Acts 3:1–11

In the first century, being paralyzed or physically disabled often meant you would be destined to a life of poverty and begging. In this sermon, R.C. Sproul takes us to the Beautiful Gate in Jerusalem to tell the story of a man whose life was dramatically changed when he encountered the healing power of Jesus manifested through the Apostles.

Transcript
We will continue this morning with our study of the book of Acts. I am going to read from Acts 3:1–11:

Now Peter and John went up together to the temple at the hour of prayer, the ninth hour. And a certain man lame from his mother’s womb was carried, whom they laid daily at the gate of the temple which is called Beautiful, to ask alms from those who entered the temple; who, seeing Peter and John about to go into the temple, asked for alms. And fixing his eyes on him, with John, Peter said, “Look at us.” So he gave them his attention, expecting to receive something from them. Then Peter said, “Silver and gold I do not have, but what I do have I give you: In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk.” And he took him by the right hand and lifted him up, and immediately his feet and ankle bones received strength. So he, leaping up, stood and walked and entered the temple with them—walking, leaping, and praising God. And all the people saw him walking and praising God. Then they knew that it was he who sat begging alms at the Beautiful Gate of the temple; and they were filled with wonder and amazement at what had happened to him.

Now as the lame man who was healed held on to Peter and John, all the people ran together to them in the porch which is called Solomon’s, greatly amazed.

He who has ears to hear the Word of God, let him hear this narrative. Let us pray.

Father, would that we had been eyewitnesses to this astonishing event that took place by the Gate Beautiful. We pray that the impact of it will reach down through the centuries even to this morning to touch our lives. For we ask it in Christ’s name. Amen.

A Fixture of the City
The city of Amsterdam in the Netherlands received its name because of a dam built along the Amstel River. The city was built in concentric circles around this dam, and it is a major European metropolis to this day. Vesta and I and our daughter Sherrie journeyed to Holland for my graduate work and lived twenty-five miles outside the city in a small Dutch village. It was my custom to commute to the University of Amsterdam by train from the outskirts of the little village into the hub of the city, Central Station.

In those days, the Free University of Amsterdam was located downtown, right around the corner from the Anne Frank House. Today the university is out in the suburbs and the old site is no longer functioning as a university.

As I got off the train in Amsterdam, I would walk down the main street, first across a bridge and then down toward the dam, and then make a turn to go to the university. Every day that I went across the bridge, I passed a beggar. He was seated on the side of the bridge on the road with his collection basket. I could not pass him without dropping some coins, small alms, as it were, into his collection basket. When I was finished my residency in Amsterdam and returned to the United States, I went back to Holland four years later. I came into Central Station, got off the train, walked across the bridge, and the same man was still there, still begging. I still gave him some coins.

On that trip, we bought a memento. We purchased one of those large picture books that celebrate various cities—Prague, London, Rome—for your coffee table. I bought this big picture book of Amsterdam, and as I was going through the pages, I saw a photograph of the bridge, and sure enough, there was the same man, sitting with his hands out, waiting for alms. In other words, he was a fixture of the city. It is a story like that which we read here in the New Testament about a man, a fixture by the Gate Beautiful, who encountered Peter and John. Let us look at the text.

Peter and John at the Temple
Luke begins, “Now Peter and John went up together to the temple at the hour of prayer.” One of the things that jumps out at me as I read this text is the company being kept in it. This was Peter, who betrayed Jesus only a few weeks earlier at His crucifixion, now going side by side with his companion John, who stayed with Jesus because he was at the foot of the cross when Jesus commended the care of His mother, Mary, into John’s hands. The one who fled was working together with the one who remained loyal to Jesus at His death.

The second thing we see is that they went to the temple. The separation of the Christian community from the Jewish community took many years to accomplish. It was not finalized until the year AD 70 with the destruction of the temple and Jerusalem. But when we read further in the book of Acts, we will see that when Paul went on his missionary journeys, it was his custom to go first into the synagogue and participate in relationships there.

In the first century church, before the Judaizing heresy became a threat to the very life of Christendom, the early Apostles went to the temple to pray. There were different times of the day established for prayers. This time was the ninth hour, which was the time for evening prayers, at three o’clock in the afternoon. So, we get details from Luke about where they were, at what time, and what was going on.

The Beggar Born Lame
Luke continues, “And a certain man, lame from his mother’s womb was carried, whom they laid daily at the gate of the temple which is called Beautiful.” Luke gives us a description of the sight and the situation of the person involved in the narrative.

First, let us look at the description of the man himself. Luke, being a physician, is careful to give us significant details about this occasion. There are many ways in which people can become lame, such as through disease or accidents. There are people in our congregation who, for this reason or that, have lost the use of their legs. They can remember what it was like to walk. They can remember what it was like to run. They can remember what it was like to leap with joy, but those days are gone, as they are now confined to wheelchairs or worse. But the man in our text had a congenital lameness. He was born lame. Never in his life had he stood on his own two feet unaided. Never in his life had he experienced what we take for granted, such as leisurely strolls down the street.

I’m greatly moved when we take up the offering at Saint Andrew’s Chapel and I see one of our members rolling down the aisle in his wheelchair with the collected offering plate on his lap, singing praises to God. What a testimony that is to the faith of the man and to the grace of God.

The man Peter and John encountered had never stood, never walked, and never run or jumped. He was only carried. Every day, this man’s friends or family carried him to the gate that separated the court of the Gentiles from the court of the Jews and sat him by it. Carrying him to the gate took effort because not only was the temple elevated but the stairs between the courts made the court of the Jews even higher, so it was a difficult task to carry somebody there. They did not have elevators in those days. Regardless of the difficulty, they carried the man and put him by the Gate Beautiful.

Josephus tells us in vivid terms what the second temple looked like. This was the temple built by Herod. It was one of the wonders of the ancient world, and all the doors and gates within the temple complex were huge and beautiful. But this particular gate was called the Beautiful Gate or the Gate Beautiful because, though made of bronze, the interior of the door was covered with silver and gold. It was a portico of magnificent opulence. Next to that symbol of wealth they laid the poor beggar so that people who walked past him, who were entering through the Gate Beautiful and coming to the inner courtyard of the Jews, would be moved to compassion by his pitiable condition and give him alms.

I might add parenthetically that the giving of alms in Old Testament Israel and in New Testament Christianity was a practice that God expected His people to practice. One of the surviving documents of the second century, the short book called the Didache, or the “Teaching of the Apostles,” gives us a summary of Christian duty and obligation and obedience and stresses the generous giving of alms.

An Astonishing Event
The man born lame saw Peter and John about to come into the temple, and he asked them for alms. Peter and John looked at him, and Peter said to the man, “Look at us.” Imagine being in this man’s place, and in your pain and debilitated state, two strangers come by, and they make eye contact. That itself is significant. Watch what people do with their eyes when they see a beggar on the street. The most normal human reaction to the presence of a beggar is to avert your gaze and to look the other way as if the person did not exist.

If any man was accustomed to watching people approach him and look the other way, it was the poor beggar in this text. But when Peter and John came, they did not avert their gaze. They looked directly at him. They made eye contact with him, and they emphasized that eye contact by saying to him, “Look at us.”

“So the man,” we read, “gave them his attention, expecting to receive something from them.” When the beggar heard somebody say, “Look at me,” he looked at him and watched his hands. He was watching for the money that would come. He was now in a state of eager anticipation and expectation of what he would get from the two men who approached him. It was on this occasion that Peter expressed the immortal words, “Silver and gold I do not have, but what I do have I give you: In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk.”

The man’s heart sank at the first portion of what Peter said: “I don’t have any money. Silver and gold have we none.” The man was likely thinking: “Well then why are you looking at me, and what are you telling me to look at you? You filled my heart with expectation only to tell me that you have no money. What help can you possibly give?” But Peter continued, “I don’t have any money, but what I have I’m going to give to you. In the name of Jesus of Nazareth, rise up and walk.”

Then an astonishing event took place. We read, “And he”—that is, Peter—“took him by the right hand and lifted him up.” He told the man, “Rise and walk.” The man was thinking: “Rise and walk…? Is this your idea of a cruel joke?”

Peter reached down, took the beggar by the hand, and helped him to his feet. Immediately, we are told by sacred Scripture, power and strength came into his ankles and legs, and where moments before, his legs were useless limbs, he could now stand.

You may have seen small colts on the ground brought to their feet for the first time with their skinny, spindly legs, and they get up, and you do not know if they are going to remain standing very long. The beggar was tentative at first, but he took a step, then he took another step. For the first time in his life, he experienced what it means to walk. When that happened, he started jumping and leaping and praising God. What an incredible moment.

The beggar was no staged plant for a healing service. This man was known by everyone in the temple complex, because like my friend, the beggar on the road from the Central Station in Amsterdam, he was there every day, and everybody knew he could not walk.

The Power of Christ
Centuries later, the great theologian Thomas Aquinas visited Rome and had an audience with Pope Innocent II. Thomas was amazed by the opulence of the Vatican in that day. This was prior to the building of Saint Peter’s, but even then, it was a glorious headquarters for the church, filled with riches. Innocent II was proud of the riches of the church, and he said to Saint Thomas, “Thomas, no longer do we say, ‘Silver and gold have we none.’” Thomas looked at Innocent II and said, “Maybe that’s why we can no longer say, ‘Rise up and walk.’”

I love Thomas Aquinas, and Thomas may have had a point in saying that to the Pope, but it was not because of the church’s riches that the church lost its power to heal people like the Apostles had done. It was because that was a power invested by Christ in His Apostles to establish the church in the first place. Thomas knew that, but I guess he could not miss the opportunity to chide his holiness for the opulence of the church. But whatever the power the church had in the twelfth or thirteenth century and wherever it was invested, we see the power of Christ that was invested in His Apostles as we have read of it this morning.

The beggar, from the touch of the Apostle Peter in the name of Christ, leaped up, stood, walked, and entered the temple, which he had never entered before. Luke records it as follows:

So he, leaping up, stood and walked and entered the temple—walking, leaping, and praising God. And all the people saw him walking and praising God. Then they knew that it was he who sat begging alms at the Beautiful Gate of the temple; and they were filled with wonder and amazement at what had happened to him.

Now as the lame man who was healed held on to Peter and John, all the people ran together to them in the porch which is called Solomon’s, greatly amazed.

The event we have just read about became the provocation for the second famous sermon of Peter. We finished the first one two weeks ago, and God willing, next week we will begin a study of Peter’s second sermon, which was provoked not after the church was filled by the Holy Ghost at Pentecost but by the bystanders in the temple who were filled with amazement at the power of the name of Jesus.

This transcript has been lightly edited for readability.