Written by: Mark Meynell

Acts 2 v 43-47
The apostles were doing many miracles and signs, and everyone felt great respect for God. All the believers were together and shared everything. They would sell their land and the things they owned and then divide the money and give it to anyone who needed it. The believers met together in the Temple every day. They ate together in their homes, happy to share their food with joyful hearts. They praised God and were liked by all the people. Every day the Lord added those who were being saved to the group of believers.

Notes
What puts people off becoming Christians? 

- Jesus? Well, most people seem impressed by him, at least to begin with. So he is our greatest asset (if we can put it like that). 

- His message? Well that would figure for some – people try to divorce Jesus from his message, taking him while ditching what he came to say and do. 

- Something else? I think there is one stumbling block that overshadows all others – Christians. Hypocritical, smug and selfish – uncomfortable words which often hit home.

What a different situation we would be in if our churches looked something like the very first church in Jerusalem. So we must ask, what made the difference for them?

The verse immediately before ours puts it into context. ‘They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and prayer.’ It was once they were captured by the wonderful news of Jesus, taught them by the apostles, the first followers couldn’t help but live for him. They were overwhelmed by his love shown supremely at the cross. And this welled up in them the desire to live full-on for God, together as a new church of believers. The apostles did things which demonstrated that it was true – we have Luke’s word on that. And people were awed by God. 

That put everything into perspective. Money wasn’t the most important thing to them. They were willing to share their homes, their wealth, their friendship, above all their very lives with everyone around. Getting right with God impacted everything. So getting right with God meant getting right with one another – not because they had to but because they wanted to. How different things would be if people saw us as we see these first Christians?

Acts 3 v 1-5
One day Peter and John went to the Temple at three o’clock, the time set each day for the afternoon prayer service. There, at the Temple gate called Beautiful Gate, was a man who had been crippled all his life. Every day he was carried to this gate to beg for money from the people going into the Temple. The man saw Peter and John going into the Temple and asked them for money. Peter and John looked straight at him and said, “Look at us!” The man looked at them, thinking they were going to give him some money.

Notes
If people ever ask Christians for anything, they often get more than they bargained for. Sometimes people want help, or they want our charity, or simply our companionship. These are all good things in themselves, of course. And I hope that we would be totally up for following Jesus’ example in giving them. It may be that your mates just want you to leave them alone and stop pestering them with all this Jesus stuff. That makes it really hard to do what they want, especially because as Christians, we know what we all need most of all – we all need Jesus - his forgiveness and the certain hope of heaven. We know that no one else can offer those things. We know that they are available through him, even if people we chat to don’t. 

So when they ask for anything from us, we often find ourselves wanting to help but wanting to give much more. We want them to know Jesus for themselves, even if they want us to leave them alone.

So, as you read these verses for today, then just ask what the bloke who grabbed Peter and John’s attention really needed. It’s not that unfamiliar an event, if you think about it. Tragically, many cities are full of people desperately begging for money. But what did he really need? How did that differ from what he thought he needed? What do you think you would have done? More on this tomorrow.

Acts 3 v 6-10
But Peter said, “I don’t have any silver or gold, but I do have something else I can give you. By the power of Jesus Christ from Nazareth, stand up and walk!” Then Peter took the man’s right hand and lifted him up. Immediately the man’s feet and ankles became strong. He jumped up, stood on his feet, and began to walk. He went into the Temple with them, walking and jumping and praising God. All the people recognized him as the crippled man who always sat by the Beautiful Gate begging for money. Now they saw this same man walking and praising God, and they were amazed. They wondered how this could happen.

Notes
Peter was able to do something remarkable. But it wasn’t him or his powers. In one sense, he had nothing to do with it – he was God’s right man in the right place at God’s right time. And what he did, he did ‘by the power of Jesus Christ from Nazareth’. God pulled this off. And the man got far more than he bargained for – he didn’t get money, he got legs that worked! And he realised the crucial thing. He realised it was God’s work, so he gave all the credit where it was due – he walked and jumped as he praised God.

Did you notice - because of his testimony of giving God the credit, onlookers did the same – they praised God, not Peter. That is an encouragement to us to share our gratitude to God with those who don’t know him. Who knows how it will make an impact?

But still, there are many people today who meet Christians and ask for help or even healing, and don't get it. Does God still work today like that? A huge question. The bottom line is, of course, he can. But the truth is that he doesn’t always. So can we Christians offer anything to friends with confidence? Well, think back to the question of our deepest need. This man’s deepest need wasn’t money. And interestingly enough, it wasn’t even to be able-bodied (even though what Peter did for him was awesome). It was something far more radical. Think about what that might be…

Acts 3 v 11-16
While the man was holding on to Peter and John, all the people were amazed and ran to them at Solomon’s Porch. When Peter saw this, he said to them, “People of Israel, why are you surprised? You are looking at us as if it were our own power or goodness that made this man walk. The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of our ancestors, gave glory to Jesus, his servant. But you handed him over to be killed. Pilate decided to let him go free, but you told Pilate you did not want Jesus. You did not want the One who is holy and good but asked Pilate to give you a murderer instead. And so you killed the One who gives life, but God raised him from the dead. We are witnesses to this. It was faith in Jesus that made this crippled man well. You can see this man, and you know him. He was made completely well because of trust in Jesus, and you all saw it happen!

Notes
I guess Peter and John knew the crowd would be impressed with the healing miracle. After all, they themselves had been pretty amazed when Jesus started performing healings! But now, they want to get beyond the miracle – they have some huge things to say. They don’t want to miss the massive opportunity that the miracle created for them to teach. And so they teach about power. The question is: how do you receive power?

So Peter talks about an event that looks anything but powerful. After all, if you’d been walking past Jesus’ cross that first Good Friday, what would you have thought? Words like failure, weakling, criminal and pathetic would have tumbled into your brain. It was anything but powerful. But look what happened next! God, the one who is the God of the Universe, the God of the Jews (Abraham, Isaac and Jacob) the one who is in ultimate control of everything that happens performed the ultimate miracle – he brought Jesus back to life. Peter says ‘we were witnesses – look guys, we saw it. Believe it!’ God has the sort of power that can beat death at its own game. That is pretty awesome power. Do you know anyone with anything like that sort of power? Of course not! This is unique.

How do you receive it? Well, what did the crippled man do? He trusted Jesus. That makes perfect sense, doesn’t it? No point trusting someone who can’t deliver that sort of power. So the big question now is what happens when we trust Jesus? Can we expect the same sort of miracles? Well, whether we experience healing or not – we can ALL expect the greatest of all miracles when we trust Jesus. We’ll see tomorrow what that is.

Acts 3 v 17-20
“Brothers and sisters, I know you did those things to Jesus because neither you nor your leaders understood what you were doing. God said through the prophets that his Christ would suffer and die. And now God has made these things come true in this way. So you must change your hearts and lives! Come back to God, and he will forgive your sins. Then the Lord will send the time of rest. And he will send Jesus, the One he chose to be the Christ.

Notes 
Have you ever been lost in a city? You’ve got a map and you know your destination, but you haven’t the faintest idea of where you are now. How on earth are you going to get there? A scary situation! The obvious thing is to find someone who knows the place and ask for directions. Supposing you get them and you’re told that you’re going in completely the wrong direction. What are your options? Well, you can carry on. But you’d still be lost: you won’t get to where you want to be. Or you can take the advice, turn around and head in the right direction.

I assume that you want to go to heaven. Most people do. But the vast majority of people haven’t a clue how to get there. What we need is a way through death to life and forgiveness with God. They are our greatest needs. Only Jesus can offer those things – and he does! 

So Peter in his talk in the Jerusalem temple is telling people to turn back to God by turning to Jesus. They’d been going in the wrong direction all their lives. It was time to stop in their tracks and follow the directions of the one who not only knows the scene, but comes from the destination. He has come from heaven to show us the way to get there. ‘So you must change your hearts and lives! Come back to God and he will forgive your sins!’ 

The result of this – ‘rest.’ We will be in heaven. Getting us there takes real power. “Trust me, says Jesus. I can do it.” That is the ultimate miracle – forgiveness and life forever. Who could possibly want to turn that sort of advice down? 

Acts 3 v 21-26
But Jesus must stay in heaven until the time comes when all things will be made right again. God told about this time long ago when he spoke through his holy prophets. Moses said, ‘The Lord your God will give you a prophet like me, who is one of your own people. You must listen to everything he tells you. Anyone who does not listen to that prophet will die, cut off from God’s people.’ Samuel, and all the other prophets who spoke for God after Samuel, told about this time now. You are descendants of the prophets. You have received the agreement God made with your ancestors. He said to your father Abraham, ‘Through your descendants all the nations on the earth will be blessed.’ God has raised up his servant Jesus and sent him to you first to bless you by turning each of you away from doing evil.”

Notes 
Jesus was no bolt from the blue. Peter didn’t dream up Jesus to impress anyone who would listen. Far from it! Jesus’ mission did not begin in 30AD, but centuries before when God alerted his people about his intentions. Throughout the Old Testament, he gives hints, pointers and explicit prophecies of Jesus (see for instance, Isaiah 9:6-7 and Isaiah 53:1-12). You can’t necessarily predict exactly what God’s Messiah will be like from the prophecies alone. But once he arrives on the scene, and you look back at the prophecies, you can see that he fits perfectly, like a hand in a well-fitting glove.

Here, the focus of Jesus’ fulfilment is that he is himself a prophet. He’s one like me, says Moses. And what does a prophet do – he speaks the words of God. Jesus is no ordinary prophet though – he doesn’t just speak the words of God, he is God. He’s the ultimate prophet. So when Jesus speaks, God speaks. So how do you respond to him?

Well, it’s pretty obvious. If Jesus speaks, you listen. And that doesn’t just mean a polite, respectful silence. It means doing precisely what he says. And the heart of it here is to ‘turn away from doing evil’. It means living for Jesus in every area of life, not just on Sunday, but at home, at school, at the cinema, on the footie pitch etc etc. We don’t do this to earn Jesus’ love – we do it because he first loved us. So turn to this Jesus! The consequence ultimately of not doing that is the opposite of life and forgiveness – remaining in guilt and missing out on eternal life. ‘Anyone who does not listen to that prophet will die, cut off from God’s people’.

Acts 4 v 1-4
While Peter and John were speaking to the people, Jewish priests, the captain of the soldiers that guarded the Temple, and Sadducees came up to them. They were upset because the two apostles were teaching the people and were preaching that people will rise from the dead through the power of Jesus. The Jewish leaders grabbed Peter and John and put them in jail. Since it was already night, they kept them in jail until the next day. But many of those who had heard Peter and John preach believed the things they said. There were now about five thousand in the group of believers.

Notes 
Did anything said in the last few days’ studies offend you? I wouldn’t be surprised if it did. There are many things that offend people about Jesus today: Who likes being told they are guilty and need forgiveness? Or that Jesus is the only way to find that forgiveness? Or that it is impossible to earn your way to heaven?

If you were offended, the consequences for me are not likely to be very severe – although you could track me down to Uganda and send the boys round! But for Peter and John, they were. For the ‘crime’ of telling people to trust Jesus for forgiveness and life in heaven, they were jailed. Their preaching had a huge cost. It clearly poses a threat to the authorities. And certainly, there are places even today where people are imprisoned or even killed just for believing the gospel.

But is it worth it? Shouldn’t Peter and John have kept their mouths shut? They would certainly have avoided the dirty and disgusting Roman prisons if they had. But they couldn’t do this – they had discovered Jesus for themselves. They knew that he put everything into perspective, that he made the suffering for preaching the gospel not worth comparing to being with Jesus in heaven forever. And see the result – many believed them! Within only a few days of Pentecost (Acts 2), there are now 5000 Christians. That alone would make it worth it – just think of the difference their work made to heaven’s population!

You may find that you get it in the neck for telling people about Jesus. The question you must ask is this – is it worth it? It’s only if you think it is that you will persevere. And surely the hope of heaven does make it worth it?!


word-on-the-web uses the Scripture text taken from the Youth Bible, New Century Version (Anglicised Edition) copyright 1993 by Word Publishing Milton Keynes