To Bless You

TO BLESS YOU 

An Exposition of Acts 3:1-26

By Pastor Brian Wilbur

Date: March 23, 2025

Series: The Book of Acts

Note: Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are from The ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway. Used by permission. All rights reserved. 

INTRODUCTION

Good morning. I invite you to turn in your Bibles to Acts chapter three, and I'm going to read the whole chapter. The Apostle Paul said, “The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners” (1 Timothy 1:15). And Acts chapter three is a beautiful testimony to that message that we proclaim. So Acts chapter three, beginning in verse one.

THE SCRIPTURAL TEXT

Holy Scripture says:

¹ Now Peter and John were going up to the temple at the hour of prayer, the ninth hour. ² And a man lame from birth was being carried, whom they laid daily at the gate of the temple that is called the Beautiful Gate to ask alms of those entering the temple. ³ Seeing Peter and John about to go into the temple, he asked to receive alms. ⁴ And Peter directed his gaze at him, as did John, and said, “Look at us.” ⁵ And he fixed his attention on them, expecting to receive something from them. ⁶ But Peter said, “I have no silver and gold, but what I do have I give to you. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk!” ⁷ And he took him by the right hand and raised him up, and immediately his feet and ankles were made strong. ⁸ And leaping up, he stood and began to walk, and entered the temple with them, walking and leaping and praising God. ⁹ And all the people saw him walking and praising God, ¹⁰ and recognized him as the one who sat at the Beautiful Gate of the temple, asking for alms. And they were filled with wonder and amazement at what had happened to him.

¹¹ While he clung to Peter and John, all the people, utterly astounded, ran together to them in the portico called Solomon's.¹² And when Peter saw it he addressed the people: “Men of Israel, why do you wonder at this, or why do you stare at us, as though by our own power or piety we have made him walk? ¹³ The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, the God of our fathers, glorified his servant Jesus, whom you delivered over and denied in the presence of Pilate, when he had decided to release him. ¹⁴ But you denied the Holy and Righteous One, and asked for a murderer to be granted to you, ¹⁵ and you killed the Author of life, whom God raised from the dead. To this we are witnesses. ¹⁶ And his name—by faith in his name—has made this man strong whom you see and know, and the faith that is through Jesus has given the man this perfect health in the presence of you all.

¹⁷ “And now, brothers, I know that you acted in ignorance, as did also your rulers. ¹⁸ But what God foretold by the mouth of all the prophets, that his Christ would suffer, he thus fulfilled. ¹⁹ Repent therefore, and turn back, that your sins may be blotted out, ²⁰ that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and that he may send the Christ appointed for you, Jesus, ²¹ whom heaven must receive until the time for restoring all the things about which God spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets long ago.²² Moses said, ‘The Lord God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your brothers. You shall listen to him in whatever he tells you.²³ And it shall be that every soul who does not listen to that prophet shall be destroyed from the people.’ ²⁴ And all the prophets who have spoken, from Samuel and those who came after him, also proclaimed these days. ²⁵ You are the sons of the prophets and of the covenant that God made with your fathers, saying to Abraham, ‘And in your offspring shall all the families of the earth be blessed.’²⁶ God, having raised up his servant, sent him to you first, to bless you by turning every one of you from your wickedness.” (Acts 3:1-26)

This is God's holy word, and it is for our good. Let’s pray:

Father, as we come to you this morning with our Bibles open, we are glad that it is not by our might, it is not by our power, it is not by our wisdom, it is not by our godliness, that people will be ministered to this morning. But it is because of the name and the power and the grace of Jesus Christ. And we pray in his name, that you would do a mighty work in our hearts and minds this morning. Amen.

WALKING THROUGH THE PASSAGE

Well, we'll walk through this passage in three parts.

Something big happened that got people’s attention (v. 1-10)

The first part I want to summarize this way: Something big happened that got people's attention (v. 1-10). We noticed last week at the end of Acts chapter two (Acts 2:42-47), that it was common for these first believers, these first Christians, to frequent the temple. And they would go to the temple to worship the Lord and to hear instruction and to pray. And as we begin chapter three, we have a concrete example of the apostles Peter and John going up to the temple at the hour of prayer, at a designated time of prayer. It says the ninth hour – that would be at 3:00 in the afternoon. And there would have been a lot of people there, gathering there to connect with God and to worship him.

And there was another man who was being brought there, this lame man. We know from chapter four that this man was over 40 years old (Acts 4:22). So this man had been lame, from birth, for over 40 years. He had never walked. He was dependent upon others to move around. And other people brought him to the temple gate in order to ask alms, in order to beg for money. And that's what he was there to do. In fact, as we notice later on there in verse 10, he was known as that guy who comes here all the time and sits by this gate and asks for money. That guy.

Well, Peter and John, as they're making their approach to the temple, they see this man asking for a handout. And Peter and John look at him, and of course the lame beggar is thinking that, ‘well, hey, maybe these guys are going to give me something.’ You know? And they tell him to look at them. And he looks at them, and they're looking at him. What's going to happen? And I love what Peter says in verse six. He says, “I have no silver and gold, but what I do have I give to you.”

A brief word of application

And I just want to pause right there and make a little application to all of us, okay. Well, I know we're not apostles. Maybe none of us have the gift of healing. That's okay. I just want you to think about how as we're doing life, as we're rubbing shoulders with people, whether it's in our neighborhood, in the workplace, out and about in the public square, whatever, there will be times when people are asking something of us. In this case, the lame beggar was asking for money, okay. There are times when people are asking something from us, and we may not be able to give them what they're asking for. It may not even be right or wise to give them what they're asking for. But you know what we can give them as Christians? We can give them what we have. And do you know what we have? We have a relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ, if we're Christians. We have the message that Jesus gave us to give to others. And we have whatever gifts the Lord has given to us. And so we don't have to feel like we are in any way bound to give to other people what they are asking or what they are expecting or what they think that they need. But as servants and ambassadors of the Lord Jesus Christ, we can go about with confidence that we can give people what the Lord wants to give people through us. There's just a little application there for all of us.

But in any case, Peter's like, “I have no silver and gold, but what I do have I give to you.” I wonder what that is? As it turns out, it's much better than silver or gold. And Peter is absolutely confident – he knows that he knows that he knows – that it is the will of the Lord to heal this man instantaneously and completely. And so operating out of that knowledge that the Lord gave him, and out of that faith, he says, “In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk!” (v. 6) So very, very important for this man and really for everyone else to know that it is in the name of Jesus Christ, not in the name of the universe, not in the name of a vague higher power, not in the name of your lucky stars, not in the name of anyone or anything else, certainly not in their own name, not in the name of Peter or John, but only in the name of Jesus, that the healing is declared – “rise up and walk!” And Peter is so confident that the Lord is going to actually raise this man up that he immediately begins to help the man, he reaches down with his right hand and helps to pick the man up. And as that's happening, the Lord is bringing healing and strengthening to the man's feet and ankles, and they are made strong.

Another brief word of application

By the way, I think there is another little word of application here. This is a beautiful picture of what the Lord calls us to be and do in terms of our ministry to other people. We don't heal anybody. We don't save anybody. But what a picture here: Peter, as a servant of the Lord, is helping to raise up someone, in this case, to raise up someone who is lame. The even greater issue is to raise up those who are spiritually dead and need to be saved. But we're the Lord's servants. The Lord is the one who does the healing. The Lord is the one who does the saving. The Lord is the one who gives, in this case, who is giving strength and restoration to the feet and the ankles. But we have a role to play. We have a message to proclaim. We have a right hand to extend, to be there as midwives as it were, nursing people to spiritual health.

Now returning to this remarkable healing, think about this. As I was pondering this text, I was thinking about the fact that this man was lame from birth. He had never walked. He had never learned to walk. He had never developed the coordination of walking. And do you see what happens here? It's not just that his lameness is taken away. The Lord immediately gave him all of the coordination and strength, not only to walk, but to leap, to jump, to celebrate. Beautiful, beautiful picture. And he's praising God. Isn't that what we saw at the end of Acts chapter 2, verse 47, that the believers were praising God? And now this lame beggar – that's how he started the day, as a lame beggar, kind of on the outside of the activity that was going on in the temple, kind of outside of the worship – and now he's raised up and he's drawn in and he's praising God.

And people, all the people around are just blown away. How can this be? And by the way, this is a pattern that we're going to see in the Book of Acts, because we saw it at the beginning of Acts chapter two, right? At the beginning of Acts chapter two, something big happened that got people's attention, right? The Holy Spirit came upon those 120 disciples, and they spoke in all the languages of the people who were present, and all the people were astounded. What does this mean? Well, the same thing's happening here. Something big happened that got people's attention. They're blown away and they're wondering what in the world's going on.

Once Peter has their attention, he tells them about Jesus (v. 11-16)

So let me move to verses 11 to 16: Once Peter has their attention, he tells them about Jesus. Not that Peter is orchestrating this, the Lord is orchestrating this, but when God does something big to get people's attention, it's not to leave them in a state of wonderment and amazement, but it's rather to communicate truth to them and of course, specifically, the truth about Jesus.

So you can imagine, you know, as we are looking at verse 11 there, all the commotion. You have the man who's now healed clinging to Peter and John. All the people are utterly astounded. They're running together. They're gathering in the courts of the temple. And now it's time for Peter to explain what has happened. Something big has happened. Now he has their attention. He's going to tell them about Jesus.

And the first thing that he has to do is he has to deflect attention from himself, because the other people were falling prey to a natural human response. People are looking at Peter and John and they see this man now healed. And they’re like, ‘whoa, what's up with Peter and John? Peter and John must be pretty amazing.’ Well, Peter and John are not amazing. And Peter wants to make that clear. So he says in verse 12, “Men of Israel, why do you wonder at this, or why do you stare at us, as though by our own power or piety we have made him walk?” It's not by our power, it's not by our piety, it's not by our godliness, it's not by anything that we have in ourselves that this man is now healed.

I was thinking – by the way, all of the three songs that we just sang all dovetail with Acts chapter three; it's amazing; it wasn't planned at all; I see it all over the place – and I was thinking about this in relation to the “Is He Worthy?” song. We're talking about the questions of, you know, “Is anyone worthy? Is anyone whole?” from that song.[1] And of course the point is that Jesus is worthy to open the scrolls and he is worthy of our worship. But even in thinking of it in this sense that Peter's talking about in Acts 3, is anyone worthy, is anyone whole to actually bring healing and salvation to others? Yeah, there's one, Jesus, and that's what Peter wants to call attention to. He's deflecting attention from themselves and he's going to put the attention on Jesus.

There is someone who has unique power, divine authority, and special relationship with the God of Israel, tight? And so this is what Peter's talking about. “The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, the God of our fathers, glorified his servant Jesus” (v. 13). Peter's beginning to tell the people who Jesus is. So first of all, he identifies Jesus as the servant, the servant of God, whom God glorified. Now this isn't just any servant of God. This is the choice servant of God. The book of Isaiah makes much of God's special servant through whom God would bring salvation to Israel and to the whole world. Jesus is that servant. God has glorified him.

And once again, just like we saw in Peter’s sermon in Acts chapter two, what you see is the people of Israel are totally at odds with the plan and purpose of God. God has glorified Jesus, but the people of Israel have rejected Jesus (v. 13). Even the pagan Roman governor Pilate understood that Jesus was not guilty of a capital crime and was prepared to release him. But no, the people of Israel were adamant: ‘Crucify him! Crucify him!’ And what a picture of the sinful human condition on display in terms of how they treated “the Holy and Righteous One” (v. 14) – that phrase in verse 14. Jesus is the Holy One, the Holy One of God, the Righteous One, the Righteous Servant. When the Holy and Righteous One was presented before them, they said, ‘no, we'd rather have a murderer be released’. Of course they were ignorant, they were blind, they didn't understand that Jesus actually was the Holy and Righteous One. But nevertheless, in their blindness, they wanted to put the Holy and Righteous One to death, and they wanted the murderer to be set free (v. 14). It says in verse 15: “you killed the Author of life, whom God raised from the dead.” Here's another description of Jesus, “Author of life” – or it could be rendered the Pioneer of life, the Leader of life, the Source of life. I have to raise a question. If you can kill the Author of life whom God Almighty was going to raise from the dead, I have to assume – and a few verses later will confirm this – I have to assume that the only way you could succeed at killing the Author of life is if that's God's plan, if he lets you. But again, it shows their depravity, their bondage to sin. They're enveloped in darkness and spiritual death, and they reject the Holy and Righteous Messiah that God had sent to them for their salvation. And all this – especially the resurrection of Jesus – is what Peter and the other apostles are bearing witness to (v. 15).

And the punchline comes in verse 16. After all that setup of who Jesus is and the fact that God has glorified and raised up Jesus, now you all need to understand that it's by the name of Jesus, and indeed by trusting in him, it's by the name of Jesus that this man whom you know has been healed and restored to health (v. 16).

When you tell people about Jesus, you present them with a choice and with the opportunity for new life (v. 17-26)

Now I want to move on to verses 17 to 26. So here's where we've gone so far. Something big happened that got people's attention. And once Peter had their attention, he tells them about Jesus. But now he's going to apply this very personally to the lives of his hearers. And so here's the big idea from verses 17 to 26: When you tell people about Jesus, you are presenting them with a choice, and you are presenting them with the opportunity for new life. Okay, so let's walk through this here.

Peter is speaking to those who have, he says, “acted in ignorance” (v. 17). That doesn't mean that they're not culpable. It just means that they didn't really know what they were doing. But nevertheless, they are guilty of having rejected the Messiah and having been complicit in his death. They're totally at odds with the plan and purpose of God. And yet – and yet! –  at a deeper level, all of this is according to God's plan, right? The suffering and death of the Messiah is no accident. Look at verse 18: “what God foretold by the mouth of all the prophets, that his Christ would suffer, he thus fulfilled.” God had a purpose for the suffering of the Messiah. A great passage to read about regarding that would be Isaiah chapter 53, that God laid on the Messiah the sins of all the people, that he bore our iniquities. He bore the cost of our redemption. And it was foretold that the Messiah, though he suffered and died, would live again and would enjoy the fruit of his labor. So, this is all according to God's plan, actually, that the Messiah would die for the sins of the people.

And now Peter is urging them to turn to Jesus in order to be reconciled to God. It says in verse 19, “Repent therefore, and turn back.” We looked at this in Acts chapter two. Change your mind. Change your mind about Jesus. Change your mind about who he is. He's not one to be denied and rejected and belittled and ignored. He is the Messiah who brings salvation. And you need to turn back. You need to turn back to God, and you need to receive the gift that he has given.

Three promises for those who repent and trust in Jesus

And for all who will repent and turn back and believe in Jesus, Peter gives three promises. Two of the promises pertain to the present time, and then the third promise pertains to the future.

The first promise for those who repent and turn back, is “that your sins may be blotted out”. This is the Christian message, not that you're supposed to be good enough and try harder and make your own way and climb up the ladder of spirituality. That's not our message. “[For] all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). We're all in this mess called sin, and what we need is cleansing and forgiveness. I'll return to this point a little bit later on.

The second promise is in the first half of verse 20: “that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord”. I think this “times of refreshing” dovetails with the way that Peter had given the promise back in Acts 2:38, when he said, “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.” (Acts 2:38) The gift of the Holy Spirit: the Holy Spirit is the one who brings renewing, refreshing, and transforming; who brings the love, the joy, and the peace; who brings the new life and the new direction in our lives. This gift of the Holy Spirit and those “times of refreshing from the presence of the Lord” come immediately to those who repent and believe in Jesus.

The third promise actually pertains to the future, the distant future. It says beginning in the middle of verse 20: “and that” – this is the third promise – “and that he may send the Christ appointed for you, Jesus, whom heaven must receive until the time for restoring all the things about which God spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets long ago.” (v. 20-21) It's a mouthful there. But the point is that Jesus – as we know from Acts 1 – that Jesus ascended into heaven, sat down at the right hand of God, and is now reigning from heaven, from the Father's right hand, and that he will remain there until the very end.

And we're looking – and we sang about this also in that song “Is He Worthy?” with the words “Is all creation groaning?”[2] – we're looking forward to a future day when God restores all things and makes a new heaven and a new earth. And the lame man, healed and made strong and restored, is a picture of the restoration that God wants to bring to the entire universe and will bring to the entire universe in his own good time. We look forward to that new creation. And if you turn to the Lord and receive his salvation and receive his forgiveness and receive His Holy Spirit, and now you're walking with him day by day, then the promise is that you will share in the blessings and the riches of that new creation when God restores all things on the last day.

Jesus is the key to the blessing that God has promised

So having urged the people to repentance and recounting these promises to them, in the final verses there in verses 22 to 26 Peter is basically reinforcing what he has already said and just really making it clear that you have to turn to Jesus and you have to realize that he is the key to the blessing that God has promised. He is the key.

In verse 22 and 23, Peter refers to Moses. Moses foretold that the Lord God would raise up a prophet. Of course, the Lord raised up many prophets, but Jesus is the ultimate prophet, the Son who reveals the Father and speaks authoritatively on the Father's behalf. He is the ultimate prophet. And the way that you respond to Jesus determines your destiny. If you listen to him – that's God's command, right? In verse 22 it says, “You shall listen to him in whatever he tells you” – if you listen to him, love him, and follow him, then it will go well with you. But verse 23 says, “every soul who does not listen to [him] shall be destroyed”. Verses 22 to 26 are showing you this choice that you have to reckon with. You're either on the path of destruction (v. 23) or you're on the path of God's blessing (v. 25-26). And Jesus is the key to the blessing.

Peter reiterates these things in verses 24 and 25, indicating that God's prophets from Samuel and all those who came after Samuel, have testified in various ways to these realities in terms of what God has now accomplished and is accomplishing through Jesus. And Peter refers to those wonderful promises to Abraham that we studied a couple years ago. At the end of verse 25, God had said to Abraham, “And in your offspring [in your seed, in your descendant] shall all the families of the earth be blessed.” Well, Jesus is that ultimate descendant of Abraham. It's like how the Gospel of Matthew starts off, right? “The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.” (Matthew 1:1) He is the one who brings blessing, the blessing of salvation, to all the families of the earth.

And finally, verse 26. Remember what I said before, how the pattern in the New Testament is that the Gospel message goes to Israel first and then it will go to everyone else, right? To the Jew first and also to the Greek; to the Jew first and also to the Gentile. And so it says in verse 26: “God, having raised up his servant, sent him to you [speaking to Israel] first, to bless you by turning every one of you from your wickedness.”

APPLICATION: THE GREAT BLESSING OF BEING TURNED FROM YOUR WICKEDNESS

And I want to pivot off of that verse in order to make the application that I really want to drive home with you all this morning. I just want you to ponder this. From our standpoint, from our Western, America, materialistic kind of a culture, this is a very unusual way of thinking – that the way that the Lord wants to bless you, the greatest blessing that he wants to bring into your life, is to turn you from your wickedness. We need to think like that. We need to think biblically.

Too often when we think about blessing, we think, ‘Oh, I want to be blessed by God. Well, wouldn't it be great to be blessed by God with a big family, with a big house, with a great job, with good physical health, with wonderful friendships, with all kinds of opportunities for promotions and vacations and excursions and creature comforts. Oh, I just love the blessing of God in all of those ways.’ And if God were to bless you in all of those ways and not deliver you from your wickedness, you would be cursed.

On the other hand, if God were to deliver you from your wickedness, then the door is wide open for you to have fellowship with the Father and to have His Holy Spirit working within you and to be transformed from the inside out. And if that's happening in your life, it doesn't really matter a whole lot what else is happening, if only you have that reconciliation with God and communion with the Father and the confidence of his gracious work in your life.

And so again, I want to emphasize the fact that the Christian message is not designed to condemn you for your wickedness. You're already condemned. The Christian message isn't designed to shame you for your wickedness. The Christian message isn't designed for you to figure it out yourself and for you to fix your wickedness problem. The Christian message is designed to show you the great and free salvation that has been secured by Jesus Christ through his broken body and shed blood upon the cross, so that if anyone would turn to him, you would be forgiven, you would be cleansed, you would be set free from the penalty of sin, and you would also be set free from the power of sin. And you would begin to walk in newness of life.

And, you know, I want to give what I think is a very important word of encouragement to you all. I'm especially speaking to you out there who might be unbelievers, and you're still in bondage to sin and death. Now, if you are a believer, because we still have an ongoing battle with sin, each and every one of us, each and every one of us faces temptation, each and every one of us still stumbles and falls in various ways, we need to continually come back to this wonderful truth that the Lord wants to rescue me from my wickedness. So this is a message that we as believers can apply to ourselves. But I especially want to speak to any unbelievers out there this morning, or perhaps really immature believers, because sometimes we can get to thinking that ‘my sins are really bad. Like, you just don't understand, like I think maybe I've out-sinned God's grace.’ But I really, I really want to encourage you this morning.

And here's how I want to start. I want to start with this. Can you get any worse than having killed God's Messiah? I mean, they denied him, they rejected him, they cast their vote against him, they shouted enthusiastically for his crucifixion. And yet – and yet! – Peter is promising those people who were complicit in killing the Messiah, he is promising them the fullness of salvation. So just start there.

The Bible is a very realistic book. And the Bible doesn't try to make sinners look better than they are. We are a sinful lot. And I don't know what particular sins that might be really plaguing your heart and mind. I mean, it could be the fact that, man, you've spent your whole life ignoring Jesus, belittling Jesus, using Jesus as a curse word. Maybe God sent godly influences into your life at various times in your life and you've rejected them. You've turned a deaf ear to the word of God or you've turned a deaf ear to the godly people who are trying to speak sense and truth to you. You've got a track record of being a God-rejecter and being a Bible-rejecter.

Maybe you've done some really terrible things to other people. Maybe you've had an abortion, and you feel really guilty about it. Maybe you've assaulted other people. Maybe you've done some really illicit things. Maybe you've been really cruel and unjust in the way that you've treated other people or in the way that you've run your business. Maybe you're a thief.

A remarkable story of God’s grace[3]

You know, I've been reading these missionary stories with Malachi. And as I was thinking about this passage, one of those stories came to mind. A few weeks ago I was reading about this man, he was a ringleader of a gang, basically. He was the ringleader of a murderous gang in Ethiopia. And the guy was a serial murderer and proud of it. And he was walking to where these Christians were gathered and he went there with murderous intent – he and four of his fellow gang members. And so they get there and they are astounded that there are thousands of Christians there. And so, they sit down and they're just kind of taking it all in. And what are these thousands of people doing? Well, the guy up front is preaching the gospel, because there are both Christians and non-Christians present. And he's just telling people about the gospel, telling people about Jesus, his life, his death, his resurrection, the new life that you can have in him. And this serial murderer, with his fellow thugs in the back, his heart starts to get softened a little bit. And they give an invitation and a number of people come forward to receive Christ “With Two Hands”. In Ethiopia, there was this way of demonstrating repentance: “With this hand I renounce the devil and all his works! With this hand I surrender to Jesus Christ! All I am and all I have!”[4] Thus they would take Christ as their Savior “With Two Hands”, which is the title of the book from which this story comes.

The invitation was extended: ‘Well, does anybody else want to come forward?’ And five men walk forward. You couldn't see their faces, they were kind of covered. But they get up front and then they reveal their faces and people are like blown away. These thugs are coming forward to put their faith in the Lord Jesus Christ! And the ringleader of the group, he's sobbing, “I am a murderer! I am a robber!”[5] I mean, he had burned houses down – he had burned houses down with whole families inside. He's a bad dude, but God saved him that day.

And by the way, it's an amazing story that demonstrates the times of refreshing that the Lord sends upon sinful, wicked wretches – like every single one of us – when we turn to the Lord.The Christians were like, ‘Look, man, you have to make some things right. So we need to go down to the police station.’ So the man did this very willingly because he was a new creature in Christ. He was a new creation in Christ. He went down to the police station, because they were looking for him, and said, ‘Here I am. I put my faith in Christ. I'm a new creation, and here I am. But they couldn't book him and put him in custody, because they just didn't have any space for him in the jail. So they're like, ‘Well, thanks for letting us know and we'll let you know when we need you.’ And the funny thing is that the police station ended up getting destroyed. All the evidence was lost, and he never got prosecuted. But you know what happened? He started a prayer house. He was transformed. He started ministering to other people. And he became a humble, gentle, gracious reflection of the Lord Jesus Christ. That's what God does.

Entrust yourself to the grace of Jesus

I don't care what your sin is. I don't care how much havoc you have created with other people or how much you have shaken your fist in God's face. All can be forgiven and blotted out. And you know, we're going to sing a very beautiful song after I'm done up here. And it is just a beautiful song that describes how we can exchange all of our junk, our sin, our sin-sickness, and all of that for the grace and the mercy of Jesus Christ.

And if God is speaking to your heart this morning, don't leave this place before you have cried out to him and surrendered your life to the Lord. And just ask him to bring the blessing, this blessing, into your life. Let's pray: 

Father, I pray that your Holy Spirit would hover over the hearts of everyone here, especially if anyone here knows in their heart and mind that they are walking contrary to you – they're walking in unbelief, they're walking in pride, they're walking in anger, they're walking in lust, they're walking in defiance. Father, I pray that you would touch and transform their heart, and that you would bring people, that you would birth people, into your kingdom today. I pray in Jesus’ name, amen.

ENDNOTES

[1] From the song “Is He Worthy?” written by Andrew Peterson and Ben Shive.

[2] From the song “Is He Worthy?” written by Andrew Peterson and Ben Shive.

[3] This story is recounted in Rebecca Davis, With Two Hands: True Stories of God at Work in Ethiopia (Hidden Heroes 1). Originally published in 2010. Reprinted in 2016 and 2019 by Christian Focus Publications, Ross-shire, Great Britian. See Chapter 11: “Wanted: Dead or Alive”. I recollected the story extemporaneously during the sermon. Words in double quotation marks (“…”) are directly from the book. Words in single quotation marks are my own rendering of what transpired.

[4] Ibid., from a flyleaf page near the front of the book.

[5] Ibid., p. 98.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

David G. Peterson, The Acts of the Apostles (The Pillar New Testament Commentary). Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2009.

Patrick Schreiner, Acts (Christian Standard Commentary). Holman Reference, 2022.

Ben Witherington III, The Acts of the Apostles: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998.