Acts 3:12-18
Last week I was out, and Mickey taught on the healing of the crippled man in the beginning of Acts chapter three. This week we will look at the first half of Peter’s second sermon, which he gives in the window of opportunity that the healing created.
When we rejoin the scene in Acts, the men of Israel have a problem. They all know that the beggar that was healed was truly lame. They would have seen him there countless times over the many years he begged there. The beggar dancing around would have made it undeniable that he was completely and instantly healed. They of course looked to Peter and John as the source of the healing, but that brought them to another problem, these were fishermen from Galilee, and not pious profits or priests. To bring it to modern terms, it would be as if a mentally challenged, poor high school dropout from some ghetto won the national championship on Jeopardy.
Peter uses this confusion, and attention to give the second sermon we have recorded of his. This could very well be his second sermon ever, or he may have had other opportunities to preach that were not recorded for us. The order and number of the sermons is not what is important to note here, rather that Peter once again seizes the opportunity to preach the Gospel of Jesus every time he has an open door.
As we saw a few lessons back when we covered Peter’s first sermon, he does not kick the door open, rather he waits for an opening and runs through. This is a critical lesson for us today. If you have an opening to share the wonderful news of salvation through Jesus, you should seize it right away. However, kicking down a door and bashing someone in the head with red-letter King James Bible is normally very anti-productive.
As we begin to look at what Peter preached in this opening it is important to take note of his audience. These were religious Jews who have gathered for the thrice-daily time of prayer. This is not your normal street crowd. It is very likely that everyone there had large parts of the Old Testament memorized, and most if not all would have been very familiar with the scriptures. As such Peter does not need to cover many of the basic things that modern day preachers face when preaching to a crowd. For example he does not need to prove God is real, as the Jew’s already knew God.
Peter taps into this existing knowledge base to introduce to them Jesus as servant of the “God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob” which separates him from any Roman or other pagan god. This makes it very clear to everyone hearing that they are speaking of the God of the Jewish religion.
Peter in his introduction calls Jesus the Servant of God. Servant is one of the names of Jesus that we tend to over look. The Jewish audience at the time would have likely been familiar with Isaiah 52:13-53:12 where the Messiah is spoken of as the Servant of God, so for them it would be less of a jump. Today’s focus is on how we can serve Jesus better, and what we can do for His Kingdom. It is not that this is a bad focus, indeed it is a good thing to offer ourselves in service to God, but in doing so we may over look that Jesus came to serve us.
Now some may balk at that, but Jesus himself said, “For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve.” (Mark 10:45) Further more he said to Peter if he did not allow Jesus to serve him, he would have no part with Jesus (John 13:8). He also said to all believers in general that with out Him, you could do nothing. (John 15:5). Notice He did not say apart from him things would be hard; he said they would be impossible. Later in our study through Acts we will see that God does not need our service (Acts 17:25) and if we think back to Isaiah 64:6 we will remember that our works are nothing but filthy rags to Him.
So in light of this, how should be properly understand service? When faced with scriptures that are hard to understand, it is always best turn our gazes back on the face of God Himself, and interpret them in the light of our best understanding of His nature. When we do that we should remember that one of the primary jobs of Christians is to bring glory to God.
Keeping that in mind, lets consider a fairly normal situation. Say I was to loose my job, and my family fell on very hard times because of it. Now, through this job lose God leads me to a new and better job where my family is much better off (not necessarily monetarily, there is much more to life then that) then we were before. God has served me by getting me into a better position in life. As a Christian, my proper response would be to offer praise and to give God all the glory. I would tell my friends and neighbors that God got us through it, and that God got me a better job. See it is natural that the one that does the service is the one that gets the honor. Since I was served, it was not of my power, and I was helpless with out His service. This fits well with what we read in Psalm 50:15, “Call upon Me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you, and you shall glorify Me.” It may help your understanding to ask yourself this question, “Who would be glorified if I solved all my problems myself?”
You cannot truly serve God the Father, unless God the Son serves you. With out the power and strength that Jesus provides. As Peter explains for us, “If anyone speaks, let him speak as the oracles of God. If anyone ministers, let him do it as with the ability which God supplies, that in all things God may be glorified through Jesus Christ, to whom belong the glory and the dominion forever and ever.” (1 Peter 4:11) Its not that God is glorified through all things we do, but all things we do through Christ. It is Christ’s service to us that gives us the ability to serve and glorify God.
This servant nature of Christ should be a convicting model for us as believers. When Christ serves us, we have the ability to serve God who gets all the glory. If the Most High humbles Himself down and serves us, how much more so should we who are nothing but filthy rags humble ourselves to serve others? It will be through this service that the lost will see God and ultimately connecting the lost to their savior is one of our primary objectives in life.
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