In his sermon titled 'Walking and Leaping and Praising God,' Scott Brown discusses the miracle performed by Peter and John at the Beautiful Gate, as recorded in Acts 3. The sermon highlights how Peter and John healed a man who had been lame from birth, emphasizing that the healing was done in the name of Jesus Christ and not by their own power. The narrative outlines the public amazement and subsequent sermon by Peter, where he explains the significance of Jesus as the Holy and Righteous One, and the Prince of Life. Peter connects this miracle to Old Testament prophecies, emphasizing that Jesus is the fulfillment of these prophecies and urging the people to repent and return to God for their sins to be wiped away. The sermon underscores the importance of the church's presence in the community, advocating for a life of faith and engagement outside the confines of the church. It also stresses the necessity for Christians to establish regular patterns of prayer and Scripture reading, and to focus on Jesus Christ as the central figure in addressing life's challenges. The sermon concludes with a call to witness and spread the gospel, reflecting on the transformative power of faith in Jesus Christ.

Now Peter and John were going up to the temple at the ninth hour, the hour of prayer. And the man who had been lame from his mother's womb was being carried along, whom they used to set down every day at the gate of the temple, which is called Beautiful, in order to beg alms of those who were entering the temple. When he saw Peter and John about to go into the temple, he began asking to receive alms, But Peter, along with John, fixed his gaze on him and said, look at us. And he began to give them their attention, expecting to receive something from them. But Peter said, I do not possess silver and gold, but what I do have I give to you in the name of Jesus Christ, the Nazarene, walk.

And sizing him by the right hand, he raised him up and immediately his feet and his ankles were strengthened. With a leap He stood upright and began to walk, and he entered the temple with them, walking and leaping and praising God. And all the people saw him walking and praising God, and they were talking, taking note of him as being the one who used to sit at the beautiful gate of the temple to beg alms, and they were filled with wonder and amazement at what had happened to him. 11. While he was clinging to Peter and John, all the people ran together to them at this so-called Portico of Solomon, full of amazement.

But when Peter saw this, he replied to the people, Men of Israel, why are you amazed at these? Or why do you gaze at us as if by our own power or piety we had made him walk? The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God of our fathers, has glorified his servant Jesus, the one whom you delivered and disowned in the presence of Pilate when he had decided to release him. But you disowned the holy and the righteous one and ask for a murder to be granted to you. But to put to death the Prince of life, the one whom God raised from the dead, a fact to which we are witness.

And on this, and on the basis of faith in His name, it is the name of Jesus which has strengthened this man whom you see and know, and the faith which comes through him has given him this perfect help in the presence of you all. And now, Bren, I know that you acted in ignorance, just as your rulers did also. But the things which God announced beforehand by the mouth of all the prophets, that his Christ would suffer, He has thus fulfilled. Therefore repent and return, so that your sins may be wiped away, in order that times of refreshment may come from the presence of the Lord, and that he may send Jesus, the Christ appointed for you, whom the heaven must receive until the period of restoration of all things, about which God spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets from ancient time. Moses said, the Lord God will raise up from you a prophet like me from your bread.

To him you shall give heed to everything He says to you. And it will be that when every soul that does not heed that prophet shall be utterly destroyed from among the people. And likewise, all the prophets who have spoken from Samuel and his successors onward also announced these days. And it is you who are the sons of the prophets and of the covenant which God made with your fathers, saying to Abraham, and in your seed all the families of the earth shall be blessed. For you first, God raise up his servant and send him to bless you by turning every one of you from your wicked ways.

Let's pray. Oh, God, have mercy on us because we are wicked, because we don't work in your paths and in your ways. Today, as we rejoice in the health of a baby that is born to a family in this church. Another family is crying because a two-year-old girl was killed when somebody beat her to death. And another person that I know or that I have heard of is trying to get rid of a three-month-conceived baby.

Father, have mercy on us make us bold give us the power of Peter John to take the hand of those who live and raise them up raise them up to the highest of your heaven to the highest of your glory to the highest of your mercy to the love the perfect love that made Jesus Christ come and die for us. And today, Father, I praise and I beg of you that you fill Scott with the power of the Holy Spirit to make us that bold church that Peter and John began, to make us the witness that can amaze people, to make us your people, your sit, your kingdom, to make us part of the bride, the clean bride that must be preserved white for the great aid of the wedding of the Lamb. Thank you God. In the name of Jesus we pray. God.

The book of Acts has a way of confronting us with lukewarmness confronting us with lukewarmness and not having a life of amazement as we see constantly in this book. But Acts chapter 3 begins with the healing of a lame man at the beautiful gate in Jerusalem, and it introduces what is the very first miracle that's recorded in the early church. And this miracle is an amazing miracle because it was what tripped the very first recorded persecution of the church. It's interesting how something so wonderful can kick off something so horrible And that's what happened here in this story. The context of chapter 2 and 3, some of the contextual themes here are the glory of Christ at work in the early church and in the community.

This week we see the glory of the gospel moving out on the street, out in the wider community. Last week when we were going over Acts chapter 2, we saw different elements of the effect of the gospel in inside the community of faith and the bonds of love the rejoicing in heart one to another the natural outworking of the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ where they were continually devoting themselves to the Apostles teaching and to fellowship and to the breaking of bread and to prayer and everyone kept feeling a sense of awe And many signs and wonders were taking place through the apostles and all those who had believed were together. They had all things in common and began selling their property and possessions and distributing those to anyone who might have need. And there they are rejoicing. They're together.

They're unified. They really care about one another. They're not just showing up at these anonymous meetings, but they're truly knit together and hard. It's a beautiful picture of the way that God has desired his local church to take root in the community of faith. And so we're moving from Acts 2, which documents the internal workings of the community of faith and the gladness and sincerity of heart.

And then it moves out onto the street. You have to see the flow here. The internal workings of the community of faith and now the outward expression of the people of God in the community. And now we're walking and leaping and praising God. Do you get the connection?

They're rejoicing together in gladness and sincerity of heart together, and they just carry that right on out. And wherever the gospel touches someone, they're walking and leaping and they're praising God. And it's just a wonderful image of the lives that we have to live in the fellowship of faith and then out on the street. And it's just a fulfillment of what the apostle Paul said in Romans 14. He said, for the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but in righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.

That's the kingdom of God. Or like Jesus, when he said the kingdom of heaven is like a treasure in a field. And when a man found it, he sold everything he had from the joy over it, and he goes and buys that field. But here we have just some illustrations of all that Jesus said about the kingdom, all of what Paul said about the kingdom, and it's right here in these two chapters. So I first want us to get the distinction between what we see from chapter 2 to chapter 3.

And there were times of refreshing from the Lord. Now, problem. All the joy and refreshment led to an outbreak of persecution against the church. The healing of this lame man was the cause of Peter being thrown into prison in chapter 4. The authorities demanding that they Stop speaking about this thing.

Stop walking and leaping and praising God. Stop it. And stop talking about the Lord Jesus Christ who you say is the author of it. Now this has happened many times in history where the work of God is, there's an attempt to stop it. This has happened many times in history.

John Bunyan spent 13 years of his life in prison for this, for what was called unauthorized preaching. And three times he was incarcerated, and he was indicted for, quote, devilishly and promiscuously abstaining from coming to church to hear divine service and for being a common upholder of several unlawful meetings to the great disturbance and distraction of the good subjects of this kingdom, contrary to the laws of our sovereign Lord and King. It was during his third arrest and imprisonment that he wrote Pilgrim's Progress, which is a wonderful testimony of the gospel. But we see this pattern in Scripture as well, where God is working. There's often a public reaction and that public reaction takes different levels of intensity at different times.

In chapter 4 we'll see one level of intensity. As we go on in the book of Acts, we'll see even more intense and dangerous levels of intensity of the persecution that comes against this group of people who are walking and leaping and praising God for what Christ has done for them. So what begins here in chapter 3 innocently enough with the healing of the lame man, results in something more difficult. Now, I'd like to give you an idea of the structure of this chapter, of Acts chapter 3. The first 11 verses tell the story of the healing of the lame man and the facts are given about his life and the things that happened and how it was that he was walking and leaping and praising God.

And then the second Half of the chapter is Peter's speech about it. He explains it and then he calls for repentance. And he just explains so many things about the gospel, how a person is saved. It's just full of rich theological terms. We could spend weeks unpacking the different terms that the Apostle Peter uses here that explain the beauty of the gospel.

I was tempted to do that. Who knows? We may end up doing that. But at least we're going to try to work through the whole chapter here this morning. But this section of Scripture is beloved by me because It takes me back to my early days in the faith, back in my teens, when the words of scripture were so comforting and convicting to me.

You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free. And Jesus says, and you shall be free indeed. Verses like, He who believes in me, out of his innermost being shall flow rivers of living water.'" Those verses just absolutely gripped me. And this verse that's in this passage was one of those big verses that God used to draw me to the Lord Jesus Christ when the apostle Peter said, Therefore, repent and return, that your sins may be wiped away, in order that times of refreshing may come in from the presence of the Lord." And I realized that the times of refreshing had come to my soul. I can't tell you a moment when I gave my life to the Lord Jesus Christ.

I don't know when it was, but I do know this. There was a moment in time, over a period of time, where I realized that times of refreshing had come in, that I desired to follow God with all of my heart, that I wanted His kingdom, not mine, that I wanted His ways, not my own. That's salvation. And there's this verse that was so gripping to me when I was the age of my son David. It's such a great verse to read and to be able to just testify even to the grace of God in my own life.

Well in chapter 3 we see the beginnings of a change in tone and the tremendous opposition that takes place. One of the commentators said that what you see in chapters 1 and 2 is Jesus Christ. What you see from chapter 3 on is Satan attacking the church. And I thought that was an interesting way to characterize it, but it is true that you do see a change in tone, particularly as this man continues to walk and leap and praise God. This is somehow quite offensive to people who are seeing it.

The first thing that we see in the narrative is Peter and John going up to the temple to pray. It is interesting just to note that you know what were they doing not only they were they were they meeting house to house and breaking bread from house to house and rejoicing together not only that were they in the public square as we saw them in chapter 2, but they were also still going to the temple. This would end in time. But they were still going, just like the Lord Jesus did, to speak in the temple and to relate with the people that were there. Peter and John were often together.

They were like blood brothers. There was a lot of love between them that you can see. It was the two of them that ran to the tomb of Jesus. It's recorded in John chapter 18. And now here they are, they're going together again two by two during the hour of prayer, which is about three o'clock in the afternoon, to the temple.

And they were experiencing life and ministry together. They were experiencing the rhythmic patterns of life, of faith, where there were three times of prayer that godly Hebrews were praying, nine o'clock noon and three o'clock in the afternoon. It's the same thing we see in the book of Daniel when Daniel did the same thing when he was in Babylon. There he was in the wicked city, but the wicked city wasn't in him because he had daily committed himself to a regular routine of relating with God and prayer. It's a really great example for the establishment of regular times of interaction with God.

What I found is that if you just leave it up to whenever it fits, it never fits ever. There's a war being waged against prayer, there's a war being waged against the reading of Scripture in your home, and the war will never stop. So you have to take up arms and wage war against it and nail down times that are unbreakable times for prayer and the reading of the Word. If you don't do that, it'll just never happen. I just think that's the wisdom of What we see of these two gentlemen here, and we see it all through Scripture, we just must establish regular patterns for this kind of thing.

And if we just leave them up to convenience at the right time, the right time will just never come. So here we see Peter and John going up to the temple to pray. They're at three o'clock in the afternoon as part of their normal routine and they have an encounter with a lame man at the beautiful gate. The man had been lame from his mother's womb. This is one thing you learn from the narrative.

He had been lame all his life. He came out that way, and he was lame in such a way that he actually had to be carried. If you can imagine that. Now he was 40 years old plus, okay? Think of the logistics.

I wonder who carried this guy. Somebody, it must have been somebody like John Poli that carried him, but somebody was carrying this man who maybe they had developed some kind of cart or something to carry him, but it says here that they had to carry him there, and I don't know if they possibly were carrying him in a cart or actually on someone's back, but you can imagine the burden that this was to the family. But God had created him this way for his own glory, for his own purposes. And who knows how many times this man had lamented and his family had lamented his state. But nobody knew what God was going to do with that lameness in his life.

Nobody knew it. Nobody knew that it would cause a great outpouring, not of the Holy Spirit, and thousands of people would be saved as a result, but it would provide defining moments for the early church to make the early church what it should have been. It said that he was carried there every single day. That's interesting. This was also a routine that the family had to be engaged with.

And apparently they willingly did it because it happened every day. And it happened for years, for many years. We don't know when they started taking him out there to the beautiful gate to beg, to seek alms, but we do know that it happened every day and it happened for years. We also know that everybody knew it. The whole town understood what was going on with this man.

And he was a beggar. And he was a beggar most likely because of his need. There's no indication that he was a plant, a family plant. You know, if you travel in other countries, you'll often see families of beggars and they send their children out to the four corners of the city for the purpose of cash flow. And they dirty themselves up and they develop these looks on their faces that are just as pitiful as you can imagine, and they're manufactured.

I don't think that's what he was. But there's really not much obviously said here about it. But he was there seeking alms. Now God knew him. Not only did the people in the community know him, but God created him.

God was watching him daily and the scenes that surrounded his life. God was watching those who despised him and those who loved him. God made this man as he was that day. He made him that way. As someone mentioned to me this week, I believe it was my son David.

God made him that way for such a time as this. You know, it's a puzzle that Jesus didn't heal him. You know that Jesus was walking around this area. If you look at the geographical range of Jesus' ministry, it was very tight. Obviously the Lord Jesus walked by this man.

He was in this area constantly. Why is it that Jesus Christ would not heal this man I would just I I believe that he was there when Jesus was walking And the Lord Jesus knew about him, but sometimes God chooses not to heal. He sometimes heals everyone there and sometimes He does not heal everyone there. And apparently this man was one of those who was not healed. And why does God not heal sometimes?

And the answer to that is that He waits for the right moment to heal for His own glory. And we might cry out and say, how long, Lord, will this continue? Like this man, he had been lame for over 40 years. But we know that Jesus Christ is always on time. He never waits a minute, a second, a nanosecond too long.

The Lord Jesus Christ always performs what he would perform for his own glory in his own time. And that's one of the lessons from this narrative that we have here. There's much we could say about this. We could speak about the role of prayer for suffering people and attention to them. But we see this conversation, Peter's conversation with this lame man in verses 4 through 9, And there are a number of things that happen.

Peter fixes his gaze on, or they both fix their gaze, and they say, look at us. Isn't that interesting? Look at us. Both of them are together and they say, look at us. It was a very interesting relational moment here that they were having with this man.

And Peter and John reveal their financial status. They say, silver and gold have I none, but such as I have, give I thee." They had no money. But fortunately, money was not the problem that needed to be solved here. This lame man was looking for alms, but it wasn't his greatest problem. The world often wants to solve its problems with money, but it never works.

This man did not need alms. He needed Almighty God and this healing touch from his hand. It's true for all of us that We look in the wrong places for help. A lot of times we look for contributions. We look in books.

We look for entertainment or a movie or some kind of a program to give us the help that we need. And whenever we try the worldly things, it always leaves us paralyzed, just like we were in the past. It never gets to the true nature of our problem. People often come to the church in our day and they're looking for a good foundation for their children, which is fine. Or they might be looking for companionship.

Some people actually come to church because they're looking for business contacts. And if you just start a company, you go to a big church a lot of times, it really rolls out some of the supplier relationships that might be necessary. There are people who actually connect with churches particularly for that reason, and they choose a particular church because it would provide opportunity like that. Some people are looking for psychological treatment or intellectual stimulus or maybe even entertainment itself or maybe just to feel good again somehow. You know, people, we all, I think, carry some of these motivations and elements within us, you know, deep within our hearts, but Here's the truth of it.

The Lord Jesus Christ alone has what we need. And all of these other things, the psychological treatment, the companionship, the foundation for your children, the business contacts, are nothing compared to the Lord Jesus Christ. And you know, it might be that we should say, you know, psychological treatment, have I none, but such as I have, give I thee. Entertainment, have I none, but such as I have, give I thee. Material prosperity, have we none here, but such as we have, give I thee.

The Lord Jesus Christ, that He would be the supreme object of our hearts meditations, our conversations, our motivations for all that we do, seeking the Kingdom and the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, acquiring His Word, letting it dwell richly within our hearts, seeking Him and Him alone. You know, it's the Lord Jesus Christ in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk. That's what He said, of Nazareth. Remember when the people said to Jesus can anything good come out of Nazareth well absolutely only good came out of Nazareth The only good came out of Nazareth, and that's the Lord Jesus Christ. If anyone is seeking help for their marriage, for their emotions, for their financial life, There is one single hope for any of us in any of these pursuits, and that is in the name and the riches and the kingdom and the wisdom of the Lord Jesus Christ.

He is our only hope. And seeking these shadows in the church, in the home, anywhere, just makes us more bankrupt. It leaves us lame and blind and naked and poor. And that's why Peter and John said, Silver and gold have I none, but such as I have, give I thee. I really loved the way that Ray Stedman expressed this in a commentary that I bought for $2.95 brand new in 1970.

Here it is. We are to declare our bankruptcy in the realm of the material. The basic call of the church is to release the life of God, to declare the power of God, and to make available to men in the name of Jesus the things that only God can do. Rest on that. This ought to be the supreme focus of our church.

The Lord Jesus is the great physician and He died, He rose again and He sent His Holy Spirit. You shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. And through the gift of the Holy Spirit are all the comforts, is all the wisdom that anyone would ever need. And this is the blessing of the kingdom of God. This man, lame from birth, received the blessing of the kingdom of God.

This man, lame from birth, received the blessing of the kingdom of God. We can't always give people what they're looking for when they might come to our church. But with the Lord Jesus Christ, if we have Him, the soul can be soothed, the marriage can be healed, the children can rise up in honor and in grace and in beauty and But it's only through the Lord Jesus Christ that these things can happen You know there's a there's a story that comes out of the 12th century where Thomas Aquinas, the great philosopher who brought Plato and Aristotle into the church, very bad idea, very, very bad idea. The story goes that he was walking with the Pope around the Vatican and the Pope was showing him all the gold and the glory of the buildings and the things inside. And the Pope remarked to Thomas Aquinas saying, we cannot say with Peter silver and gold have I none.

And the story goes that Aquinas replied and he said, nor can we say such as I have give I thee in the name of Jesus Christ rise up and walk. And this is always the danger of any church, that the name of Jesus Christ would be diminished for the sake of any other thing. So Peter and John made this marvelous statement that is so helpful to us to help us understand the source of any help that we might ever give, and that is, it is in the name of Jesus Christ that we trust. And then we see the crowd's reaction to this, they were taking note of him as one who used to sit at the beautiful gate. Everybody knew it, everybody understood what was going on.

It says that they were full of wonder and amazement. Hey, by the way, wonder, amazement, this is a theme. The words astonished, amazed, wonder appear a number of times in these first four chapters. I haven't collected myself to see how often these terms appear in the book of Acts, but I'll tell you one thing, they show up a bunch in the first four chapters. And so you have this vivid public display of this former lame man, he's walking and leaping and he's praising God.

And now everybody's in wonder and amazement. And one reason is this man is clinging to Peter. Now the word that Luke chose to use here is a word that's like gripping, like with talons, like with an unbreakable grip. This man is so happy. If you can just picture it, he's walking and leaping and he's praising God and he's got his arms around Peter.

He's so happy and he's not leaving Peter's side. Wherever Peter goes, so does this man. And by the way, wherever Peter goes, 5, 000 people are going too, it sounds like anyway. A lot of people, there are crowds, multitudes gathering around watching this whole thing, and everybody in town can see it, and they are full of amazement and astonishment as a result. Then we get to Peter's sermon, which finishes the chapter for us.

Peter's words are Christ-centered in every way. This is of course like all of Peter's sermons. They are full of the Lord Jesus Christ, the prophecies in the Old Testament, the imagery about Him that was given in the Old Testament are referred to throughout all of His speeches. And they always praise the beautiful name of Jesus Christ. They always extol exactly what He does in a heart, the things that he accomplishes.

They're full of words that explain that and they're just wonderful expositions of the whole Council of God. It is interesting that whenever Peter speaks, you always see this, he starts with the whole Bible. He does. He always goes hundreds maybe thousands of years back and he traces the steps of the footprints of God from, well in this case, Abraham, all the way through all the prophets and up to the Lord Jesus Christ. He traces the steps of the way that God worked throughout all of history and he just gives thanks and praise to it as he speaks.

Now let me give you some of the elements of this speech, this sermon. Now I'm going to give you several points here, but it's not the whole thing. I can't get to it. There's too much. But I'll give you sort of a thumbnail sketch of it.

First of all, he identifies the source of the healing, why this man was healed. And it seemed like the people were beginning to assign the healing to a false source. They were thinking that Peter and John were something special. And maybe there was a growing kind of hero worship in the crowd as we see a number of times in the book of Acts where the men are exalted and Peter he sees it I think and he just shuts it down right away he says he says men of Israel why are you amazed at this Why do you gaze at us as if by our own power this happened? No!

This is not about, we did not do this at all. Don't look to us, look to the Lord Jesus Christ. He's the one who did it. He addresses them specifically, he calls them men of Israel. And it's almost as if he's saying, you know, well of course we know who he's talking about, he's talking about talking to the Jews, he's talking to the people who had crucified the Lord Jesus, and who allowed it to happen there in that community.

But it's almost like he's saying, men of Israel, you know the Scriptures, you know what God's like. You understand that God parted the Red Sea, he destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah. You know, he caused the axe to float on the water, he turns back armies, he caused the wall of Jericho to fall down. You know, you know this God, you have no excuse. You know what happened here, and he addresses them that way.

And then he directs them to Jesus. He uses a number of terms to explain who Jesus is. He calls Jesus the Holy and Righteous One, Holy and Righteous, explaining His purity and His sinlessness. He calls Him the Prince of Life, indicating that He is the way, the truth, and the life, that He's the living bread, that He's the living water, that He is life-giving spirit in the spirit of a human being. And then He says that it is the name of Jesus which has strengthened this man.

And so he builds everything around the name, the character, the heritage, the nature of the Lord Jesus Christ. And he speaks rich theology really to them. He speaks tremendous detailed clear Bible doctrine to them regarding the nature and the person of Jesus Christ. This is so critical that we do this just like he did. That our message, it must include the nature of the Lord Jesus Christ, who he is.

He's holy, he's righteous, he's sinless, he's the giver of life and all the other things. Thirdly, He reminds them of the Old Testament prophecies by tying the miracle to three prophetic voices in the Old Testament, and those are Abraham, Moses, and then the prophets from Samuel onward. When he's speaking to these men, he's giving them a historical context and he's saying this Jesus is the one whom these three spoke of And that's what he's doing. Christ is the fulfillment of the prophets, words about the Messiah, and this is another element of our message that we should use when we're speaking with people who who've not trusted the Lord Jesus Christ that they would see Who Jesus is in the historical scheme of things? That he is a historical person that who was prophesied to come and fulfilled perfectly all of the prophecies about Him.

This should be part of our explanation of who the Lord Jesus is, because people don't know it. But Peter reminds these Hebrews of it. Isaiah chapter 35 so perfectly and beautifully gives the fulfillment of this very incident. Here's how it reads, The wilderness and the desert will be glad, and the Arabah will rejoice and blossom, like the crocus. It will blossom profusely and rejoice, with rejoicing and shout of joy.

The glory of Lebanon will be given to it, the majesty of Carmel and Sharon. I believe He's prophesying here about the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, the joy that was injected by the Holy Spirit into the hearts of these new believers and the ways that they related to one another. It prophesies the inward joy that salvation brings, and it also, I believe, prophesies the kind of joy that you saw in the early church and that you see in every church that's faithful to the Lord Jesus. Honestly, no rejoicing, no Jesus in the church. If you see a church where people are not rejoicing, where the happiness of the Lord is not present, something else is at work.

Something is dampening the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ. They will see the glory of the Lord, the majesty of our God, encourage the exhausted and strengthen the feeble." Do you think this man was exhausted and feeble? He had to be carried? Do you think his family was exhausted and feeble? Probably.

Say to those who are with anxious heart, take courage, fear not, behold, your God will come with vengeance. The recompense of God will come, but He will save you. Then the eyes of the blind will be opened, and the ears of the deaf will be unstopped. We've seen this in the ministry of Jesus already. We're going to see more of it in the book of Acts.

And then he says this, "'Then the lame will leap like a deer.'" And that's what we see here in this passage. And when Peter stood up and he went back to all the prophets, I'm confident he had this in his mind. Then, and the tongue of the mute will shout for joy, for waters will break forth in the wilderness, and streams in the Arabah. The scorched land will become a pool, and the thirsty ground springs of water in the haunt of jackals, its resting place. Grass becomes reeds and rushes.

This is about the restoration of a heart, a family, a conscience, emotions, God healing all these things as He begins to work progressively, not instantaneously, doesn't fix everything in one moment. He works with us for a lifetime. He's gracious to us, and he doesn't reveal everything to us lest we die, lest we see all of our sins at one moment. This is God is merciful. He would work with our conscience and He would give us merciful brothers and sisters to help us with it.

A highway will be there, a roadway, and it will be called the highway of holiness. The unclean will not travel on it. But it will be for him who walks that way, and fools will not wander on it. No lion will be there, nor will any vicious beast go upon it. These will not be found there.

But the redeemed will walk there. I believe he's talking now about the final redemption of the life and the body and the kingdom at the end of the age. I think this is a telescopic prophecy that speaks of things nearby and then things far, far away. And the ransom to the Lord will return and come with joyful shouting to Zion. This is our final redemption.

With everlasting joy upon their heads they will find gladness and joy and sorrow and sighing will flee away." This is when he wipes every tear from every eye. He begins here, he begins by wiping our tears here, but we're not completely healed here, but there will be a day when he will bring everything to pass. All of His promises will come flooding down and everything will be set right and every tear will be wiped away and they will find gladness and joy in it. So he then exposes their sin, identifying their rejection and disobedience to Christ. Verses 13-15, he outlines the facts of their disobedience, which is something that always must happen if we're speaking with people about Christ.

We need to tell the truth about sin. We all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. We've broken every law. We've broken every single one of the Ten Commandments. And the Bible says if you've broken one of them, you've broken them all.

You say, well, I've never committed adultery. Well, Jesus said that if you look at a woman with lust in your heart, you've committed adultery. So I'm pretty confident that wipes everybody out on that commandment. So he outlines the facts of their disobedience and he itemized a number of things that they did in their rebellion against Christ. They handed him over, they disowned him before Pilate, and they disowned the Holy and Righteous One and asked for a murderer.

So he's convicting them of sin. He speaks, oh men of Israel, here is your sin. And he outlines it with real specific actions that everybody knows what he's talking about. And he does what we all must do. He speaks of sin so that it can be repented of.

And we were all rebels, until we repent of our rebellion against him, there's just not going to be any relief from our sin and our guilt. And these guys, Peter and John were not a bunch of dreamy idealists, just, you know, feel something and everything will be beautiful. No, he says, these are the facts for which we are all witnesses. These are the facts of your sin. Repent and believe in Jesus Christ.

That's his message. That's really the only message that I think can save. Come and come and get your your heart healed. Come and get your relationships fixed. That's not it.

This is not the whole gospel. Come and repent of your sins so that times of refreshing will come in. And it's interesting here, there's something really fascinating here. He gives the reason why they were disobedient. He tells them why.

Notice he doesn't say, you know, you had a bad childhood. He doesn't say, you know, you're going to have to go back and find your inner child so that you can make your way back. This is not the source of the problem. Being in touch with your inner child is not the problem he's dealing with here. He's dealing with something far, far greater and something far, far more difficult.

He says, verse 17, And now, brethren, I know that you acted in ignorance. Isn't that interesting? You acted in ignorance. He's saying, you know, you weren't shaking your fist at God proactively. You were ignorant.

You didn't know. Your eyes had not been opened. This is why the Lord Jesus, when he was on the cross, he made the most stunning statement that none of us ever could have made. He said, and you know what he said, he said, Father, forgive them for they know not what they do. Father, forgive them For they know not what they do.

Father forgive them for they know not what they do. That's exactly what Peter is saying here. You know, Peter was a good disciple of the Lord Jesus. Remember he denied Christ for a short period of time, but he still was a good disciple. And you see Peter doing some of the same old things that Jesus did.

Hey, when he reached out his hand to take that man, I think he was doing something he just saw his master doing. He was a good disciple. And he was a good disciple here. He had learned from the Lord Jesus that there was an element of the human heart that was ignorant. Their sins committed in ignorance.

And this was one of them right here. They were stumbling around in darkness and they didn't know what they were doing. And they were blind, they were unaware of their sins, their consciences were not activated. And Peter knew that. You know, Peter, this just tells me that Peter's heart was really right toward these people.

He was not angry with them, he was not trying to nail them, he wasn't trying to just blow them away with their sins or anything like that. He knew that only God could open up their hearts to see the truth. And so he tells them, he says, you and the rulers, and the rulers were ignorant. And This is why in the Old Testament there were sacrifices for sins of ignorance. So, then he speaks of the beauty of Christ's work in the human soul.

Human soul. He first of all describes him as the Prince of life and then he says that strengthens and heals. And then he says he wipes away sins. You know, He makes it very clear that God has to deal with guilt. And that's what he does right here when he talks about wiping away.

He says, therefore repent and return that your sins may be wiped out. WIPED OUT! It's a great term that he uses to help us understand how sin is dealt with. And first of all, I just think we need to understand how gracious God is to wipe our sins out. That deals with our guilt.

I don't know if anybody is carrying guilt that they shouldn't be carrying today, right now. But if you are, take this to heart. The Bible says that when you believe in Jesus Christ, that your sins were wiped out. And he uses a really interesting word that was used in the handling of papyri. Papyrus' paper made for writing, and papyrus at that time of writing was such that the ink could be wiped off.

At that period there were no acids in the ink. And so with a papyrus scroll or a fragment of some kind, you could actually take a wet cloth and wipe the words right off of there. And that's what he's talking about here. That your sins will be wiped out. He uses the same term that was commonly used for that procedure in taking words off the page and he's talking about your sins being wiped away.

And of course we see different terms in Scripture. Your sins will be white as, you know, though your sins be as scarlet, they'll be white as snow, white as wool. There's all this consistent imagery in Scripture. So you see it from a number of different angles and he speaks of it here that your sins, their sins would be wiped away. And he identifies our main problem.

You know what? My main problem in my marriage is not my background, it's not my wife's background, it's my sin. All of my problems can be traced right to one single source, sin. And let's not pretend that these things have happened for other reasons. The only hope for my marriage is that I would deal with sin in my life.

Same way with all of us. And Peter goes right to the heart, he goes right to the heart of sin as being the problem. And our resolve to get better will not take care of the problem of sin. Being a better person, cleaning up our act, does not get to it. It is the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ, it's His work in the conscience, it is His conviction of sin that is our only hope in any of this.

And our actual turning away from sin, that makes a difference. And that's why Peter bears down really hard on this whole issue of sin. You know, When people come to church, as often they want moral uplift, they want success, they want comfort, but the Lord Jesus Christ comes to deal with sin. And that's the essence of what Peter is doing here. And Peter says, the Lord Jesus wipes away sins.

And then fourthly, he brings in times of refreshing, verse 20, this beautiful verse that I have so much affection for. To the forgiveness of the sins, he adds something else. It's refreshment. Times of refreshing. And then, fifthly, he sends Christ to bless.

He says, And in your seed all the families of the earth shall be blessed. For you first God raised up his servant and sent him to bless you by turning every one of you from your wicked ways." The logic here is that The fulfillment of the Abrahamic covenant is taking place right here. God told Abraham, in you, in your seed, all the families of the earth will be blessed. And Peter is saying Christ is the fulfillment of that. Now this means a lot of different things.

Here's one thing it means. It means this. That Christ is The only true effective source of blessing in your family, Christ is. This says that in you all the families of the earth will be blessed. In who?

In Christ. In Christ. And this is why it's so critical that you who lead homes fill your homes with Christ every day. Your family can't be blessed without Christ. They won't be.

And so it's God has given a jurisdictional role to a father, to every day when he sits in his house, when he walks by the way, when he lies down, and when he rises up, to bring the Lord Jesus Christ and His Word into that home. It's a marvelous responsibility, but it's really critical because your family won't be blessed without the Lord Jesus Christ. It's just that simple. That's the way the world is wired, And he makes it very plain here. So Christ is fulfilling the promise of Abraham to bless all the families of the earth.

You know, this is why when Paul was addressing the Ephesians, he said, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ. Just as He chose us in Him, that we would be holy and without blame before Him in love." That's all about the blessing of the gospel in a home. There are so many gospel-destroying things in a home. There are so many gospel-destroying things in a home. There are so many influences and pressures and time commitments that edge out the gospel in our homes.

The presence of the Lord Jesus Christ is the greatest source of blessing in a home. We just need to understand that and get real with our schedules, get real with the things we look at in our homes, the things we think about and the things we say. I understand none of us are perfect in this area. We have so far, I just marvel at how far off I am in my days for really bringing the love and the wisdom of the Lord Jesus Christ into my home. And so I know it's a prayer that all of us have, but we should at least have this confidence, that the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ is that thing in which all the family, is that one in whom all the families of the earth shall be blessed.

The blessing comes from two sources. One from the blessing of Abraham and secondly from the blessing of turning from your wicked ways. That's also what you read here in this last part of his sermon. So he speaks of the beauty of salvation and that there's this progressive turning away from wicked ways. This is progressive sanctification.

It's healing that happens. God takes us where we are and then He takes us where He is. And He takes a whole lifetime. And it does require his patience toward us and sometimes our patience with ourselves as well. But there's this continual identification of sin, turning to Him, cleansing the well, cleansing the spring, and never arriving, but one day arriving when He chooses to take us into His glorious kingdom.

And He will do it, just like this lame man, He'll do it in his own time. He's never slow. He's always on time. He is always perfectly on time for all of his work Including including our sanctification. Okay So that's the sermon now.

Let me just give a couple of thoughts for application of this. First of all, it's really more of a question. What are the implications of this for our lives together in the wider community? Notice Peter and John were out in the wider community. They were out where everybody else was.

They were not cloistered in their holy huddle. You know, I was talking to a friend who's this week who is having an affection for the monastics, for the contemplatives. And he was excited about all of what he was learning about entering into this contemplative state and he was singing the praises of the monks, you know, he was talking of one monk who had been in this monastery for 80 years. And what I said to him was, that is totally unbiblical. There is not a shred of evidence that men and women should cloister themselves in another world and keep themselves away from the world.

This is wrong. This is what I was telling him. This is wicked, this is wrong. It was so hard because he was sharing this wonderful thing that he had found. He was a married man, he wanted to go be a monk.

Absolutely that it would be wicked, that would be a disobedience against everything in scripture. Well here we find Peter and John out in the mix in the community with people that had been there and done that. And God had planned them there. Let's make so sure that we don't experience too much exclusion and that we are in the same way that Jesus Christ was with those who needed healing, those who needed ministry, truth, whatever they needed. We need to be like the Lord Jesus.

The Lord Jesus did not go into a monastery, okay? And He is our pattern for everything. So the next time someone tells you that they want to go live the contemplative life of the men and monastic Please just open up Acts chapter 3 and read it to them because that's not the biblical pattern for the church So it's a picture of Christ's work in the community. So how would God use us in this community? Us individually and us together.

We have a lot of resources together so we can do things together and we can do things individually. Both are really important. Okay, second application, our message. There's a lot in here about what the message of the gospel is. Our message is Christ prophesied, Christ crucified, repentance of sins, times of refreshing, the kingdom of God.

That's kind of the range of what you see in here. This is what he shares with the people. I think we should be sharing the same message. The message is, come to Jesus and you'll get your needs met. The message isn't come to Jesus and he'll fill that hole in your heart.

That is not the message of the gospel. Okay? You still might have a hole in your heart, okay, but the Lord Jesus Christ will fulfill all of His promises toward you. But the message is very clear. Well, We may someday end up with a public censuring and even an imprisonment, as Peter and John did, as John Bunyan and others did.

But it is our joy to spread the gospel of repentance so that times of refreshing would come in so That we would be as witnesses in Jerusalem Judea Samaria and the outermost parts of the earth because this promise is for you and for your children and those who are far off and as many as the Lord our God will call to himself and that's why God has placed us here so let's pray father thank you for this beautiful story giving it to us I pray that you'd help us to be like Peter and John I pray that you'd help us to be like the lame man I pray that you'd help us to be like the crowd who were amazed at the great work that you did in Jesus name In Jesus' name, Amen.