You haven't given it to God and if the opportunity comes, you know you might, you might, we'll see what happens. You know, we'll play it out when we play it. You know when you have thrown the ball down the field and you might be willing to pick it up later. You know. And you know when you have given it away completely. There's a difference. Galatians said it's for freedom we've been set free.

And so if you, that one's freedom and one is a pause. You gotta have this willingness, not willpower, let it go. And then the final one when it comes to the Lord and about seeing his power and being a person that walks in his power, I wanna give you a little, I wanna give you a phrase. I want you to use this phrase. It's a very powerful phrase. Hey, let's pray about that.

I'm gonna give you this phrase. Let's pray about that. Hey, you know, school was really hard today. I had this issue. Hey, you know what? Let's just take a second. Let's pray about that. My mom has this phrase and I put it above my bed where I could see it. It was on my ceiling for a long time about 10 years ago. Prayer is always the answer. She just has a phrase.

Prayer is always the answer. Let's pray about that. We've been driving by somebody, you see an accident. Hey, let's pray about that accident. Something happened with your kids. Somebody has a sickness. Somebody, whatever it is, let's pray about that. When you put yourself into the let's pray about it, you become that person. You start opening doors for God to move.

It says that we open doors that no one can close in heaven and you can close doors that no one has opened. You open up brand new vistas where you can walk up and see what Jesus is doing beyond what you can see. You ever been on a cliff and you can't really see over the cliff and as you walk it just gets wider and wider and wider. That's what prayer does.

It says, let's pray about that. That's the second thing. So the first one for this week is let's go, let go and the second one is let's pray about that. Those are two things you can do practically to start walking in power. We're gonna have Joe come up in a second for our communion after the service. We're gonna have a time where you can come forward for healing.

We'll do one song afterwards you can come forward. We have a prayer team up here with oil. We wanna anoint you. If you have a broken heart, if you have diabetes, if you have ringing in your ears, if you have a hand that's hurting, I don't know if God's gonna heal but I know he can. And are you the person who is saying I need a breakthrough today? We wanna give you a shot for breakthrough.

So after this communion, communion, if you believe in Jesus, take the communion. If you're not ready to believe in Jesus yet, hang out. It is for believers, the Bible says. But we want you to be a believer. If you're a person who has never accepted Jesus at the end of the service and you wanna know Jesus, you wanna walk in him, this story rings true to you.

This message hits your heart. You come forward to anybody here and they will pray with you to know Jesus and we will see you baptized and get rooted firm in the faith and in the love of Jesus Christ. Let's stand and Joe's gonna lead us in a communion. Thanks, Pastor Adam. Good word. Move this podium here. You know, why do we need communion? We're forgetful people.

I'm a forgetful person. And Jesus said to do this forever in remembrance of me. Why? To keep him as the main thing, the main person, that we're not our own savior, that we need a savior. And when we get together every month, we remember his life and his death and his resurrection. And it unifies us knowing that we need a savior. And some administrative things, what we're gonna do, I'm gonna read the words of the Lord Jesus.

People on this side will come up, take the bread and the wine, go back, pray, do work with the Lord, and then that side will do the same thing. And I'll read the words again and we'll take it together showing that we are a corporate one under the same savior, same father, and the same spirit. The Lord Jesus, on the night of his arrest, he took bread and after giving thanks to God, he broke it and he gave it to his disciples saying, take and eat.

This is my body given for you and do this in remembrance of me. In the same way, he took the cup saying, this cup is the new covenant sealed in my blood shed for you for the forgiveness of sins. Whenever you drink it, do this in remembrance of me. Every time you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the saving death