And all the residents of Lydda and Sharon saw him, and they turned to the Lord.
And it became known throughout all Joppa, and many believed in the Lord. Acts 9:35, 42

Acts 9:32–10:8 – The Story of the Church: Living Into This Drama in the 21st Century
Fourth Sunday after Pentecost – June 20, 2021 (am)

I remember when I first heard the testimony of Charles Colson. It was shortly after the release of his first book, Born Again (1976). I was in high school. And it was just a few years after the Watergate scandal had caused President Richard Nixon to resign from Office. Colson had been Special Council to the President and a ruthless operator in Washington. I had received Christ as Savior. And I believe I had already begun to sense God’s call into ministry.

On some level I was very aware of God’s sovereignty and omnipotence, although I’d not yet embraced the doctrines of grace.  But I also remember having a new feeling at the time—that if God could save Charles Colson, he could save anyone. Or, to put it more broadly, if he could do that, He could do anything!  That experience immediately awakened within me a curiosity about what God might do!

I believe Luke intended a similar response among his readers after he wrote his account of the conversion of Saul (9:1-31). If God could do that, He could do anything!  

And that starts raising questions. Who might God save next? How will He do it? Can anything stop Him or impede the spread of His Word, of His gospel? What all might happen as the Holy Spirit enters this picture, gaining more and more influence? And what all will happen?

Well, Luke takes us off into a series of accounts in our passage today that seems crafted to address such questions. It picks up at 9:32 and goes all the way through 11:18 or even 12:25, but we can’t cover all that today. What I’d like to do is just take us through his introduction to this long section and see how he sets up his eventual answer. Through these three encounters (9:32-10:8), each with a more challenging hurdle than the previous, Luke sets us up to see what God can do—what He is doing and what He will do!

Disease is no obstacle to God’s saving power and purpose. – 9:32-35

Peter was [out and about] among [the churches], probably visiting and teaching (Marshall 189), and he came down to Lydda (32). Aeneas was there, a [paralytic], bedridden for eight years (33). 34 And Peter said to him, “Aeneas, Jesus Christ heals you; rise and make your bed.” And immediately he rose. Luke’s streamlined telling of this first encounter seems intended to recall Jesus’ [healing] of the man lowered through the roof in Caesarea (Luk.5:17-26). Jesus had said to him (Luk.5:24): Rise, pick up your bed, and go home.  

One wonders why so much interest in the [beds] of these [paralytics], but that’s not the most central point. Do you remember that story in Luk.5?  The first thing Jesus said to that [paralytic] was (20): Man, your sins are forgiven you. And the Pharisees were incensed when they heard it; no one could forgive sins but God! Jesus next words were: 22 …“Why do you question in your hearts?  23 Which is easier, to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven you,’ or to say, ‘Rise and walk’? 24 But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins”—he said to the man who was paralyzed—“I say to you, rise, pick up your bed and go home.”  25 And immediately he rose up before them and picked up what he had been lying on and went home.

The clear implication was that they would believe it is far easier to say: Your sins are forgiven you, because no one can really test that to see if it happened. So, Jesus did what they would perceive as the harder thing—he told the man to rise and walk—as a demonstration of the fact that He was also able to do what really was the harder thing, namely, forgive his sins!

Luke finished the account writing: 26 And amazement seized them all, and they glorified God and were filled with awe, saying, “We have seen extraordinary things today.” Similarly here, as a result of the healing of this [paralytic], Luke records: 35 And all the residents of Lydda and Sharon saw him, and they turned to the Lord. The same Jesus who saved Saul healed Aeneas. The miracle displayed His power and purpose, and He saved many [more] here at Lydda!

Death is no obstacle to God’s saving power and purpose. – 9:36-43

Meanwhile, a few miles away in Joppa the situation was not nearly so jovial. Tabitha, a [gracious and generous] servant of the Lord (36), had become ill and died (37). After Tabitha’s body had already been prepared for burial (37), the Christians there sent for Peter (38), whom they’d heard was in Lydda.

We might wonder what they expected him to do at this point, but when he arrived (39) he was greeted a number of grieving widows whom Tabitha had helped (39). Peter cleared the room, knelt, and prayed (40)—a detail only he could have provided. He then [turned toward her] and—reminiscent of Jesus’ raising Jairus’ daughter (Luk.8:40-56) to whom He said, in Aramaic, talitha cumi (cf. Mar.5:41)—Peter said to this woman, Tabitha, arise. In Aramaic, one letter different (Marshall 191); and the verb here is the same one he used with Aeneas (34), the same one used for God raising Jesus from the dead (Stott 183).

And Tabitha did just as Aeneas had done, [she got] up! (40) The [people] rejoiced and, again, many believed (42). The same Jesus who saved Saul and healed Aeneas raised Tabitha from the dead, and so He saved many [more] here in Joppa!

43 And then he stayed in Joppa for many days with one Simon, a tanner—a strange detail, but we’ll return to it in a moment. 

How about religious prejudice? – 10:1-8

A third straight paragraph begins with some form of, there was a man… (1). These accounts are linked by that introduction. And the point of each is clearly the transforming power of God. It can overcome sickness—a formidable opponent. It can overcome death—an even more imposing foe. Is it possible that it could also overcome prejudice—even religious prejudice, Jew/Gentile prejudice? As Luke tells it, this reads as the largest potential obstacle yet.

Let’s remember again Jesus’ words: Luk.5:23 Which is easier, to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven you,’ or to say, ‘Rise and walk’? We now know it’s easier to say the second. [Forgiving] sins is an immensely complex matter! It required God becoming man then laying down his life! Yet, Jesus came for that precise purpose. And in this passage, too, [forgiving] sins was the harder task.

[Healing the paralytic] and raising [the dead] were all preliminary. These miracles were all set-up to the coming act of changing sinful, self-focused hearts!

Cornelius (1) was a Gentile. He was a devout and [benevolent] man (2). But he was a Gentile—a Gentile dog, as he might have been called by virtually any Jew in that day. After all, every dog is not a Pit Bull. Even a Golden Retriever is still a dog! And Cornelius may have been more that sort. But an angel visited him (3). And the angel said that God had taken note of his prayers and [gifts to the poor]! (4) Can you imagine hearing that message from an angel? Your prayers and your alms have ascended as a memorial before God? (4)

The angel also said he should send for Peter, who was in Joppa, the city from which Jonah [fled] God’s call to Nineveh… (Jon.1:3). 6 He is lodging with one Simon, a tanner, whose house is by the sea. We’re back to that point we just read in 9:43. Why is this a big deal? Well, according to Jewish law Peter shouldn’t be residing with a tanner, someone whose work would have him in contact with dead animals as he treated their skins to make leather. The rabbis considered tanning an unclean trade (Longenecker 869).

It’s hard to know exactly what to make of this. And Luke doesn’t tell us explicitly what he intended. But he does mention it twice. And it’s hard to overcome the impression that Peter’s preparation for his visit to a Gentile’s home began even before his vision in 10:9ff!

In any case, Cornelius obeyed the angel by sending two of his servants and a devout soldier to Joppa to retrieve Peter (7-8). And with all this, we’re now prepared to see if the same Jesus—Who saved Saul—and made the lame walk and the dead live—was even capable of making the hateful loving!

Conclusion

This is good news, wouldn’t you agree?

It’s good news to be reminded that there is no obstacle in this fallen world that can impede the saving power and purpose of God, and to see it played out here in real life circumstances. It’s good news to be reassured that God can heal ailing minds and hearts, not just ailing bodies!

That’s particularly helpful even in our day when we can tend to lose confidence in God’s ability to change hearts and minds. We talk often about how deep the ideological divides are in our day, how the chasm between political liberals and conservatives, which has always been there, just seems wider and deeper and more hostile than ever.

It’s good to be reminded that God can change hearts, that it’s not profitless to pray for our elected leaders and those of influence in our day, believing that God really can not only work through them, but work in them according to His power and purpose. If He can soften up a Roman centurian, He can soften anyone!

But it’s not just in the hearts of the unconverted that we need to be reassured God is still able to work. I believe we need to be reminded that He can even work in our own hearts as we face, and perhaps address, the social and moral issues of our day that can also be so divisive.

For instance, the racial tensions in our nation that have moved center-stage once again over the past year or so seem to have even confessing Christians posturing against one another and against our culture more broadly in a strange game of brinksmanship that has us much more focused on our belief that we’re right than on any possibility we could be wrong, and surely more than on the clear call we have to love our neighbor (Lev.19:18; Mar.12:31), and even to love our enemies (Mat.5:44).

We can suddenly find ourselves in the place of defending the US Constitution and protecting the quality of life in America more than we are proclaiming the gospel of sins forgiven, judgment absorbed, and eternal life granted through the saving work of Jesus.

We can also find ourselves in the place where we want to make sure sinners in our day know just how twisted and wicked their sins really are rather than wanting to sure they hear that they can actually be forgiven and reconciled to a loving and merciful God. In other words, we can still have hearts that are hardened similarly to Jewish hardness toward Gentiles.

How good is God, then, to put this passage before us today, this passage in which He reminds us that there’s nothing in this world that can stand in the way of, or impede, His saving power and purpose in this world! It’s particularly encouraging at this point in the Book of Acts as we see Luke setting up the spread of the gospel to the Gentiles and toward the end of the earth (1:8). But it’s also really encouraging to be reminded that the same is still true today. There’s no obstacle in our world that can hold back the plan and purpose of God either.

There’s no healthcare situation among us, even here at GCD, that threatens the ultimate promise of God that all will be made new and set right at very least on that Day when His salvation is fully and finally delivered, if not long before then as a reminder that it’s coming!

There’s been no death among us here that threatens the ultimate promise that we will be raised with Christ in body on that same Day just as we’re raised with Him by faith in His saving work here and now (cf. Col.3:1).

And there’s no moral or social or political divide in our day that threatens our ability to love our neighbor and even love our enemies in the name of Christ, to long for and pursue their salvation even while they’re trapped in sin.

Our calling today is to be strengthened in our confidence in and allegiance to the power and purpose of God which is still at work in our day—to be reminded that He is all-powerful, that His purpose will be fulfill, and that we’re privileged and empowered to be His witnesses!

He can actually change you and me into people who act and speak in demonstration of His power and purpose to save, people who love the lost and know with confidence that there’s no one God can’t save if He purposes to do so!

Now, in that confidence let’s come to the Table of the Lord and remember what was accomplished in order for us to gain it.

 _______________

Resources

Beale, G. K. and D. A. Carson, eds. 2007. Commentary on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament. Acts, by I. Howard Marshall, 513-606. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic.

Beveridge, Henry, ed. Commentary upon the Acts of the apostles, vol. 1, by John Calvin. Translated by Christopher Featherstone.

Bruce, F. F., ed. 1988. The New International Commentary on the New Testament. The book of Acts, revised, by F. F. Bruce. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans.

Carson, D. A., R. T. France, J. A. Motyer, and G. J. Wenham, eds. 1994. New Bible Commentary 21st Century Edition. Acts, by Conrad Gempf, 1066-1114. Leicester, Eng.: InterVarsity.

Dockery, David S, ed. 1992. New American Commentary. Vol. 26, Acts, by John B. Polhill. Nashville: Broadman & Holman.

Grudem, Wayne, ed. 2008. ESV Study Bible. Study notes on Acts, 2073-2156, by John B. Polhill. Wheaton: Crossway.

Longman III, Tremper and David E. Garland, eds. 2007. Expositor’s Bible Commentary. Vol. 10, Acts, by Richard N. Longenecker, 665-1102. Grand Rapids: Zondervan.

Morris, Leon, ed. 1980. Tyndale New Testament Commentaries. Vol. 5 Acts, by I. Howard Marshall. Downers Grove: InterVarsity.

Stott, John, ed. 1990. The Bible Speaks Today. The Message of Acts, by John Stott. Leicester, Eng.: InterVarsity.

 

NEXT WEEK: Acts 10:9–48, Dave Patty