Look At Us!...But Why Are You Staring?!

Good morning church.

It's good to see you this morning.

I am excited.

I did not make any promises.

We need to start there.

But I will talk quickly and I want to warn you before I talk that this is more like a shop talk for the mature, because people who are doing a church plant and a church replant or a church relocalization, these are above average people.

They're robust in their maturity and they know things.

And I know our congregation today.

I do know that you know things and so I want to do kind of a shop talk, if you will, an exposition of Acts, chapter 3.

Acts 3 · chapter mention

And I'm going to entitle this exposition.

It's a philosophy of attention getting ministry, the title being look at us, but why are you staring?

And when we go through Acts 3, we're going to see some of the features.

Now, the book of Acts is a history book and it's true history.

It's a true story.

Everything in it is true, unbelievable stuff, except that it's supposed to be believed, because it is believable if you know Jesus, the Lord and the actor in Acts.

And it is not necessarily prescriptive like people teach us in Bible school or seminary.

It's not necessarily prescriptive in telling us what to do.

It's descriptive in telling us what happened.

But when we look at what happened we find out the way God likes to do things, and there ought to be features and things that stand out that are normative.

That means that they are things that can go on and on.

They are things that can go from year to year, place to place, country to country, and these kinds of features ought to stand out in a philosophy of ministry.

I think we'll see that in Acts 3.

So what I'd like to do is talk to you about some of the features that are in a Pentecostal powered, a Holy Spirit powered, an apostolic type of ministry.

And these things matter.

We'll see that place matters, presence matters, prayers matter, perception matters, possession matters and proclamation matters.

Before we dive into that, let's read Acts 3.

And let's entitle our philosophy talk.

Look at us, but why are you staring?

Now?

Peter and John were going up to the temple at the hour of prayer, the ninth hour, and a man, lame from birth, was being carried, whom they laid daily at the gates of the temple that is called the beautiful gate to ask alms of those entering the temple.

Seeing Peter and John about to go into the temple, he asked to receive alms and Peter directed his gaze at him, as did John, and he said look at us.

Do you get where I got to?

Look at us part?

Okay, you tracking me?

Look at us.

And he fixed his attention on them, expecting to receive something from them.

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.

And he took him by the right hand and raised him up and immediately his feet and ankles were made strong and, leaping up, he stood and began to walk and entered the temple with them walking and leaping and praising God.

And all the people saw Him walking and praising God 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.

And while he clung to Peter and John, all the people, utterly astounded, ran together to them in the Portugal called Solomon's.

And when Peter saw it, he addressed the people men of Israel, why do you wonder at this?

Or why do you?

Why do you stare at us?

See where I got it All right, my title came from the scripture.

Why do you stare at us as though by our own power or righteousness we have made him walk?

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.

But you denied the holy and righteous one and asked for a murderer to be granted to you and you killed the author of life, whom God raised from the dead.

To this we are witnesses, 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.

May God add his blessing to the word.

Place matters all throughout scriptures and one of the Beliefs and convictions we have as a church is that place mediates our relationship to God.

None of us have ever come to know God Not somewhere.

We were all somewhere.

When we came to know God.

We were at all at a place.

When we came to know God Somewhere, god used that place on earth as a place of encounter with him.

That was the whole purpose of the earth in the first place, before the fall of man, the whole purpose of the earth was to be a temple, a place of an encountering with God, where man and God could fellowship together.

The whole earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof is God's.

Psalm 241 says over and over again throughout the scripture we see that the earth is God's place, but man has come and defiled the place and has been separated from the place and has corrupted the place.

And the temple became a feature, if you a symbol of you will, of the place where people could encounter God.

Even Daniel prayed when he was in Babylon.

He prayed facing himself toward the place he played.

And Jonah turned toward Jerusalem when he left the presence of God.

It's not because he thought God was localized in one place and not omnipresent.

It was because he knew that that place was a sacred place, the, the land of Israel when the temple was, and he fled from the presence of God.

Place matters in Christian ministry.

We need to understand that it mattered to the Apostles when they were first called.

In fact, in the Acts Commission, in Acts, chapter 1, verse 8, we are told you go and you wait and you pray for the Holy Spirit, and when power has come upon you.

Acts 1:8

You will be witnesses in place Jerusalem, in place in all of Judea, in place all of Samaria and then in all of the places of the world.

You are going to be witnesses.

We go from place to place to place, sanctifying that place with the gospel of Jesus Christ.

That is an apostolic feature that ought to be embedded, embedded into our ministry.

A book that I love, by y'all Marston, says this quote good inhabitants is an art requiring detailed knowledge of a place, the capacity for observation and a sense of care and rootedness.

And Quote we should know our place and and I'd like to illustrate this way To you the importance of knowing place well, by showing you how little I actually know my place.

But I've thought about this often.

I know I live on a very short street in San Jose.

It's actually exactly 280 steps of my steps from one end of the street to the other end of the street.

There are eight houses on one side, ten houses on the other side, and I have Thought often to myself how finite and how ignorant I am Because I do not know all of the different species of grasses that are represented on that one 280-step street.

I don't know and I could not name all the different kinds of trees or the cacti.

I couldn't name all the different kinds of flowers.

They all have individual names.

God, who can name all the stars, knows all those flowers by name, and he knows all the different cactus and all the different trees and all of the grasses, and he even knows the two different kinds of artificial turf that are on my street.

I don't even know all of that.

I'm very ignorant.

I thought to myself I don't know what kind of bricks are in that house or what kind of bricks use that house.

The Density, the PSI, the pound per square inch of the concrete.

I know that it's softer concrete than what might be used in a nuclear plant.

I know some stupid stuff like that, but I don't know exactly what it is around my house.

It must be pretty soft because there's cracks in it and I don't know.

But here's what's worse.

I have still yet figured out how many souls are on my street.

We have some rentals that are in and out and I've tried to figure it out and we're in one area of a dense part of the city that is not actually very dense and I haven't yet quite figured it out, but I want to know the place.

Now, this was a place that was well known by the apostles.

In fact, in another part of Acts and in Luke, luke highlighted that it was their custom to go to this place.

In the same book, the author says this quote Place is meant to be our partner in mission, and so those of us who want to be church planning and that's all of us in here, those of us who want to serve community, we need to think of our place as a partner in ministry.

Another term that we like to call it is a parish ministry.

Parish ministry, says one author, is a missional value, a way of doing ministry, as well as an attitude about ministry that says we are called to this place and to this people.

We minister in this place and to this people in the name of Jesus Christ, for the welfare of this place and these people.

Besides Acts 1-8, where we have this locational language, we see locational signals by Luke all over the place.

We see the upstairs room in Acts 1-13, the house of Mary in chapter 12.

We see host are mentioned, particularly because they hosted, like Philip and his daughters.

We actually have in Luke, which is unique to ancient scripture, exact addresses At Carmel by the Sea.

My family loves to go to Monterey Peninsula.

That's one of our happy places At Carmel by the Sea.

When we take visitors, we like to take them on one street next to the ocean where the houses do not have numbers.

They have names.

One of my favorites name is Witt's End.

Where are you going this weekend?

To my Witt's End?

I think that's kind of cute, but there's all different kinds of names.

They don't have numbers.

That's actually an old way of doing addresses.

In the book of Acts you have an exact address.

You have Judas, the straight street of Damascus.

That was where Paul became, his blindness was healed and he turned to Christ.

And then you have Simon, the tanner house by the sea in Joppa.

Those are exact addresses.

That's the way ancients gave their addresses in that day and Luke wants us to know.

That place is a special place in our church history.

That is a special place that stands out and is valuable to us because of what God did into that place.

And so you see Paul's lodging in Rome and in Corinth with Priscilla and Aquila, and the lecture hall of Tyrannus in Ephesus.

You see everywhere in scripture that place matters.

God did not make an accident when he put us in a place and we need to ask God to help us understand that place and to be here.

Comes the next point present Presence matters how to be present in that place.

The place was important because it was the temple and it was the place where they continued to worship, and all the historians who are almost in accord that the early church had church meetings in the courtyard of the temple and certainly Peter and John were going to that place.

But there was a new presence that was felt there.

They were able to see things that they had not seen before, be aware of things that they had not been aware of before and they were actually to have an effect like they had not had before, because this is now people who are present in a place filled with the Holy Spirit, and that makes the difference known.

We don't want to just bring ourselves to Union City or to Fremont or to San Jose.

We do no good if we go to Union City or to Fremont or to San Jose, but what we want to bring is Jesus to Fremont and to Union City and to San Jose.

That's what we want to bring.

It's the presence of Jesus that makes the difference in those places.

It's the presence of Jesus in places that redeems those places and beautifies those places and sanctifies those places.

We are not the ones that do that.

It is Jesus that does that and His presence is made known by Spirit-filled Christians.

Only the Holy Spirit, in and through and after prayer and patience, makes us fully and effectively present in our places.

Only the Holy Spirit can make us fully present in our places.

When I've moved into a neighborhood, I've made it my practice to let the neighborhood know that I'm their pastor.

I really do.

It doesn't matter if they're saved, it doesn't matter if they don't even want me to be their pastor.

I'm like hi, I'm here, I'm your pastor if you ever need me.

And in our neighborhood, where we live, I did that very thing.

The very first week I was able to introduce myself to a whole group of them as a pastor and make myself available.

And then COVID hit, and it wasn't long when an 80-year-old woman across the street.

She was aware that there was a pastor in town and she said can I see our pastor, the pastor on our street?

And so I went over to her by her bedside.

She would be dying in a few days, it was clear and she said I heard you were a pastor and I've never seen you or met you because I've been sick this whole time.

And first of all, they were just in awe that I would go, because that was at the height of COVID, where you were afraid to even look at someone because you might catch that, if you remember that paranoia and fear.

And so they were in awe that I would actually go into her house and be beside her bedside.

And then she said to me she said, pastor, I just had the priest here to do last rites.

She said but I just don't understand that when I read the Bible it seems to me that I shouldn't have to go to purgatory, because if Jesus died on the cross for my sins, why should I have to go to purgatory?

And I said you know what?

You agree with the apostle Paul?

Let me show you.

And it would not be right for me to say I let her to Christ.

I kind of let her to Christ, but she was already believing in Christ.

I just had to help her understand that she was already believing in Christ and so I was able to pray with her.

And then, a couple of days later, her son told me, and actually he even just last week again.

He reiterated me.

I don't know what you told my mother, he said but she changed and she was at peace and I could hear her through the speaker because they had a like a monitor on her.

I could hear her all the time just talking to Jesus and saying things that she just had.

So much peace.

She came to know Christ and she had heard about the presence of Jesus through people on her street and we were able to have an effective present, not because of who I am, but because Jesus living in me, and I didn't even lead her to Christ, it was low hanging fruit just to be there and be a minister to her Presence matters.

But the only way we can have an effective presence is to have the patience to sit in the room and pray and wait until the power of the spirit comes upon us.

And one of the leading problems, one of the significant problems of church planters and missionaries and pastors and people wanting to do ministry is the lack of patience to wait for the power of the spirit.

But if we have the patience to wait for the power of the spirit, our presence will be felt Every day that lame man was brought to the temple, people saw him every single day.

He had been born from his birth.

He had been born lame and he represents the congenital reality of every single person in our places.

We are all born with a lifelong, permanent defect that makes us lame or blind or broken because of sin.

And yet we come, habituated to it and it's regular to us and we walk by it all the time.

We can't do anything but throw some coins at it and maybe do some superficial help, maybe put on a blanket over the homeless or whatever, but we can't do significant difference and we can't have a powerful difference until the Holy Spirit is in us.

After we have prayed and waited for God's power, then our presence matters and, it is felt, prayers matter.

Now you notice that I didn't say prayer, because I don't think this is highlighting prayer as a theme, as a talking to God.

I said prayers.

This is like how prayers is used in Acts, chapter 2, when it says the church devoted themselves to the breaking of bread, and the prayers is talking.

Acts 2 · chapter mention

It's an article, and the plural, the prayers, is talking about the congregation getting together, as was the time.

It was the time of prayer, it was the ninth hour, they were gathered together.

This is the habitual liturgical, congregational and physical gathering of the disciples.

It is a means of grace, not only to the disciples who go but to the community through which they go.

I'm very conscious of the fact that my neighbors see my family going to church every Sunday.

I'm aware of the fact that we're passing people on the way to church.

Peter and John were just going to church.

They were just going to go to church and be with the brothers and sisters and they got interrupted by a poor person, an indigent, on the way to church where they're going to go.

Fellowship.

But what I want to highlight here, because I think it's a philosophical point, is the prayers matter.

It is important that we understand congregational, be engaged in the habitual, the regular, the routine, the liturgical gathering of ourselves together to worship God.

Because as we do that, we are saying it is not about me individually.

We are a group, the people of God who have been redeemed by the people of God.

Let the redeemed of the Lord say so, and we'll say it together, congregationally, and we'll come together, we'll confess together, we'll sing together, we'll pray together, we'll listen to God's word together, we'll break bread together.

We are a congregation of people set apart, a holy nation, a royal priesthood that have been saved by God, and it is our commitment to the habitual and liturgical and physical gathering of God's people on a regular basis.

That in itself will have an impact on the place, and that is why we want to think deeply and think prayerfully about where we meet congregationally.

Oh, I wish I had time to just philosophize and enjoy with you why it was important that they met where they met, in the temple grounds, but we'll leave that for another day.

Perception matters, notice, I don't say perspective.

I thought about this a lot and I perspective did not say the word that I wanted, did not say what I think is important here.

Perception is what I think is really important and I like to use the nervous system analogy.

I don't want to go too deep or confuse you, but try to.

Hopefully this will provoke some thoughts, but neurologists say that we process all of life through five actions or five areas sensation, perception, feelings, thoughts and the behaviors.

Let me walk through it this way.

Sensation that is the non-negotiable extraction of data from around.

Right now, your bottoms are sensing the pew.

Now, you never thought about the fact that your bottoms are sensing the pew or that your feet are sensing the floor.

You never thought about that until I drew attention to that and now you perceive it.

And now you are perceiving it, because perception is like a spotlight it's turning your focus onto something.

And you hadn't thought about the fact that your bottoms are connected with the pew until I made you perceive it.

Now you got some feelings and you might be saying you know, here's what I feel about.

It doesn't actually feel so good, hurry up and end this message.

And now, after the feeling, you might have some thoughts.

If he doesn't hurry up, I might just stand up and walk out of here.

See, now, perception is the focalized attention to whatever's happening out there.

Brothers and sisters, we have to know that there are so many things to sense and sensations, some, that we're not even.

There's certain kinds of light that we don't even have the receptors to receive.

We can't perceive it.

Animals can perceive some kinds of light that we can't, but God has given us all kinds of perceptive abilities that we just don't even use because we're dumb or we're stubborn or we just don't know how to use it.

My wife accuses me of having kind of spontaneous deafness.

There's things that I just don't hear and I truly did not hear it.

And then if I took an hearing test, even without my hearing aids, it would be proven that I had the capacity to have heard her when she talked to me, but I didn't hear it.

I didn't perceive it because I was ignoring that sensation and that's a marital confession.

You could pray for me.

But my point is we need help to perceive, and there are four different Greek words that are used here in this language.

Luke, clearly, who was a medical person, clearly wanted to get us.

The blind man seen Peter and John approach.

He saw them, that's one Greek word.

And then Peter fixed his gaze on him.

That's the strongest word, it's just like gaze deeply into his soul.

Peter did that and he said look, that's another word.

And the blind man looked at him.

And then the blind man he's expecting something else, that's another word.

And then later on, is why do you stare at us?

That's another word.

That's going on, and it's all talking about this engagement of the sight and seeing what's around you.

One author put it this way we need what he called optical reciprocity.

We need the unbelievers to see us and we need to be able to see the unbelievers.

He said quote disciples are watched.

They must be seen, especially by those in need.

Even more fantastic Disciples must call attention to themselves, not as an act of hubris, but as the absolute mandate of witness.

End quote Wow, that you know what that is.

That's the part of my title that says look at us.

Peter said look at us.

We wanna go into Union City and we wanna go into San Jose and we wanna administer in that parish and in that place and we want to live in such a way.

That says look at us.

Matthew, chapter five, verse 16, says let your lights so shine before men that when they see your good works, they will glorify their Father, which is in heaven.

Look at us.

We want people to see us and we want them to know that they are seen.

We wanna say I put it this way we want them to know we see something that you do not perceive in yourself and you are not perceiving something that we see in ourselves.

We see, everybody saw that lame man by the gate, beautiful, as they passed them day after day.

And Peter wanted to say you know what?

I've just been studying you for a moment.

Everybody sees disability, but I perceive possibility.

Everybody sees a man outside the temple, but I perceive a man dancing inside the temple.

Everybody sees a beggar, but I perceive a worshiper of God.

Everybody sees someone that cannot walk.

I perceive someone that can leap.

You see what I'm saying.

The Holy Spirit starts giving you the powers of perception to see people in a different way than they actually see themselves.

You perceive hope when they see despair.

You perceive light when they see death.

You perceive healing when they perceive sickness.

And you perceive all of that because you've looked intently, because you have the spirit of God to see everybody around you in a different way.

You don't see rich and poor, black and white, and you don't see different ethnicities.

What you see before you are living souls who have a congenital disease, broken by God, who don't need your money, they don't need your blessings.

They need your Jesus and you believe he can heal them because you perceive.

But you know what's interesting?

They perceive, they think they perceive something in you that we do not see about ourselves.

That's why Peter said why do you stare at us?

You know what he said right after that it's not by our righteousness or by our power that this thing has been done.

It's not by our righteousness or by our power that this thing has been done.

You know, before the man was healed, he said oh, I know what they're gonna do.

They're gonna give me some money.

That's the best thing that happens to me all the time.

His hope was established, his expectations were established by his experience.

But Peter said I got something better to give you, and you don't realize that.

Do you think I can give you some money?

Well, you're wrong, I can't give you money.

And when he healed them and people are coming around now everybody's thinking man, you guys must be God, you must be super righteous, you must have super powers of healing, you must have all of these things.

Clearly you do.

And Peter said whoa, whoa, whoa.

You don't get it right, cause if you knew about us, it's not our righteousness, it's not our power.

Look at us, but why are you staring Next, possession matters, and you'll notice that I say not notice.

I didn't say possessions, because this is not about possessions, this is about a possession.

It is about a possession.

Peter says silver and gold have I?

None, but what I have I give.

Brothers and sisters, every one of us needs to understand this right now.

You cannot give what you do not have.

You cannot be a blessing to people if God has not been a blessing to you.

You can't offer things.

In fact, in the scriptures, in Acts in fact, we see people like Simon.

He wanted to.

I want to give that to everybody.

No, you can't get that to everybody.

You're being led by a bad spirit and you can't do that.

And you see some other people wanting to heal some people and the demons jumped out of them.

They want to cast out demons.

The demons jumped out of them and into the counterfeit healers and they ran away.

Because you cannot give what you do not have.

Peter said I don't have money or silver or gold, but what I do have I give to you.

We must have, get this.

We must have experientially and personally, in these jars of clay, the ultimate treasure that the spiritually and relationally impoverished around us need and desire more than all the treasures of the world.

We live in a wealthy area, but we live in an area where some of our high schools lead the nation in suicide, even though there's some of the richest kids in the world.

We live in an area where we are proud of the Silicon Valley and proud of our technological accomplishments and imagine that we will live to be 150 and maybe 200 years old, and there's some that believe they'll live longer.

They can do all of these things.

We live in a world where people are so rich they don't know what to do with their money and yet we have brokenness and poor people all around us and despair and death and inability.

All of this brokenness is around us.

And unless, unless we know that what everybody needs is God, what everybody needs is a personal connection with the infinite God, what we will be are like the people who walk by the lame man day after day, and maybe we're more generous than others because we give him a hundred dollars instead of one dollar, and maybe we try to pat him on the back, but in the end, in the end, what he wants more than anything he has forgotten to want.

He's forgotten to believe that he could have it, he's not prayed for it anymore, he's become completely dead in his hopelessness.

But what he wants and does not know he wants it until the spirit of God moves in the presence of the power of the Spirit is there is ankles and feet that help him dance and walk.

I have a cousin who, just after Christmas, got terribly sick with the flu, some kind of some variation of coronavirus, and they took her in and within a few hours she was on life support and she's been mostly unconscious this whole time now almost 10 days, and we've thought we've lost her.

But it's gone from hope to tragedy.

And it's at this tragic moment right now as I speak, where this godly young couple there in their low 30s with two little children at the same time her son, got sick and is in ICU in another hospital.

This is Christmas vacation but all of her veins have so collapsed that the last we've heard is that they're gonna have to amputate all four of her limbs.

This young mother, when she wakes up, if it goes as planned, will wake up to find out that all four of her limbs, her two arms and her legs have been amputated.

It just makes my stomach sick to think of this and I and I think to myself I wouldn't even want to live if that were my reality, if I were to wake up like that.

And and I think to myself, what if?

What if?

I went to Sierra and I said I know how to give you a million dollars, ten million dollars.

I know how to give you all of these things.

And and she would say I don't want ten million dollars, I just want my legs and my arms.

When God's spirit works, he gives people the right desires and then he gives them the boldness to believe it will happen and they will get God if we have God.

Finally, proclamation matters.

Everybody in this room, as far as I can tell, believes deeply in the proclamation of the Word of God and we could break down this message, but I want to tell you simply how it's summarized.

It's summarized this way for all the neighbors to know, everybody know.

It's summarized this way.

It's not us, it's Jesus.

It's not us, it's Jesus.

And I want to encourage us as churches now going to our respective places and as pastors that are here and church planners and future church planners.

Here's one thing yes, we need to be committed to presence and we need to be committed to place and we need to be committed to this, this idea of of prayers.

But here's one thing we should never compromise is the full proclamation of the fact that we are sinners and there is no salvation outside of Jesus Christ.

He is the way, the truth in the life, and no man comes to the Father but by him, and it is our sins that put him on the cross.

But even though he was put on the cross, he would.

He died and rose again and has ascended into heaven, and he is Lord, and it is he who does every good thing that is ever done through us.

It is not us.

We join the psalmist who opened the psalm saying not unto us, oh Lord, not unto us, but unto you.

Be glory forever and ever.

Amen.

These things matter and if, my brothers and sisters, if these things matter, then we will have a proper biblical, humble, attention-getting ministry that says look at us, but why are you staring at us?

It's Jesus.

I pray this would help somebody.

Oh Lord, amen.