Bible Guys Classics: Acts 3

So in this chapter we're about to read the Apostle,

Peter is sticking it to the man.

Wow. So he's Chris, I'm Jeff. We're the Daily Bibble guys. Okay, hey,

you always laugh on that.

Yeah, it's just the the the ending of the intro.

I have to wait for it. It goes and I'm

just waiting. I'm like, is it going to be over

any time?

So it's building intensity.

Yes, it's intensity. It's so intense this podcast.

So here's the deal. I just decided to pull up

a list just for fun. By the way, I just

decided like two seconds ago to do this. It is

a list of the top paying jobs.

In the world.

Wow.

So I want you and by the way, I'm just

going to give you a hint. Okay, out of the

top like five, i've they're pretty much all in.

The medical field, okay, okay, okay.

Well as if you couldn't have guessed that, okay.

Okay, So what do you think out of all the

medical So it's not.

Lead teaching pastor that I thought that was going to

be in the list.

Bro, it didn't even make those lists.

No, I have no idea on these brain surgeons.

So number. That's a good guest. That's a good guess.

It is not.

No, believe it or not, it is not according to

this list.

Okay, again, every every list on the internet must be real.

But these actually have median incomes with actual sound.

I can read this out because nobody make that up.

You know, everybody has a keyboard. You can just push

any number you want to push on it. Let me see.

So not brains, Wikipedia, heart surgeons.

No, it says, by the way, they're on here. I

don't know, man, it's anesthesiologists. Anesthesiologists make the median income

is three hundred and thirty one thousand dollars.

What that's what it.

Says, all right, I had no idea.

And then oral or maxi facial surgeons.

People who rebuild the faith, right.

Uh, gynecologists almost three hundred thousand. Then then surgeons which

includes heart, brain, uh you know, orthodonists, and then uh

so anyway, then it goes down and then guess the

one profession that is outside of medical. It's the first

profession outside of medical that makes the most money.

Oh, computer programmers.

Yeah you would think so. Yeah, psychiatrists.

Psychiatrists in the medical field. Little bit Well, they're just

working on your on your on your emotions and your brain.

Well that's I guess that's probably true. Well then gee whiz.

Then you get to go all the way down to

like a general title of chief executives. Okay, yeah, uh,

pediatricians Okay. Outside of that, then we have Airpine airplane,

airline pilots.

I don't know why that was so hard for me

to read.

I don't know, it's tough.

My brain wanted to say here, yeah, that's a tough one.

That's a tough one.

Airline pilots, co pilots and flight engineers.

You know what they make?

How much?

What do you think?

Three million?

You stink?

I don't know.

You're like, you're like that guy that says like you're like,

hey man, I went through the airport the other day,

I got a hot talk. You'll never believe what it was.

And you would go like fifty dollars yeah, and shut

me down. No, dude, come on, six bucks man, geez,

you kind of ruined my story.

Okay, so you don't want me to ruin your story.

They make one hundred and ninety five thousand.

That's great, one hundred ninety eight thousand, bam, did you cheat?

No, okay, I just know stuff. Well, no you didn't

because you said three million.

Well no, I was trying to make it interesting for you.

But if you want to me me precise, I'll take

you there.

Yeah, so that's it all right.

Yeah, I've read before.

So uh so you've had other jobs? Real quick, we

have you have thirty seconds.

I've had other jobs.

What is the.

Most interesting job that you've had outside of being a pastor?

You have thirty second ago.

Yeah, I worked at the Flagship Marriott Hotel in Chicago

on Michigan Avenue and Magnificent Mile for quite a while,

and I loved that job. Loved it customer service. But

basically we had twelve hundred and eighty rooms or something

like that. Twe hundred and forty nine rooms, and I

solved all the problems people call and complain and I

found ways to solve that. I had a whole crew

of people who could rush to solve your problem.

Magnificent problem solver her.

Yeah, it was good. What was your favorite job.

Well, pastor, outside of pastor?

Yeah, yeah, I would have to say definitely. Back when

telemarketing wasn't rejected by people, it was definitely telemarketing.

Really, I did tele marketing for a lot while I

hated it. Yeah, back then I don't like cold calls.

That oh I loved it.

Yeah, I'd imagine you're that irritating person. Now your personality

is just irritating enough. I can see that.

Hey, thank you for that.

But listen, it is almost a hard thing to believe

that you would call somebody and the number one they

would even answer, and then number two they'd.

Say, absolutely, I have ten minutes. But when telemarking was new, Yeah, yeah.

That's every single person said that.

I'm not everybody, but a lot of people.

Okay, Well, anyways, there's it. So my favorite job was

serving people. In your favorite job was fleecing people.

No, making money from people. Yeah, that was my favorite job.

Okay. So today we are continuing in the Book of Acts,

and now the Holy Spirit has come and the Gospel

is spreading their behaving like the church. And now you're

seeing the people of the church step up in the

power of the Holy Spirit, and you're seeing incredible impact.

So here's just one illustration out of Acts chapter three.

It says Peter and John went to the temple one

afternoon to take part in the three o'clock prayer service.

As they approached the temple, a man lame from birth

was being carried in. Each day. He was put beside

the temple gate, the one called the Beautiful Gate, so

he could beg from the people going into the temple.

And when he saw Peter and John about to enter,

he asked them for some money. Peter and John looked

at him intently, and Peter said, look at us. The

lame man looked at them eagerly and expecting some money,

But Peter said, I don't have any silver or gold

for you, but I'll give you what I do have

in the name of Jesus Christ. The nazarene get up

and walk. Then Peter took the lame man by the

right hand and helped him up, and as he did,

the man's feet and ankles were instantly healed and strengthened.

He jumped up, stood on his feet and began to walk,

then walking, leaping and praising God. He went into the

temple with them. All the people saw him walking and

heard him praising God. And when they realized he was

a lame beggar that they had seen so often at

the Beautiful Gate, They were absolutely astounded. They all rushed

out in amazement to Solomon's Colonnade, where the man was

holding tightly to Peter and John. Peter saw his opportunity

to address the crowd people of Israel. He said, what

is so surprising about this? Why stare at us as

though we had made this man walk by our own

power or godliness? For it is the God of Abraham,

Isaac and Jacob, the God of all our ancestors, who

has brought glory to his servant Jesus by doing this.

This is the same Jesus whom you handed over and

rejected before Pilate, despite Pilot's decision to release him. You

rejected this holy righteous One, and instead of demanded the

release of a murderer, you killed the author of life.

But God raised him from the dead, and we are

witnesses of this fact. Through faith in the name of Jesus,

this man was healed. And you know how crippled he

was before Faith in Jesus' name has healed him. Before

your very eyes, friends, I realize that you and your

leaders did to Jesus was done in ignorance, but God

was fulfilling what all the prophets have foretold about the

Messiah that he must suffer these things. Now repent of

your sins and turn to God so that your sins

may be wiped away. Then times of refreshment will come

from the presence of the Lord, and he will again

send you Jesus, your appointed Messiah, for he must remain

in heaven until the time for the final restoration of

all things, as God promised long ago through his holy prophets. Wow,

what a cool story. Well I'm in Yeah, well, I

thought I thought you were in the story because it

kept talking about the lame man. And then I just realized, oh,

because I heard your dad jokes a couple of days ago,

you know. And then I realized, Oh, he's not talking

about you, just being lame.

So let me get this straight.

While reading God's Word, the one thing on your mind,

Dominantly was I can make a joke of God's.

Word when it's talking about lame same I'm trying to

figure out how to shame. I'm always anytime, I'm trying

to figure out how to apply it. And the only

lame person I know is.

Yeah, the only lame guy that's terrible. You know, this

is an unbelievable story. And here's what I think. I

think this is the first recorded instance of Peter committing

this type of miracle. Yeah, now I have to believe

that it would be the first instance. Right, It doesn't

necessarily mean that it was, but I'm we're pretty sure

that it was. And so if you think about the

faith that Peter had, I mean, these are the same conversations,

you know. It reminds me of the conversations where they

went back to Jesus, remember in the Gospels, and they said.

Why don't we have the power to drive out demons?

You know?

And why don't we have your same power, Jesus?

You know?

And they were sort of, you know, always trying to

you know, want to be you know, Jesus's messengers and

and and carry his power. But now Peter does this

in a way to where he says the command first

and then helps the man up, which means with absolute

confidence and belief, he says, rise and walk in the

name of Jesus the Nazarene, and then he helps him up,

and then it happens. And there's no like, you know,

there's no moment where it's recorded where Peter says, I

hope this works. You know, so we we see we

feel a sense of confidence, and and so think about it.

Wouldn't you be confident if you just experienced the fiery

tongues in Acts chapter two?

Yeah?

Absolutely, just the absolute miraculous things that you know, you

see Jesus ascend to heaven.

Yeah, and then and then then.

You so I mean, then you preach in your language,

but everybody hears in their language, right, right, So why.

Would Peter not have absolute confidence because it isn't Jesus

anymore leading the miraculous things, it's them experience miraculous things, right,

And so Peter's thinking, hey, we've got this. Jesus told

us one day we would have it, right, He told

me I was the Rock, and and and and so

this is where Peter starts, you know, becoming more rock like.

Right, right.

And I think it's awesome.

And you'll also notice the theme the miracles that happened

through the Book of Acts. Almost all of them have

the purpose of being able to share the Gospel with

people who otherwise wouldn't have paid attention to the gospel. Right,

So this is bringing validation to what other people, many

of the other Jews would have viewed that viewed Christianity

as a cult, as we mentioned before, and so these

miracles are bringing validation to the message of the Gospel

to people who would otherwise have never listened to the gospel.

I'm sure there were other lame people in and around Jerusalem,

and by laying mean crip yes, cripple people not like Maine, right, right,

they would be like in this situation. So that was

a joke before, but this this is for real. I'm

sure that there were other people who couldn't walk in Jerusalem,

but it was this guy on this day that was

necessary for the opportunity to share the gospel immediately afterwards. Right,

So there are sick people that don't get healed even

though they believe in the name of Jesus. There are

because that's it's part of life. It's part of the

consequence of us living in a broken world, all those

kinds of things. And this isn't heaven, right, So perfect

healing does come in heaven. But in this circumstance, God

saw fit to heal this guy for the purpose of

Peter being able to step up and share the gospel afterwards.

And that's what you'll see throughout most of the miracles

throughout the rest of the Book of Acts is those

kinds of miracles. You know. I was just in Nepaul

and a guy was sharing his testimony. He was Hindu

and his whole family were Hindus, and he did not

know Jesus at all, didn't even know his name. Then

somebody introduced Jesus to his family and to him, and

he was very interested, but his family was very aggressive

against it. We don't want this imported Jesus. We don't

want this colonial god. They've just pushed away. This is

a foreigner's god. And Christians, you know, they call us

cow eaters, and you know many of the Hindus worship cows,

and so they are offended even by our behavior in general.

And can you imagine, right, So he said, they wind

up having this horrible circumstance, and he prays to all

of his gods, and none of his gods will work.

And so then he said, Jesus, if you're the real God,

would you do this miracle? And then immediately this miracle

happens and the whole family goes, oh wow. So then

this friend who had introduced Jesus to them before came

back is able to share the Gospel with them. They

all become followers of Christ, and they banish all their

other gods and they only now serve Jesus. This miracle

happened for the purpose of these people being able to

come to faith in Christ. And he said, that's the

only major miracle we've had in our lives, apart from

the everyday miracles, but the one where we called on

Jesus for a miracle, and it was for the purpose

of the Gospel being able to be made clear to them.

I think that's most of the miracles we see throughout

Christianity and certainly in the Bible.

Yeah, that's amazing. Yeah.

So my brother Jim, he's a he was a former

pastor in Texas and still is involved in ministry in

very significant ways.

And he works with.

Those who are Indian, right, so they're directly from India.

In fact, they come over to the United States and

the state of Texas calls him personally and asks him

to host them when they arrive from their nights, you know,

from developing countries.

Yea.

So he is this big ministry and you know, he's

sort of in charge of like five or six hundred

people that he talks to almost on a weekly basis

from India. So anyway, but he always tells me, he says,

so learning about polytheism and how they believe in multiple

gods Holly means multiple yeah, as opposed to God, monotheism

or theism. So anyway, he says, he goes, it's a

really strange thing to have to learn that. You have

to sort of start with Jesus is a god among

many gods, right, He's a god, and then you have

to graduate to the Jesus.

Is the God, I mean who. That's just an unbelievable

thing to have to manage.

Well, it's incomprehensible because you know, for us, we've grown

up even if you're not growing up in a Christian family,

you've grown up in a Judeo Christian world where the

general ideas that there was this good man named Jesus

who claimed to be God, Easter, Christmas, Resurrection, all that

kind of stuff. Generally, know the idea, even if you

don't know the specifics. Whereas when you get it dealing

with the Gospel and places where they have no concept

at all, then how do you penetrate into that. One

of the ways would be the miracles. The other way

it would be starting where they're at and bringing them

to Jesus, which is both tactics you find in the

Book of Acts.

You know. Let me comment on this real quick. I

had a really good thought, and that is Peter's.

Good We're hoping we've been waiting for a good thought

from you.

Thanks Jeff.

Verse fourteen, where Peter looks at the crowd after he

says this is Jesus, he says, you rejected this holy

righteous one and instead demanded the release of a murder.

And then he says, you killed the author of life.

So he looks at a crowd who he's trying to

give the gospel to. And gospels, by the way, the

word gospel means good news. It's the good news about

the resurrection of Jesus. So he's trying to spread the

good news, tell them that they need to believe in Jesus.

And the first thing that he says to this listening

crowd is you killed the author of life. That is

such an unbelievably strong statement. But how it relates to

us is this. I learned a long time ago that

in order to get a people person to realize that

they need Jesus. They need to be lost before they're found.

That's right.

People need to know their sins.

You know, the Bible says that the first thing that

we need to learn is that we need to be saved.

And in order to be saved, we realize that we

have to be lost. Right, you have to know that

you're a sinner, saved from what, saved from what?

Right.

And so here's what Peter is doing, and it seems

incredibly harsh, but Peter, you know, starts out with his statement, says,

you want to talk about defining reality. You killed the

author of life. That is what it is. And of

course we don't know the people's reaction. But then he

eventually says, now we know that you've done this by ignorance.

We understand that you didn't understand it. It is the truth,

but you didn't realize it. And then he then he

sort of talks about, you know, Jesus and the story

of Jesus.

But it's real.

There is no good news without some bad news, right,

It's just all news.

That's right, that's right. Right.

So when I went in from my sert with with

my really good my cancer doctor, you know, I didn't

know I had cancer. We just knew something wasn't right.

And then the doctor comes in after all the tests

and he sits down and he says, listen, there's no

good way to do this. He said, there's good news

and bad news. I'm going to give you the bad news. First.

You have cancer, and it's bad, and it's just quiet

for a moment, you know, I think I want to cry.

And he said, the good news is this, it's treatable,

and we think we can get it all right. So

I don't know that I would have been open to

the idea of somebody cutting a ten inch incision in

my side and taking out my kidney.

Right unless I said, if I.

Hadn't realized there's some bad news. The good news is

we can manage this and treat it. Then, you know,

so far all of my tests. Here we are almost

two years later. It looks like I'm cancer free. Everything

that they said, it's turned out that way. But I

don't know that I would have responded with the need

to please cut me open and cut something out of

me if I hadn't known that there was some bad news.

And it's the same thing. You don't know that you

need to be saved until you know you need to

be saved, and that means you have to understand what

you need to be saved from. We're sinners and we're

betting against God. We have a broken relationship with him,

and the only answer is killed the author of life.

But he said God raised him from the dead, and

wear witnesses of this fact. So he gives bad news

and good news back to back. So it's not just

about shame on you. I think a lot of Christians

they want everybody to change your behavior, and that's not

the goal. The goal is to understand that everybody is

apart from Christ and that Jesus is the answer that

we can come to Christ. Christ will rescue us, save

us from our sins if we would turn to him.

So we got to get the Jesus, not just the

shame on you part of it, but get the Jesus.

The good news is what's important.

Yeah, and we have to realize this as well, that

if we dumbed down the bad news, then then we

make the good news.

Not that important.

It's less.

So think about it in terms of our salvation. So

if you were to, like you know, so visually on

video I'm raising my hand and I'm saying, like, you know,

instead of being really high, you know, you sort of

lower that bar and say, well, I'm not that bad

of a person. I don't need Jesus as much as

the next God, you know, and I've been pretty much

good all my life. Then all of a sudden, it's like, wow,

you don't even be from anything, do you, right?

But the reality is no, you know, we.

All sin and fall short of God's glory. You know,

we are you know, destined to spend eternity away from

God because of our sin. And therefore here's good news,

And all of a sudden, the good news becomes very good, right,

because the bad.

News is very bad.

I think it's important for everybody to understand, even Christians,

our sin is far worse than we can imagine.

Right.

The guilt that we carry in our sin is far

worse than anything we can imagine. But God's grace and

God's love and the sacrifice that Jesus gave for us

is far greater than we can even comprehend. Right, It's

it's even greater than our guilt and our sin. So

we need to elevate. Quite honestly, we need to if

you're going to be honest, a real, honest, growing Christian,

you have to elevate the consequence of your sin, and

how horrible that is. Don't minimize it, elevate it. Just

don't carry the guilt of it. Because Jesus carried that guilt.

Jesus took that guilt. His grace is far superior to

the worst thing that we could have possibly done.

Yeah, and so for our listeners, just trying to you know,

process all that, and it is. You know, the Bible

says if a man or a woman thinks themselves to

be higher than they are, right, then they fool themselves. Yeah,

So not to think of yourself more righteous, you know,

not to think of yourself as you know, not needing Jesus.

Every one of us have a complete and utter dependence

upon our God every single day.

Yes, So all of that message comes, this good news

message comes from the fact that Peter and John were

walking into the temple to pray, right, which is really important.

By the way, I was talking to a Muslim friend

of mine, and he was surprised to find out that

Christians pray regularly. He said, I know, Jews pray regular

They prayed three times a day in the temple. Muslims

will pray five times a day, but you know, Christians

don't have a set time for prayer and always surprised.

So I think it is important if you if you're

going to be a person of faith in the public square,

you need to be it needs to be noticed that

you're praying not for the praise of people, but to

establish that you're a person of prayer, right, and that

your faith matters. I think that's important. But then so

they're going into pray and then they stop and this

guy's begging and they say, we don't have any money

silver and gold have I none, But such as I

have I give to thee right King James. And so

what Peter realized was there's some things that are even

more important than money. Did you know that? Did you

know that?

That's a shock? Right?

You know?

So often we see poor people, we see struggling people,

we see difficult circumstances. And what we want to do

is we will solve solve the physical problem. And even

greater than the physical problem is the spiritual problem. So yes,

we should feed hungry people, and clothe naked people, and

house homeless people, all those things are important, but we shouldn't.

We shouldn't do those without the Gospel. So he realized

the most important thing was but such as I do have,

I'll give to you, and that is faith in Christ.

And he says later on it was his faith in

the name of Jesus that healed him. It wasn't just

faith in faith. Oh you gotta have faith, right, it's

not that. It's faith in the name of Jesus Christ.

And it was the mighty name of Jesus that healed them.

And so more important than anything else you do at work,

at school, with your friends and family, is get Jesus

to those people's great well.

I think that's a great place to end, and we

will see you next time with the Bible guys,