Intro
If you were with us last week, we spent time with the story in Acts 3 about the miraculous, dramatic healing of a lame man lame outside the temple courts in Jerusalem. In case I didn’t say it clearly enough last week, a story like that doesn’t guarantee that everyone who has faith in Jesus will receive physical healing in this life. That does happen sometimes, according to God’s wisdom and plan, but not always. Not even close. Instead, what a healing like that indicates is that the Kingdom of God has already come among us through Christ. And it is a promise that one day in eternity, Jesus will completely, totally heal and restore all who trust in him. That’s what we proclaim every single Sunday when we gather together on the day of the week that Jesus rose from the dead. That in this world of death and hopelessness, we have a solid and certain hope because of the resurrection of Jesus. We are citizens of another kingdom! Our faith is not in the things of this world but in the victory of God! We glimpse that victory now in bits and pieces, but one day it will be final!
In other words, the miracle is not the point, but the point is what the miracle points to. That’s what we see in the aftermath of the healing in Acts 3. When people hear that this man is up and walking, they run to see it and find out what happened. This is huge. It’s like toilet paper at Costco at the beginning of the pandemic- remember that? They got a new shipment of TP!? Lineup out the doors at 6am, because we’ve got to get in on this! Peter’s got a captive audience. And you know where he’s going to go. He’s telling them about the life that can be theirs in Christ.
Before I get into that, I want to sit with this point a bit longer. For some people, the goal is the miracle or the experience. That’s why they participate in church. They’re looking for a worship experience. They put their faith in Jesus because they hope they might get their miracle. That’s understandable, because the centrality of experience is pretty prevalent in our culture as a whole. The most powerful currency of truth for many is “lived experience”. There’s even an idea out there that unless you have personal experience, you really have no right to speak to it. Which is a bit of a bizarre idea if you think about it. For example, it means you really can’t encourage your kids about the dangers of drugs if you haven’t done them yourself!
Listen, experience is great, including in Christian faith. It should be tangible, it should impact us in every way! But the manifestation of God’s power and the witnessing of miracles is not the end or the point of faith. Think about marriage. If you think that the point of marriage is to give you great memories and to make you feel good, you’ve probably been married for one week. It’s a pretty weak foundation! The foundation should be a commitment to love this person regardless of challenges that might come. If that’s true, the high points in marriage are a gift that can help strengthen a marriage even when we spend long periods in the proverbial desert. Same thing with Christian faith. The point is a a committed relationship with God that endures through thick and thin. Moments like Acts 3 when a miracle takes place strengthen faith and deepen the relationship, but they are not the point. Peter gets that, which is why he directs the attention of the crowds away from the miracle itself and to the one the miracle points to.
1. The choice of death (Acts 3:11-16)
11 While the man held on to Peter and John, all the people were astonished and came running to them in the place called Solomon’s Colonnade. 12 When Peter saw this, he said to them: “Fellow Israelites, why does this surprise you? Why do you stare at us as if by our own power or godliness we had made this man walk? 13 The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God of our fathers, has glorified his servant Jesus. You handed him over to be killed, and you disowned him before Pilate, though he had decided to let him go. 14 You disowned the Holy and Righteous One and asked that a murderer be released to you. 15 You killed the author of life, but God raised him from the dead. We are witnesses of this.16 By faith in the name of Jesus, this man whom you see and know was made strong. It is Jesus’ name and the faith that comes through him that has completely healed him, as you can all see.
Acts 3:11-16
The first thing Peter does is to be clear that Peter and John didn’t give this guy the ability to walk. No way. It’s all Jesus. He’s the star of the show here. You can throw your bouquets of flowers at his feet, not ours.
Within this section, Peter makes a really provocative statement. He says that the people of Jerusalem killed the author of life. That’s his title for Jesus. The author of life. That’s a big time title! Especially from a Jewish, monotheistic perspective! Who could you call the author of life? God alone, right? Peter says that title can be given to Jesus.
From the New Testament, the title is true in a couple of ways. We get this astounding claim that this man Jesus, who walked the earth for a few decades a couple of thousand years ago, had an existence in eternity past. John starts his gospel by saying that in the beginning, before the creation of the world, the word- his title for Jesus- was with God and was God. John says that “through him all things were made, without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life.” (John 1:3-4) That’s not just John. In Colossians 1, Paul says that “in him all things were created…all things have been created through him and for him.” (Col. 1:16) Hey, I wish we had more information about how exactly this works metaphysically, but I suspect John and Paul didn’t have enough parchment to lay that out for us! The bottom line is that according to the Scriptures, you owe your existence to Jesus!
It’s also true because of the resurrection of Jesus, he has become the originator of a whole new way of life. In the same passage in Colossians, Paul says that Jesus “is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead” (1:18). In Revelation 1, John calls Jesus “the firstborn from the dead” (1:5), meaning that all who trust in Jesus will also be raised to life in eternity, in bodies that are immortal and imperishable. We have that hope in Jesus because as he says in John 11, he himself is the resurrection and the life.
Here’s a math equation. You ready for this? I haven’t done Math since Grade 12, and this is pretty complex, so we’ll see how it goes. Jesus = life. You want life, go to Jesus. He’s the author of it. The inventor of it. The sustainer of it. You want life as it is meant to be lived now in this world, and the promise of life forever, he’s your guy. He’s all about life. Which, by the way, is what the church is supposed to be all about too. Abundant life, as God meant us to live. If this becomes stale or dry, something has gone wrong.
However, Peter says something crazy took place, something that might seem totally unbelievable at first glance. They disowned the author of life. They discarded him, even though he was the holy and righteous one, with no fault to be found in him. They killed him. But it gets even crazier. They asked that a murderer be released to them. If you’re not familiar with the story of Jesus’ crucifixion, this is actually what happened. Jesus found himself on trial before Pilate, the Roman governor. Pilate practiced a custom to release one prisoner to the people. He suggested to the crowds that he could release Jesus. After all, Pilate had found no fault in him. He couldn’t figure out why Jesus should die. But the crowds refused. Instead, at the urging of their leaders, the people of Jerusalem asked for the release of a man named Barabbas. This man was really and truly guilty of murder. A violent man. And they wanted him among them instead of the author of life (Luke 23:13-25).
On the one hand, this is a vivid picture of the Gospel. Jesus, the innocent one, the Holy and Righteous One, swaps his life for the guilty. All of us can find ourselves in that picture. We were not righteous. But Jesus took our place. He paid the price of sin, which is death, for us. Because of it, we are set free. It’s not fair. It’s just heart-rending mercy and grace.
On the other hand, it is a vivid portrayal of the human condition. This is what we do. Over and over again, we choose death over life. We celebrate and revel in evil. We do this whenever we choose sin. We do this whenever we choose lust and greed and hatred, whenever we put our trust in idols, whenever we choose lies and self-exaltation. We are asking for a murderer instead of the author of life.
I was thinking about that last week in the lead up to Halloween. Advance warning, I’m about to sound like a grumpy old man. Halloween baffles me. Although I wrestle with it every year, we take our kids trick-or-treating. Zachary wanted to dress up as an angel this year. Knock yourself out, kid, you know? It also ends up being one of the times we connect most with our neighbours, which I’m really grateful for. And I get that for a lot of people, the spooky stuff is just “fun”. But I don’t get it. People decorating their houses with images of ghosts and demons and morbid, bloody skeletons and bloody gravestones? Kids dressing up as witches and monsters and Satan himself? You know those “drive slowly” little green kid figures? Someone in our complex dressed it up with a scary mask and a devil’s pitchfork. And I just go, why? Why the celebration and glorification of all this? Why does it sound like July 4th in the US of A with all the celebratory fireworks going off? What exactly are we celebrating?
I was also thinking about it because of an email we received from our principal, advising that some young elementary age kids have been watching the Netflix hit show Squid Game, which is apparently full of sex and brutal violence. Quick side-note here, just to increase the perception of a grumpy old man: can I encourage you as your pastor, if you have kids, do everything you possibly can to keep them away from screens and devices as much as you possibly can. A generation is getting wrecked by screen time. I saw a study this past week that said teens were spending 4 hours a day on screens pre-pandemic. Now, a year and a half of COVID later, it’s up to 8 hours. And that’s excluding any time spent on screens for school purposes. It’s doubled! If you have young kids, be resolved now. If you have older kids that are already hooked, do what you can to mitigate against this. And know what your kids are watching! It’s not like the good old days- there I go again- where you’d have to stay up until 11 or 12 to watch the sketchy stuff, and you’d have to do it on the family TV. It’s all there, any time, for anyone of any age. Seriously, this is a huge deal!
The main point here is that if you have Netflix, you know that it seems like a massive chunk of their offerings would be rated “mature”. And that’s true about just about any streaming service. Why is that? It’s largely because people want that. They want to watch this stuff. They want the glorification of sexual immorality, of substance abuse, of violence and death. This stuff sells and so they produce more and more content. Why? Why do so many people find this kind of material appealing?
Our Western progressive culture speaks as though we’ve got the corner on virtue and goodness. That’s the “woke” ideology, right? Good vs. evil and the Western progressives are the good ones. Don’t believe it. Sin infects everyone, conservative and liberal, Gen Z and Boomers alike. The human condition, and Western culture is absolutely no exception to this, is to choose death over life. But hear what I’m saying. Our Western culture is not an exception to this, but it’s also not the lone example. The defining manifestation of that choice took place in the first century, when the masses- even the ones who had God’s law and strove for righteousness in comparison with the nations around- asked for a murderer to be given to them instead of the author of life.
2. The choice of life (Acts 3:17-21)
17 “Now, fellow Israelites, I know that you acted in ignorance,as did your leaders. 18 But this is how God fulfilled what he had foretold through all the prophets, saying that his Messiah would suffer. 19 Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord, 20 and that he may send the Messiah, who has been appointed for you—even Jesus. 21 Heaven must receive him until the time comes for God to restore everything, as he promised long ago through his holy prophets.
Acts 3:17-21
In the first couple of verses here, Peter gives them relief. He says that while they made this choice, God knew they would. He kind of knows humanity. And He has used that choice to launch the greatest rescue operation in the history of the world, a rescue operation that continues to this day. Just like the problem- the corrupted condition of the human heart- persists through the ages, so does the solution. There was, and is, a way out of this inclination towards death and evil, and it’s available even to those who chanted for Jesus’ crucifixion. And it boils down to repentance. We talked about this a lot a couple of weeks ago. Repentance means a change in life, a change in thinking, and particularly in this case a change in thinking about Jesus. You can make the choice to reject what leads to death and choose to receive the author of life, Jesus. You can make the choice to trust that what God says about Jesus is true, and receive salvation in him.
But why should you do this? Why turn to Jesus, believe that He is Lord, and hand your life over to a guy who lived 2000 years ago?
a. Wiped out
Peter mentions three incredible phrases. First, he says that our sins are “wiped out”. You’ve probably had some kind of experience of a burden that was lifted from you, and the release that you felt. I have a bit of a strange story in this regard. When I was in college, I cared a lot about my marks. They determined a lot of my sense of identity and well-being. This wasn’t some uber competitive Ivy League school, by the way, this was a rural Bible college in Manitoba. But I cared a lot and it became a burden. I had to live up to this. I had to keep that GPA up.
So in my final year, I’m writing the term paper for this course, and I’m cramming. The thing is due at midnight, and I’m just shoveling words together to get it done and get my mark. And I stop and I think, what am I doing here? I’m not even learning, I’m just going through the motions to feed my pride. So I wrote that. I wrote 4 or 5 pages of a confessional, proclaiming to my prof that I was laying down my A for the course so that I could break free of some of this pride. I was giving up the burden of propping up my identity-supporting GPA. I handed that paper in, went outside and laid down on the soccer field, and felt such relief. In that moment, this oppressive GPA had been wiped away and I could be free of it. I found out a few weeks later that the prof still gave me an A on the paper because he was so touched, so it kind of ruined that whole idea. But for a moment, I was free!
Our sins are like that. They are oppressive. They weigh down on us and impact our relationships, they keep us from moving forward. On our own, we can’t get rid of that burden. But through trust in Jesus, they are wiped away. Paul uses the same Greek word in Colossians when he says that the legal charge of indebtedness that stood against us has been taken away (Col. 2:13-14). There’s a list of charges, and Jesus has authority to pardon us. To cleanse our criminal record. In a world where 10 year old deleted Twitter comments can destroy your career and get you “cancelled”, Jesus wipes away our sins and removes them as far from us as the east is from the west. Isn’t that good news?
b. Times of refreshment
Second, he says that we will have “times of refreshing”. These first two things, by the way, are for the here and now. We receive release from the weight of sin and we are “refreshed” as we follow Jesus in this world. I love this word. It’s the only time it shows up in the New Testament, actually. The basic meaning is to cool by blowing- you were baking in the heat and then something happened to make you say “ahhhhh”.
I know this feels like a million years ago, but do you remember summer? And do you remember that “heat dome” in June and July? Never before have I felt heat like that in this city. In the townhome complex we live in, there’s a pool that’s open in the summer, and my kids love it. They’d go in there every day. They want to go in there when it’s 15 degrees and raining. And on most days, I don’t want to touch the water. I am a hardcore fair weather swimmer. When we go to the Okanagan in the summer, it takes playing tennis in 35 degree weather to make me feel like jumping in the lake. So what ensues at the pool is the cutest begging and pleading by my kids, resulting in my eventual submission after 30 minutes and throwing myself in and immediately regretting it. But during that heat dome? I didn’t need to be asked or begged, I was the first one in! I needed refreshment!
This is what Peter says comes through receiving the Messiah. What comes is the experience of refreshment, a drastic change in comparison with our surrounding environment. That can be manifested in a bunch of ways, but here’s just one. In a culture where you have to prove yourself, Jesus saves us by grace, when we are at our lowest point. His love meets us when we have nothing to offer. It’s not by works, but by grace, that we are loved. That is refreshing.
c. Restoration
Third, Peter talks about the future. He says that God will send the Messiah. This would be the second coming of Jesus, since Peter clearly believes that Jesus is the Messiah and has already come. And when the Messiah comes, that is the signal that God is going to restore everything. Sins wiped away, times of refreshment, and in the future, restoration.
By now, some of you know where I’m going with this. Our future, eternal hope is not some disembodied “heaven” above the clouds. It is a renewed and restored physical creation, set free from its bondage to decay. Here’s how Peter puts it in one of his New Testament letters: “That day will bring about the destruction of the heavens by fire, and the elements will melt in the heat. But in keeping with his promise we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, where righteousness dwells” (2 Pet. 3:13). A new heaven and earth where righteousness dwells. Where things are as they should be and every tear is wiped from those whose trust is in God.
This is going to come as a huge shock, but there’s brokenness in the world. Gasp! It’s true! And I think we have a widespread sense that this isn’t how it should be. Here in Canada, whereas in the past where perhaps some people could get away with feeling that things were pretty good, the last couple of years have shattered that illusion. In so many ways, life is not what it should be. So we long for healing. We long for restoration. That’s what’s coming in eternity, and the way in is through Jesus.
3. The choice of your heritage (Acts 3:22-26)
22 For Moses said, ‘The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your own people; you must listen to everything he tells you. 23 Anyone who does not listen to him will be completely cut off from their people.’ 24 “Indeed, beginning with Samuel, all the prophets who have spoken have foretold these days. 25 And you are heirs of the prophets and of the covenant God made with your fathers. He said to Abraham, ‘Through your offspring all peoples on earth will be blessed.’ 26 When God raised up his servant, he sent him first to you to bless you by turning each of you from your wicked ways.”
Acts 3:22-26
So Peter has laid out the choice for them. They can choose death, which is the human condition. Or they can choose the author of life, in whom is forgiveness, refreshment, and ultimate restoration. But he pushes it even further here in these verses, because he shows how Jesus is their heritage. That life in him is theirs for the taking.
Remember, Peter is speaking to the crowds in Jerusalem. This is a Jewish crowd. And what Peter says is something that comes up frequently in the early chapters of Acts: Jesus is the fulfillment of the Jewish Scriptures. He is the fulfillment of the Jewish story. It’s an emphasis in the Gospels as well, this constant refrain of “this happened to fulfill what this or that prophet said”. Peter says to the crowds, this is the one you’ve been looking for, the one you were promised, the one that all the Scriptures foretold. He is your heritage.
I made these same points a few weeks ago from Peter’s sermon in Acts 2, because there are a lot of similarities. So I won’t repeat all that, and we won’t go into detail with everything Peter says. But I’ll say now what I said then, that Jesus not only fulfills the promises of the Scriptures to Israel, but he fulfills the human story and the longings of the human heart. This is why so many Gentiles in the first century understood that this was good news for them too.
Here’s an example from this text. Peter reminds them of Moses. Moses served as a mediator between the people of Israel and God. Moses ascended Mt. Sinai to talk with God, but because God’s presence was so holy, if anyone even touched the mountain, they died. That’s the gap that exists between God and humanity. That’s why a mediator was necessary. That was the role of the priests and the prophets in the Old Testament. They were mediators, bridging the gap however imperfectly between a holy God and a sinful people. And Moses said in Deuteronomy 18 that God would raise up another one like Moses who would communicate God’s will to the people. Peter says that has been fulfilled in Jesus. Other passages in the New Testament speak of Jesus as the great high priest, fully God and fully human, who bridges the gap.
Is this not the longing of humanity? To be near to God, despite the sense that we are unworthy and He is completely other than us, holy and majestic? How can we little, sinful humans enter into His presence? Jesus fulfills that longing by being our mediator, being our priest. He is both fully God and fully man, perfectly bridging the gap.
Unlike the crowds in Jerusalem in Acts 3, you may not be ethnically Jewish, knowing the Scriptures from birth. But I believe in one sense, I can still say to you, this is your heritage. Jesus is the one you’ve been looking for. He is the one who has been promised to you. He is the fulfillment of the longings of your heart. The life that comes in Jesus is yours. The wiping away of sin, the refreshment, the promise of full restoration, are yours for the taking.
Conclusion
So this is the choice you have before you. Death or life, which comes through Jesus, who is life. And the indication of the Scriptures is that generally, as long as you have breath to breathe, this choice is still yours. The thing is, you don’t know when you’ll breathe that last breath. It could be today for all you know. So let me ask you a question that the old-time evangelists would often ask. If your life was taken today, are you ready? Do you have peace and assurance about what will happen if death comes knocking? Have your sins been dealt with, or are you still bearing them? When it comes to the “life and death choice”, where do you stand?
Let’s go back to that pool image from earlier and take it further. Nate has been leading our teens through Youth Alpha over the last couple of months. During the session this last week, he showed this picture of a pool.
The question was, if Christian faith is the pool, who are you in this picture? Are you off to the side, watching others swim? Are you too busy doing other things, like flexing your ginormous muscles, to even notice? Are you dipping your toes in, not ready to commit but just feeling the water? Refreshment only comes if you jump in, all the way, your head to your toes.
Today is the day to make that choice, and to choose for Jesus. Today is the day to receive refreshment and release and restoration.
