In his sermon titled 'The Witness of the Church,' Peter Allison draws on Acts 2 to discuss the early church's practices and their impact on the community. He highlights the church's commitment to daily corporate worship, prayer, and breaking of bread, drawing parallels to historical practices of devout Christians, such as Daniel's thrice-daily prayers and the Geneva Church's frequent sermons. Allison uses the healing of the lame man by Peter and John in Acts as a demonstration of faith, emphasizing that while the gift of healing may not be as common today, God's power remains unchanged. The sermon explores the role of miracles in affirming the Gospel's message and Christ's lordship and compassion. Allison encourages believers to let their transformed lives serve as a joyful and public witness to God's grace, drawing parallels between physical healing and spiritual salvation.

Our Scripture reading this morning is Acts 2. I'd like to pick up the last two verses in that chapter. Acts 2, verse 46. Here God's Word. So continuing daily with one accord in the temple, And breaking bread from house to house, they ate their food with gladness and simplicity of heart, praising God and having favor with all the people.

And the Lord added to the church daily those who were being saved. Now Peter and John went up together to the temple at the hour of prayer, the ninth hour, and a certain man lame from his mother's womb was carried, whom they laid daily at the gate of the temple, which is called Beautiful, to ask alms from those who enter the temple. Who, seeing Peter and John about to go into the temple, asked for alms. And fixing his eyes on him with John, Peter said, Look at us! So he gave them his attention, expecting to receive something from them.

Then Peter said, silver and gold I do not have, but what I do have I give you. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk." And he took him by the right hand and lifted him up, and immediately his feet and ankle bones received strength. So he, leaping up, stood and walked, and entered the temple with them, walking and leaping and praising God. And all the people saw him walking and praising God. Then they knew that it was he who sat begging alms at the beautiful gate of the temple.

And they were filled with wonder and amazement at what had happened to Him. May this law of His mouth is better than thousands of coins of gold and silver. Heavenly Father, please seal to our hearts Your Word that we have heard right now. Please speak to us through this Word by your Spirit. Please sanctify us by it.

Lord, open our hearts and our minds that we might receive Your Word as it comes to us and sanctify my sinful lips that they may proclaim the riches of Your grace. Lord, we ask this in the mighty name of Jesus. Amen. Last week we looked at some of the traits and the character of the church of Jesus Christ, the body. And this week we want to continue, but specifically looking at the witness of the church to the community around them.

The witness of the church to the people who watched them. And the first thing that sticks out to this people, this church that God is building, the church that He added 3, 000 souls to on the day of Pentecost, and continued to add to. The first thing we see is they have a hunger for corporate worship. So continuing daily with one accord in the temple. They were worshiping corporately.

They were praying corporately. Breaking bread from house to house. They ate their food with gladness and simplicity of heart. Praising, praising God. They continued daily in the temple.

This account begins with Peter and John going up to the temple at the hour of prayer, the ninth hour. That would be about three o'clock, the way we count time. So this is the evening prayer, going up for the evening prayer. There's a hunger here for worship that might seem a bit extreme to us. Daily, going to the temple.

They would meet daily in the temple. But actually, historically this has been usual. The usual practice among faithful Christians and faithful churches. If it seems unusual to us today, It's us that is out of accord with the testimony of Scripture and of history. Psalm 55 verse 17 says, Evening and morning and at noon, I will pray and cry aloud, and He shall hear my voice." And this was the practice of Daniel in the land of Babylon in captivity where they were taken away from the temple and the corporate worship and the sacrifices and the synagogues.

And Daniel is thrust into this pagan nation, into the palace of a pagan king. And yet Daniel says that when Daniel knew that this writing was signed, and it's referring there to the law that was passed to get Daniel, because they couldn't get at him any other way, They had a special law passed that you could only pray to the king, knowing that Daniel three times a day prayed to Jehovah. And he prayed publicly. And it says that Daniel, after he knew that this law had been passed. He went into his upper room with his windows open toward Jerusalem, and he knelt down on his knees three times that day and prayed and gave thanks before God.

Was it just that day? No. As was his custom since early days. It was Daniel's custom to pray three times a day, facing Jerusalem. This was his personal practice.

Living in a foreign land, in exile, where there was no temple, and there was no synagogue, it was His personal practice to pray three times every day. There were also, with the temple worship, there were daily sacrifices, morning and evening. Exodus 29, 38 commands, this is what you shall offer on the altar. Two lambs of the first year, day by day, continually. One lamb you shall offer in the morning, and the other lamb you shall offer at twilight.

With one lamb they were to offer a sacrifice, a drink offering. And the other lamb they were to offer at twilight with a sacrifice, a grain offering, and a drink offering for a sweet aroma. Christ was crucified at the time that evening sacrifice was made on the day of Passover. And Calvin says of this passage that by this exercise were they taught to begin and end the day with calling upon the name of God and worshiping Him." And I'll give you one other example, and that is the practice of the Genevaan Church. The Genevaan Church in the time of Calvin and Biza in the 1500s, between 1540s, 1550s, 1560s, and so on, right in the middle there of the 16th century.

The Geneva church was in many ways similar to the CPC in terms of its size, numbers, number of elders, and number of congregations, although it was a much smaller geographical area. It was around the city. There were three churches in the city, and ten or twelve or so churches that were scattered in the countryside around the city. And the ministers were assigned to country churches. A minister would be assigned to a country church, but in the city, these three churches in the city, there was a group of ministers that served them and there was a certain rotation among them.

And the city ministers were expected to preach 20 sermons every month. 20 sermons every month. If you think about that, that's two every three days. The city churches were served by this group of pastors, and they had daily sermons during the week. Every day there was a sermon.

And there were three sermons on Sunday. But every day there was a sermon being preached in these city churches. And then three on the Lord's Day. They had an early morning, an evening, and a noon. And they actually had some more.

They had sermons very early in the morning for servants. The country ministers were expected to preach twice on Sunday and once in the midweek, Wednesday or Thursday. So They had a lot more difficulty, there was a lot more hardship associated with their work, and so there was a lighter expectation for them. But you can see this from Calvin's writings, his sermons. They have the dates that they are preached.

And you can go through his sermons on Deuteronomy, and they are in consecutive days. The practice was a minister would preach every day, Monday through Saturday, and then two sermons on Sunday, and then he would get the next week off from preaching every day. And then the following Sunday, he would preach two sermons, and then the whole next week, a sermon every day. That was the practice. That was the normal expectation.

Once a year, the small council, that was the civil governing authority of the city, dispatched a town crier throughout the city to remind the inhabitants that they were required by law, we're talking about civil law here, these are the civil rulers, they were required by law to attend the Wednesday prayer service as well as the Sunday morning and afternoon services each week. So they were reminded of what the civil law required of them. And historically, it has been the practice of the church in America to meet twice on Sunday. And it's really only in very recent times that this practice has been changed. I grew up living in probably ten or eleven different states, maybe more.

And I've lived in another ten or eleven since getting married. But I can say that in my growing up years, every church, I believe almost every church, without exception, had a morning and an evening service. That for the most part, we attended morning and evening. Now, I also recognized as I went back and looked later on with Google, you can do this, and realized how close we lived to the church in many cases. In one city in Minnesota, we lived within walking distance of the church, maybe a quarter mile, maybe or so.

And many other people in the city did. And so the bells would ring and everybody would walk to church. And there was a morning and an evening worship time. In another case, We lived in a very big city in San Jose, California. And we lived two miles from church.

At the time, we weren't even the closest to the church, actually. But there was a sense of community around the church. And the practice of the church is to worship twice each Lord's Day. And that has historically been the practice, and as we've seen, it comes out of the Scriptures, where there was a daily sacrifice, and there was a morning and evening sacrifice in the temple. Now, there are practical reasons today that have changed some of these things.

People generally live a lot farther away from churches. And if it takes an hour or more to get to church, that makes it a little more difficult to make two trips to church. We've tried to accommodate that in our assembly by having all the services together, but that also presents challenges for those with little ones and those of our brothers and sisters that are older because it makes for a very long day. But this is something that we ought to aspire to, to be able to worship corporately with God's people morning and evening on the Lord's day, and to have these times of corporate prayer during the week. The apostles here are going up to the temple daily, twice a day, and they're going up here at the ninth hour to pray.

These people demonstrated a hunger for the corporate worship of God, a hunger that we ought to have as well. And corporate worship is different than our personal worship. There's different aspects to it, and both are important. But God's people have a hunger to worship corporately. The second thing we see in terms of their witness to the community is that they are a blessing to the community.

These people had favor. They ate their food with simplicity of heart, praising God and having favor with all the people. And that's one of the things that's evidence of that is that people were added to their number daily. This church had a good reputation, a favorable reputation in the community at this point. So we can see that favor with people is compatible with fervency in prayer and in praise.

Those two aren't mutually exclusive. To be fervent in prayer and in worship doesn't mean that you have to alienate the community. Now, it doesn't always mean that the community responds this way. When they are stirred up by wicked rulers, communities can be very hostile to the church, as we'll see in a bit when persecution breaks out on the Jerusalem church. The persecution that was driven by the rulers.

The third thing we see is that these people, this church meets physical needs with alms, with gifts. So one of the reasons that this church was a blessing was their diaconal work. The church met the needs of people beginning with the household of faith. They were generous in their giving, even to the point of selling property and distributing the proceeds from that sale to meet the needs of the church. Paul said to the Galatians, therefore as we have opportunity, let us do good to all, especially those who are of the household of faith.

And those who don't provide for their own house have denied the faith. So as a church, this is important. And the church was meeting the physical needs of people. But that doesn't mean that they gave alms indiscriminately to everyone who asked. The disciples didn't give alms to every beggar.

They didn't give alms to the beggar in this chapter. They could have. They could have. There was money. People were selling their property and taking the proceeds and giving it to the apostles.

We read that in chapter 5. Chapter 6 talks about the church being involved in the distribution of food to widows. This church had means. It had money. And yet, the apostles did not give any money to this beggar.

This man was over 40 years old, it says. He was lame. It says a little bit later in chapter 4, I believe. He was lame. He was born this way From his mother's womb.

So for 40 years or more, he's been sitting here. Or at least in his adult life, he's been sitting here. Begging. And so Jesus would have seen him there. That means Jesus didn't heal this beggar, and Jesus didn't give him great wealth to be able to not have to beg.

So just because somebody is begging alms, doesn't mean that we must therefore give that person alms. There is a requirement for the poor to do what they are able to do. The poor in the Old Testament were expected to do some kind of work for the aid that they received. They were expected to glean the fields. The farmers were not to scrub every bit of the harvest from the fields, but they were to leave that late ripening grain or those hard to get areas of the field, they were to leave for the poor to harvest.

Leviticus 19 says, Therefore you shall observe all my statutes and all my judgments and perform them. I am the Lord. And when you reap the harvest of your field, you shall not wholly reap the corners of the field. When you reap, nor shall you gather any gleaning from your harvest. You shall leave them for the poor, for I am the stranger." So in other words, if you drop something, if it's hard to reach, you could leave it.

You were to leave it. You weren't to go grasping for every grain of corn that was in the field. Deuteronomy 4, when you reap your field in the harvest and forget a sheaf, don't go back to pick it up. Leave that for the poor together, for the stranger, the fatherless, the widow. And when you beat your olive trees, don't go back over the boughs again.

Don't go back again and harvest again. Now, that harvesting never gets as much as the first harvest does, and it's usually never as good a harvest. It's the secondaries, it's the seconds. But some might be tempted in their greed to go get every little olive they could. And God says, no, Don't go back a second time and beat it.

Leave that for the fatherless, the poor. Notice that the farmers didn't say, If you forget it, go back and get it and then take it to the house of the poor. No, leave it in the field. There was an expectation the poor would have to do some work. They'd have to exert themselves.

They'd have to go out to the field and get it. If it's the olives, they have to beat the tree. They would be the ones to beat the tree to get the olives off. They would be the ones to beat the tree to get the olives off. They would be the ones to go harvest the corners and other places that were difficult to harvest, or maybe didn't have as high a yield.

So there was an expectation of work. They didn't get the choicest part of that field. It doesn't say, well, you come to the best part of the crop, you should leave that for the poor. No, it's the corners of the field. It's the things you've forgotten.

It's the things you dropped. It's the second harvest. There is the expectation of some work for the poor. The poor could not just sit home and expect people to bring food to their and drop it on their table. And so many commentators think that it was a disgrace for this man to be sitting at the temple begging.

That, well, the people should have been providing for him so he didn't have to sit there and beg. But I don't think that's consistent with the picture in Scripture. I think it is consistent with the picture that Scripture gives about dealing or the commands that Scripture gives about how we are to care for the poor. By giving them the opportunity to work, it allows them to have some self-respect. It allows them to do what they can do, even if it's very limited.

In this case, this man is lame. He can't walk. And they didn't have things like wheelchairs and motorized wheelchairs that people like him could get around. But what could he do? Well, he could sit at the temple door where people came and ask.

And so he is daily carried to this place. He's not homeless. This is not a homeless man who has nowhere else to go. He's just sitting here. No, this is somebody who has a home.

He has people caring for him. But they also recognize that he's expected to do something. And so he has people who are carrying him every day to the temple and then taking him back home at night. He was carried daily at the gate of the temple in order to ask for alms. He was carried so that he could do something.

So he wasn't just stuck at home with nothing to do, but he's actually there with one of the things that people that have disabilities face is their limited ability to get out and interact with other people. Here's an opportunity for Him to interact with everybody that enters the temple. He can greet them. He can ask them for alms. He can do a lot of things there.

The Bible doesn't say exactly what He was doing or wasn't doing, but He does say He was asking for alms. He's interacting with people. He's having to do some work. And I think that is consistent with what the Bible teaches about the care for the poor. He did what he was able to do.

And his family helped him to do that. And so this sets the stage for the miracle that Peter and John perform. They are coming up to pray. And this man sees Peter and John coming to go to the temple, and he asked for alms. He saw Peter and John, and he asked them for alms.

He engages with them. He initiates the contact. And Peter and John respond to his initiating of contact. Now many commentators say that this man was healed without any faith. And while I agree that while the text does not clearly state that he believed, I do think that it does describe the action of faith.

Peter said, when he asked for alms, Peter said, look at us. And the Bible does say he did. He looked at them expecting to receive what He asked for. I think that was a look of faith. In the Old Testament, the Israelites who looked at the bronze serpent were healed, and the ones who refused to look were not healed.

Numbers 21, 9, so Moses made a bronze serpent and put it on a pole, and so it was, if a serpent had bitten anyone, when he looked at the bronze serpent, he lived. That's all he had to do, had to look at the bronze serpent. Jesus told Nicodemus in John 3, As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes on Him should not perish, but have eternal life. I think Peter and John come, and Peter specifically says, look at us. Look at us.

And he did. And he was healed. He looked to Peter expecting to receive what he asked for. I think Peter calls him the look to see if he has faith. There's another example where I believe it's Paul looks at someone to see if he has faith.

And when he sees that he has faith, he heals him. It doesn't say why Peter did this, but if we compare it with that other passage, he may have been looking to see if this man had faith. Look at us. And this man looked at Peter. You see, the work of regeneration proceeds faith.

The Lord opened Lydia's heart when she heard Paul preach. The Lord opened her heart so that she could respond to the things spoken by Paul. And I believe the Lord worked in this man's heart so that he looked at Peter and John when they said to look. See, faith is a gift. Faith is a gift, and that gift is that faith is the means by which we receive the benefits of our salvation.

We are saved through faith. It's not our faith that saves us, it is through our faith. It's Christ that saves us through faith. Faith is a channel, but faith has to be given before. And so when he looks at him, Peter says, well, I don't have any silver and gold, but what I do have, I give to you in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, walk.

See, Peter puts this man's attention on Jesus Christ of Nazareth. He combines His office, Christ, as the Messiah with His incarnation as the Son of God, the one who took upon Himself human flesh so that He might die in our place. Jesus Christ is the Messiah, the Anointed, And Jesus of Nazareth is God incarnate. You see, Peter is very clear that this miracle is not done by his power. And he makes that clear later on in this chapter that this man was saved by the power of Jesus Christ of Nazareth.

Not His power. He did not come saying, I can heal you. Jesus Christ of Nazareth can heal you. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk. And Peter says a little later in this chapter, and His name through faith in His name has made this man strong.

Through faith in His name has made this man strong whom you see and know. I think it's another indication. That could be Peter's faith that did this, but I think it's the man's faith. Now, that work of regeneration, of giving a new heart, of giving faith that results in this new birth and in justification, it demands a response. When God calls His people, they respond with an act of the will.

And we see that then This man who is called responds in faith and obedience. He gets up, Peter lifts him up, but he gets up and he begins to leap and to dance and to praise God. Immediately, His feet and ankle bones receive strength. This is a miracle. If you just laid in bed for a month and didn't move, you would have a hard time walking.

When you see the astronauts come off of the space station, They can't walk when they get out of there. They have to help them. It's very difficult. Your muscles atrophy. So if this person had just lived for 40 years and never been able to walk, even if he had working muscles, they wouldn't have been able to work.

But instantly, he's able not just to walk, but to leap and to dance. So there's a miraculous. It's supernatural. These are not ordinary means that God used to heal this man. Now, we might naturally ask, what about miracles today?

Can people be healed like this today? And I think we have to distinguish here very carefully that I believe that the gift of healing has ceased. But the power by which God healed this man is still very much active. Do you get that difference? Peter could look at this person before he's healed as he's lying there weak and unable to walk, and he'd say, look at me.

I don't have silver and gold, but what I do have, I give you in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk." He could say that, and knowing that God would do that. And that's what I think we don't have that today. There's nobody that can heal that way. Nobody has that gift of healing to be able to know when God was going to heal somebody so that they could speak in advance and command them to do something that required that healing. But God's power is what healed that person, and God has not changed.

His power is still very much able to heal people. And I believe He does. And I brought a book along. It's actually the first volume of two volumes. And this volume has 600 pages.

And the other one has Equal Number, heavily footnoted by Craig Keener. And I don't endorse everything in this book, but I wanted to give you an example of does God still do these kinds of things today? And I believe that He is able to, not only is able to, but that he does from time to time, certainly not frequently. And so I want to read to you one account that is from Dr. Chansey Crandall, which some local news, television outlets reported on, this particular rising claim.

A renowned cardiologist with world-class credentials, Crandall was a heart surgeon. And he had much to lose by lying. Just think of what people that tell the truth today can lose. Indeed, in today's milieu, he is risking his reputation even to claim such matters truthfully. Crandall told me, the author of this book, that he did not seek notoriety.

Why risk his established reputation for something so controversial? Yet he could not deny where the evidence led him. On Friday, October 20, 2006, 53-year-old auto mechanic Jeff Markin checked himself into the hospital in West Palm Beach, Florida and died of a heart attack there. Emergency room personnel labored for nearly 40 minutes to revive him, unsuccessfully shocking the flat-lined man seven times. Crandall was called to certify the obvious.

There was no point in continuing attempts to revive the man. Crandall recounts that Markin was not merely dead, but unusually obviously dead. His face, toes, and fingers had already turned black. Crandall concurred with the obvious conclusion, the patient was declared dead at 8.05 a.m. After writing up his assessment, Crandall left to return to his scheduled appointments.

Very quickly, however, he felt an extraordinary compulsion from God's Spirit to return. He initially but only briefly resisted this compulsion and then returned. The nurse was disconnecting the IVs and preparing the body for the morgue by sponging it down. Yet Crandall suddenly found himself praying over the corpse, Father God, I cry out for the soul of this man, if he does not know you as his Lord and Savior, please raise him from the dead right now, in Jesus' name. The nurse glared at him in astonishment.

But Crandall instructed the emergency room doctor, who had just walked in, to shock him with the paddle one more time. For Crandall, prayer and medicine work together. They are not mutually exclusive. The doctor protested. They all recognized that Markin was beyond resuscitation.

Nevertheless, out of respect for his colleague, this doctor complied and shocked Markin's corpse. Suddenly, the monitor, which they were all watching, moved from a flat line to a normal heartbeat, which would have been extraordinary even if the heart had stopped only briefly. In my more than 20 years as a cardiologist, he reported, I have never seen a heartbeat restored so suddenly and completely. Markin immediately began breathing unaided, and within minutes Markin's fingers and toes began moving and he began speaking. Perhaps recalling Frankenstein's monster, the panicked nurse started screaming, Dr.

Kremdl, what have you done to this patient? She did not know what they would do with him now. She could have had cause for concern, because someone dead even for six minutes would have irreparable brain damage. Markin had no brain damage, however, and even his once blackened extremities were ultimately restored. Crandall met with Markin Monday morning, sitting up, Markin talked with him, contemplating his second chance of life.

Now, when a medical consultant for a national News program respectfully suggested that possibly the heart had not stopped completely, but had gone only into a very subtle rhythm for those 30 to 40 minutes. When I asked Dr. Crandall his response, he replied that this complaint was merely grasping at straws. The team had tried to revive him for 40 minutes after his heart stopped, using standard American Heart Association protocols, and his resuscitation could not have happened naturally. Even the information in the media reports support Crandall's verdict.

The darkening of extremities and the unanimous verdict of those actually present in the emergency room, including renowned cardiologist Crandall, makes the more skeptical alternative seem forced compared with the more obvious interpretation. That's just one example of out of 1200 pages of things over history of where God has worked this way. Now, that doctor didn't know that he was going to do that, but he prayed. And God, in that example, it seems, chose to raise that man from the dead. But you see, miracles are not the norm.

They're not the norm today. And they weren't the norm even in the Apostles' Day when these signs and wonders were being done. More routinely. Think of the many people in the New Testament that were not healed from sickness. Paul says he left trophomus in Miletus sick.

Paul said he left them there sick. Well, if this was a normal thing, then why didn't Paul just heal trophomus so he could take them with him? Why would he tell Timothy, take a little wine for the sake of your stomach? Why wouldn't he just heal him if it was the norm? Or Paul's thorn in the flesh that he prayed to God for.

Was it because He didn't have enough faith? No. God said, my grace is sufficient for you, and my strength is made perfect in your weakness. So miracles are not the norm. They weren't the norm in Jesus' day.

Jesus didn't heal the vast number of sick people. He didn't heal the raised from the dead, the vast number of dead people. They were exceptions. If they weren't exceptions, they wouldn't be so amazing. People would be accustomed to them.

They would be expecting them. Well, that's nothing. That happens every day. The reason they were so amazed is because they didn't happen every day, even in Jesus' day and even with the Apostles. The purpose of these miracles really is a picture of the Gospel.

They're a picture of salvation. They first proclaim the Lordship of Jesus Christ over everything, including the physical and including our bodies. And they attest to the message. They attest to the power of the Word of God. What this miracle does in the outward body, Christ does inwardly in the work of salvation.

And Christ's enemies understood this in chapter 4 when they see the miracles, they realize this validates the message of the Gospel. And they're concerned about it. We have to stop these signs from happening because they are affirming and validating the Gospel message, and they're validating Jesus Christ. So these miracles proclaim Christ's lordship and His power over the body. They also demonstrate Christ's compassion for lost and suffering people.

We are spiritually lost and God saves us. But God is also saving our bodies. Paul says our bodies groan, awaiting their coming salvation, the redemption of our bodies. They will be made new. The miracles are in a sense a down payment for that healing, that ultimate healing that comes when our bodies are raised as glorified bodies without any of these sicknesses and illnesses and without death.

And so Paul says we eagerly wait for that redemption. So miracles are one thing that point to that. Miracles are also a call to unbelievers to come to Christ. These signs and wonders brought a great amazement to people. And in Acts we read there are times when through these signs and wonders people are made willing and open to consider the Gospel.

It provides an opportunity for them to hear the Word. It opens their heart. This, of course, this opening is through the power of the Holy Spirit, but He uses these things. He uses these wonders. He uses these means.

He uses the people proclaiming His Word and working these wonders. And so this lame man, he responds by confessing the goodness of God. He praises God in healing him. He goes joyfully to worship God. He went into the temple with the apostles.

You think of all the places that He could have run. If you just had legs, of all the places you'd like to go with your new legs, in the first time in your life in over 40 years, He could have gone anywhere. But he's drawn to go into the temple to worship. He went into the temple with the apostles to joyously worship God. He testified openly and publicly to the work of the Lord.

He made no secret of who had healed Him. He is praising God, dancing around, leaping. He's making Himself a spectacle to make known God's work. He is. He's a new man from what He used to be.

And the people who saw it were filled with wonder and amazement because this is an amazing work of God. This work pictures what Christ does in salvation. Now here's the point though for us. We might think, well of course this guy would praise God publicly and that he would dance around and testify to all around him of God's work because he's just gotten his legs. Isn't that amazing?

But think about each of us. I don't see any one-legged person in here. I don't see anybody that can't walk in here. We've been able to walk all of our lives. If he can praise God for being able to walk just a second half of his life, how much more ought we to be praising God that God has enabled us to walk all of our lives?

In other words, we've received more from the Lord. We ought to be praising the Lord even more. We ought to be even more. It's just the opposite. If He can praise the Lord after living half His life without being able to walk, how much more we ought to be praising the Lord and testifying to the Lord's work in our lives and publicly doing so with great joy for having feet and legs and life all of our lives.

May God enable us to do so. May our lives be transformed by the Gospel. And may that radiate out as a witness to those around us, to unbelievers, even as this man's transformed life did. Heavenly Father, we thank You for Your power that is demonstrated in this man who was healed, but also it is demonstrated in us, for we were dead in our trespasses and sins, and You have made us alive in Christ. You have given us life.

You have given us ability to walk, to sing and to talk, and to leap and to dance. And Lord, may our lives be transformed by Your gospel, even as this life was. And may we be faithful to testify to Your work of grace in us and to Your good gifts and to Your mercies that are indeed new every day in our lives. Or may we Be bold to testify and to praise your work and your grace to us in Christ. We ask your forgiveness for our shyness and our fear of man and all the other things, Lord, that inhibit us from speaking boldly and freely.

In Jesus' name, Amen.