Handicapped Praise & A Dead Gazelle

How much do we really know about the Word of God? How much do we really know as believers? How much do you know this morning about your own faith? How much do you know about today, about the fact that it's Palm Sunday? How much do we really know and understand about the things of the Lord? These following Bible stories were written by real students, Sunday school students,

and were printed in December of 95 in the National Review magazine.

Noah built an ark which the animals came on to in pairs, P-E-A-R-S. Another one writes, Lot's fire was a pillar of salt by day, but a ball of fire by night. Another student writes, The Jews were a proud people, and throughout history they had trouble with the unsympathetic genitals. Samson was a strong man who let himself be led astray by a Jezebel like Delilah.

That was clever. Samson slayed the Philistines with the axe of the apostles. Another one writes, Moses led the Hebrews to the Red Sea where they made unleavened bread, which is bread made without any ingredients. Another one writes, The Egyptians were all drowned in the desert. That was a miracle. Afterwards, Moses went up on Mount Sinai to get the Ten Amendments.

Playing off of that one, another student writes, The first commandment was when Eve told Adam to eat the apple. The fifth commandment, one writes, is to humor thy father and thy mother. Get that one, kids. Understand that one. The seventh commandment is thou shalt not admit adultery. Prevalent in our nation today. Another one says, Moses died before he ever reached Canada,

and then Joshua led the Hebrews in the Battle of Jerital. Another one writes, The greatest miracle in the Bible was when Joshua told his son to stand still, and he obeyed him. Parents can relate to that one. David was a Hebrew king skilled at playing the lyre. L-I-A-R. That's clever. We've been seeing that in our study in Samuel on Wednesday nights. Another one writes,

David fought with the Finkelsteins, a race of people who lived in biblical times. Solomon, one of David's sons,

One of the apostles was St. Matthew, who was, by profession, a taxi man. And finally, one wrote, St. Paul cavorted to Christianity. He preached holy acrimony, which is another name for marriage. And a Christian should have only one wife, and this is called monotony. Well, how much do we really know about God's Word? How much do we really think we understand

about what the Lord desires from us? How much do we understand about the days that we celebrate in Christendom, like today? This past week, I had the privilege of doing chapel for our school, and I asked the kids that question this week. I asked them, Do you know what special day is coming up this Sunday? And a lot of them just immediately said Easter. And I said, No, that's next Sunday.

That's a week from this Sunday. What special day is coming up this coming Sunday? And they were quiet for a minute, and one girl raised her hand and said, Is it Palm Sunday? And I said, That's right. And what happened on Palm Sunday? And then several of them said, Well, that's when the people wave palm branches when Jesus was coming down into Jerusalem. And I said, That's right.

And why did they do that? And they were quiet. You know, we know a lot about it, but a lot about things of the Scripture, but why a lot of times kind of holds us up. Let me exhort you, Know not only what you believe, but what it means and why you believe it. And so I got to tell them that that was a sign of victory in that culture. It was a sign of the king returning from battle victorious,

and the people would, like we have ticker tape parades and throw confetti, and we have banners out, you know, Welcome home, you know, Kentucky or whatever, basketball people. They waved palm branches. And when Jesus came down the pathway from the Mount of Olives across the Kidron Brook and across the Kidron Valley and up into Jerusalem, they waved palm branches and laid those palm branches in front of his donkey just as we would roll a red carpet out for a dignitary. And it signified they were recognizing him as king.

They were seeing him as the one come in the name of the Lord. And that's the significance that Jesus was coming into Jerusalem, but that was not going to be received as king. Ultimately, it was to die on a cross. And I told them that, and I said, You know, it's interesting that you would think that, that that's what Palm Sunday signifies. Why do you believe that that event really happened?

Why do you believe that that really took place? And they were quick to say, Well, because it says so in the Bible. And I asked them, Well, why do you believe that this book wasn't just written by some guy over a weekend who didn't have anything better to do? How come you think God wrote it? And we started off that session with 2 Timothy 3.16, that all Scripture is God-breathed.

And they said, they pointed right back to that, and I said, Because that's what it says. It says it's God-breathed. It came out from God. God wrote it. And I said, Good. Good for you. That's because God did write it. But there's a tendency for us to neglect it for some reason. There's a tendency to not look at it as God-breathed and living for today and profitable for us

for doctrine and reproof and rebuke and instruction in righteousness. It seems to be just something to kind of do if you kind of want to. And so we miss out on so much of God's Word because we take it for granted and don't look at it as His living Word. And I took them to Genesis chapter 5, and maybe you're aware of that, and maybe you're not. But in Genesis chapter 5,

chapter 5 is the 10 generations of man, the first 10 generations of man from Adam to Noah. And it lists not only the ages of each and how long they lived, but if you take the names of Adam and each of his subsequent generation of sons and write out their meaning, write out the Hebrew meaning of their name, in those first 10 generations you actually have given to you the gospel just by the derivation of the names of the first 10 generations. That man was estranged by God, dead in sin, but the mighty God came down bringing the disparaging hope. All of that just in 10 names.

And then we went to Numbers chapter 2, and I showed them what we showed here a couple of years ago at Easter. Numbers can be a boring book because it's just numbers. So many hundred thousand of these and 50,000 of those. But we showed a couple of years ago in chapter 2 it shows how the Hebrews camped when they were in the wilderness and how they would set up the tent of the meeting in the center when the smoke or the fire would stop, when God would stop, and they would set up the tabernacle.

And then they would camp. I mean you've got 3 million people, you've got to know where to put them. They need to know where to go or you've got camping problems that you can't fathom. And so Numbers chapter 2 shows us where they camped. And they were told, these three under this banner and these three under this banner off to the west and these three off to the north

and these three off to the south. And we showed last time how the numbers, the way they were distributed, would have had them camping in the shape of a cross all the way through the wilderness. And not only that, but in the center of that is the altar, the brazen altar of sacrifice. And so while they were camped, they would be doing all the sacrifices so that when they would pull up stakes and move, embedded in the ground would not only be the shape of a cross, but right in the center where Jesus' side was pierced would be the blood stained on the ground all the way through the wilderness from Egypt all the way to Canaan.

God left His impression, left His imprint. What was He doing? He was redeeming man from sin through the cross of Jesus Christ. And I told them, if we just do a cursory reading of Scripture, if we just read it to crank it out to get through some chapters, we're missing so much in how we need to spend time with the Lord to really understand what we think we know about the Scripture.

And that's true here in chapter 9. As we come to the end of chapter 9, just these few verses from 32 to the end of the chapter, it looks like it's just a simple recounting of a couple of events in the early church, just a narrative of those two events. And it is. I don't want to take away from the simplicity of that. It is a narrative. The whole book of Acts is a narrative.

It's Luke narrating to us what happened. Part of it was related to him from Peter and some of the other disciples. And part of it, as we get to it, you'll see that he experienced himself and he includes himself in that. And we'll see the pronouns change from they to we. We did this and we did that and we went here and we went there. So it's a narrative. And so you take it literally.

And that's one of the first principles of hermeneutics. Hermeneutics is simply the science of interpretation. And when you apply the hermeneutical principles to Scripture, the first principle is if something can be understood literally, then read it that way. Understand it literally. And so we do that. This is a literal event that happened or two literal events that happened.

The people involved, Aeneas and Dorcas, were literal people. Aeneas was sick. He was in bed for eight years because of a paralysis. Dorcas was a literal person, a real person, who literally died. Peter is one of the apostles who literally came to Lydda and in the name of Jesus healed Aeneas and who went to Joppa and who prayed and literally raised Dorcas from the dead.

And it says in the text there, and many people turned to the Lord as a result of that. That's the basic simple truth of this text. That's the basic application of this text. And if you go to commentaries and you read what a commentary has to say on this, every commentary says the same thing that this is what happened. And they look at it simply as a narrative.

But I think that there can be more that God can speak to our hearts in any part of His Word. Just as reading numbers shows us that those were the numbers that were there. They camped there on those sides of the tabernacle. That's literally what happened. That's true. But in pondering it, you can see what more you can see, what the Lord shows you as far as what He's doing.

If we simply take the time to get to know Him, simply take the time to spend some time with Him and ask Him, Lord, what are You doing? What do You want me to see? And so I want us to do that this morning. Now remember, another thing that you do in hermeneutics is you ask questions of the text. And I've tried to teach us that over the years. When you come to a text,

when you come to an area of Scripture that you read, God is going to speak to you initially, individually. And so ask Him, Lord, what do You want me to see? What are You telling me out of this text? And one of the first things you ask, of course, is who's writing this? I need to have an understanding of the author, original author, and what He was seeking to communicate.

So who wrote this text, Lord? And so as we come to chapter 9 and we're looking at the end of chapter 9, you ask that question, who wrote the text? And who wrote this text? The Holy Spirit wrote it, I know, but the person. Who wrote the book of Acts? Luke. Luke wrote this text. What was Luke by profession? He was a doctor. Okay. So now remember that. Luke, who was a doctor,

recorded this section. Now, what we know about Luke and what we know about doctors, up to this point in the book of Acts, has Luke been writing just generalities about things or has Luke been specific in his writing? He's been specific. Doctors tend to be detail people. Very specific. Because they're looking for the cause of disease. They're looking for the cause of these things.

And so they're very particular and very specific. They choose their words carefully because one wrong otheth, you know, you know, alysis or, you know, disease, parosis or conitosis or whatever, osis, you know, can mean something totally different from something else. And so they choose their words. Now, the Holy Spirit wrote the Word of God. I understand that.

But he uses the personalities of the individuals. He didn't just come upon people and they fall into this trance, which a lot of people think. And that's wrong thinking. They weren't in a biblical trance and ghosts wrote the scriptures. God used their personalities, which is exciting. And so God used Luke to write this section. So, a question. Lord, why did Luke single out

these two individuals to write about right here at the end of the time of Paul's conversion? That's what all of chapter 9 deals with up to this point. Now, I realize that when they translated the scripture for our benefit, they added the chapter divisions and the verses. This wasn't in here when Luke wrote it originally. But in his original writing, he comes to the end of this dealing with Paul.

They send Paul off to Tarsus. The church lives in peace and grows in number, living in the fear of the Lord. And then all of a sudden, boom! And as Peter traveled about the country, all of a sudden we're talking about Peter. And why now did he write about these two individuals? Is there some specific reason, Lord, that you had Luke write about these two or about these two cases?

Now, Peter, he's writing about Peter, and he says, as Peter traveled about the country. Peter, you'll notice in just these few verses is moving up the coast. He's left Jerusalem and he's out now moving up the coast along the Mediterranean and if you remember back about Philip when we talked about Philip leaving Samaria and he came down to the road that travels from Jerusalem to Gaza where he met the eunuch and led him to the Lord and after he baptizes him the spirit carries him and he finds himself in Azotus. Azotus is over on the west coast. It's over on the western side of Israel

and presumably from this time well it tells us that Philip then went on up the coast to Caesarea and witnessed. He told about the Lord in every town that he stopped at and so presumably he planted churches all up the coast from Azotus up to Caesarea and so Peter comes and it says it says he went to visit the saints in Lydda so he knows that there's churches established there and so he's over along the coast visiting seeking to help strengthen the churches so as he went to those churches don't you suppose that other miracles happened other than these two? Do you think do you think that that Aeneas is the only person that he healed or that God healed through him or is Dorcas the only person that

was raised from the dead by Peter's ministry up the coast? I doubt it. You go back to Acts chapter 6 and we find Stephen who's been raised up as a deacon not only serving tables but remember it told us that he was that God did many miracles through Stephen just as he was doing through the apostles he was confirming the move of God in the giving of God's spirit through Stephen as well as he was the apostle so Stephen was obviously seeing people healed and possibly people raised from the dead through his ministry. Then as we followed Philip up to Samaria same kind of thing was happening the miracles were happening so I assume that Peter who's an apostle instead of a B-postle, Peter moving up the coast is seeing the same kind of thing happen

experiencing the move of God. Why did Luke then just write about these two? Is there something significant Lord that that stood out to Luke that you impressed upon his heart to write about these two encounters evidently because they're there out of probably many that he could have written about. So why just these two individuals? Well then you stop to consider

what you know about God's Word, what you've seen him do in his Word before. Is God a stickler for order? We know that's a fact from the universe. Everything is orderly in God's universe and from what we know about the Word as we've been through other sections we know that everything has a purpose, everything has an order. I've mentioned before that the rabbis

believe when Messiah comes he's not only going to explain the words of the Torah, the words of the Word of God but the spaces in between the words. They realize that God is so detailed he not only wrote what he wrote or had written what he had written but he had reasons for spacing it the way that he did. That's a question that I, Lord why did you stick this right at the end of the thing about Paul? God's going to answer those things. I believe that. He's a God of order.

Nothing is in here that's not strategically placed for us to understand that God gives us the understanding of. So you ask him, God do you have a reason for this order that you put this in here? Is there a reason? Why these two and why not Dorcas first and then Aeneas? Why was it Aeneas and then Dorcas? Well if you're going up the coast of course Lydda is ten miles south of Joppa so

strategically, geographically he's moving up the coast he was to Lydda first. He ran into Aeneas first. But could there be something more by the order? Yes there could be just like in Genesis 5 with the ten generations from Adam to Noah and how that order of their names spells out the gospel. There's order here. Same thing in the book of Revelation. The seven churches are there in order. They were seven literal churches

that existed at the time but I believe their order in which Jesus tells John to write to them shows a strategic order of the church age down through history. All of these types and attitudes of the seven churches in Revelation were prevalent during each part of the church age but there was a predominant part. The smirn of the suffering church was very predominant in the earlier centuries. It's not true that the church is suffering in many parts of the world right now but the extent to which it suffered was back in the early part of the church greater than it is right now.

So each stage of the church age has a predominant characteristic of one of those seven churches. We're in the seventh part of the church age. The predominant characteristic is Laodicea, the church of Laodicea. So God recorded those in an order for a reason. So he must have had Luke write down these two accounts for a reason. Well let's go back. Another thing you should do when you're looking through the word and you have the

time to do it is consider the names. Lord, when you name someone you name it for a reason. Either a town or a person. Why did you put these two occurrences here? So if you have a study Bible or a Bible encyclopedia you look up the name Annius. And in your study Bible, both of them are listed here I think, in your study Bible, the name Annius means praise. And then if you look at the name

Tabitha, which also translated it says is Dorcas, if you have a footnote it'll tell you that Tabitha is Aramaic and Dorcas is Greek and they both mean gazelle. Now if you actually took time to look at your bulletin this morning, which I know most people don't, but if you did, you notice that you have a place for Bible study notes where you can take notes and at the top of that we usually list what the study is and the scriptures that we're going to be in so you can know where we're going to be. And if you did take time to look at that this morning, you notice that the title of today's study is Handicapped Praise and a Dead Gazelle. And you should have come in and looked at that and gone, what in the world

is he doing? This is Palm Sunday. Don't you know this is Palm Sunday? What are we talking about handicapped praise and a dead gazelle? Well, you're beginning to see because Annius' name means praise and Dorcas' name means gazelle. So that has something to do with it. Now, the question you can ask is, am I spiritualizing this? Am I pulling out of this more than God intended for us to see?

Am I bringing this way out of line other than He wanted us to just see it as a narrative? I don't think so. I may be. If I am, then just pray for me. But bear with me through this because I do think that there's something for us to see. Okay, let's look at Annius and Dorcas. Let's look at praise and the gazelle. What do we know in these couple verses about Annius?

Well, we know that his name means praise and that according to the text, verse 33 tells us that he in NIV, it says he was a paralytic who had been bedridden for eight years. If you're reading another version, I think King James says he was sick with the palsy for eight years and he's bedridden. So he's been bedridden because of palsy or a paralytic disease and palsy allowed to go to its full extent will render you crippled because you finally, you just can't control the muscles and anything anymore and you just, you finally become bedridden. So it was some kind of a paralysis or some kind of a palsy that rendered him bedridden. So

Annius' name is praise and he has become handicapped because of this paralysis or this palsy. So I could phrase this as and just tell you that old praise is handicapped, right? I could say that. This guy named praise is handicapped. What causes a paralysis? What results when you have a paralysis? Now this is just thinking through. If we're looking at a text like this and we're thinking, Luke wrote it, Luke's a doctor

and we're talking about a guy who's a paralytic, well then let's see, Luke would know that. Paralysis is usually caused from brain waves or nerve impulses which are stimulated from the brain. Brain waves stimulate nerves which send impulses through the spine and send it to different areas of the body and paralysis occurs when those waves have been hindered. When the brain waves, brain waves or the nerve impulses are hindered, they can't get to a certain part of the body, either from a spinal cord injury or from a deterioration due to disease. You have paralysis which is the hindering

of brain waves. So, hindered brain waves have resulted in handicapped praise here. Praise being handicapped. And Luke would know about that, again, because he's a doctor. He would understand the scientific aspect of the paralysis. Again, so let me say, we could say that hindered brain waves resulted in handicapped praise. Okay, now I'm going to spiritualize a little. Now I'm going to bring in a spiritual application.

Hindered brain waves.

Please hold your finger here and go with me back to Luke. Luke's Gospel, chapter 19. Luke's Gospel, chapter 19. Again, we'll stay with Dr. Luke for a couple of chapters just to kind of tie some of this together. Luke chapter 19, again with the idea that hindered brain waves result in paralysis, result in handicapped praise. Luke chapter 19, the end of the chapter, towards the end of the chapter, beginning in verse 41,

deals with Palm Sunday, the entrance of our Lord into Jerusalem. Verse 41 in Luke 19 says, And as Jesus approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it and said, If you, even you, had only, what? Known, understood, known. If you had only known on this day, NIV, what would bring you peace? But now it is hidden from your eyes. The days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment against

you and encircle you and hem you in on every side. They will dash you to the ground, you and the children within your walls. They will not leave one stone on another. Why? Because you did not, and the word in NIV is recognized, it's the same word from up above, it's the same word, know. Because you did not know, NIV says, the time of God's coming to you. King James

says, the time of your visitation. Why is this time of judgment coming? Why is Jesus rebuking them as he stands over Jerusalem, ready to come down the Palm Sunday road? Why does he weep and rebuke them? Because they have hindered brainwaves, something they should have discerned, something they should have known from the Word of God. How would they know that? Well, we've gone through this before. You go back to Daniel

chapter 9. Daniel was in captivity in Babylon, and he had gotten a hold of the scroll of Jeremiah, and he'd read Jeremiah's prophecy that God was going to send Israel into captivity for a 70-year period as judgment upon them for forsaking the Sabbath days. And Jeremiah brings that out, and Daniel's starting to figure, and he figures up, we've been here about 70 years. Lord, is it time for you to let us go back to Israel, back to the promised land? And he prays, and he asks

God, Lord, are you through now? Is this the end of your dealing with this nation of Israel in judgment? And Gabriel brings God's answer to Daniel, and he tells him in chapter 9, no, there's a 490-year period of judgment that's been determined upon the nation of Israel. Seventy-sevens are determined upon the nation of Israel. To bring an end to sin, to bring about peace, to set up and

anoint the Most Holy, and to realize the Most Holy One. He's talking specifically to the nation of Israel, to the city of Jerusalem, to the rebuilding of Jerusalem, to the recognizing of the holy place again, and the anointing of the Holy One, to put an end to sin. God says there's a 490-year period. Then he goes through the rest of that chapter and breaks down what's going to happen from the time of the decree to go and restore and rebuild Jerusalem until the coming of Messiah the Prince shall be 62 sevens. And exactly according to

history, that's how long it took. 62 times seven years. And Jerusalem was rebuilt from the time of the command given by Artaxerxes, March 6th, 445 BC, until the coming of Messiah the Prince. 63 sevens. One seven and 62 sevens is how it's broken up in Daniel, but 63 seven. There's one week of years, one week of sevens, one seven-year period that's missing. But until the time of the coming

of Messiah the Prince was to be seven sevens and 62 sevens. And Jesus is saying here, if only you'd done your homework in chapter 19. If only you'd taken time to take God's Word seriously and figure it out, get into a relationship with Him and discern the times you would know on this thy day, it says. But you didn't know. Hindered brainwaves. Because you didn't know Him. You were playing at your

religion. And He had the harshest rebukes for the Pharisees, for the teachers of the law, for those who thought they knew best. Those who thought they knew the stories the best. They didn't know. You're in chapter 19, go to chapter 23 of Luke. Chapter 23 brings us to the time of the crucifixion, which we celebrate this Friday in Christendom. We call it Good Friday. The only thing good about it is

that Jesus redeemed us when He died on the cross. It was a horrible time. It was a horrible day. Luke chapter 23. Look at verse 32 in chapter 23. Two other men, both criminals, were also led out with Him to be executed. When they came to the place called the Skull, or called Golgotha, there they crucified Him along with the criminals, one on His right, the other on His left. And Jesus said, Father

forgive them for they do not... what? They do not know. There's that brain fade again. Hindered brainwaves. They didn't know something they should have. They do not know what they're doing. And they casted, or they divided up His clothes by casting lots. Father forgive them. They didn't know. They didn't know. Handicapped praise comes from hindered brainwaves. Go to John now, chapter 17. John chapter 17.

John chapter 17 is what is truly the Lord's Prayer. This is the prayer that Jesus prayed for us, for His disciples, and for all of those, it says, who would believe on account of their testimony. So that includes us. This is a prayer that the Lord prayed for us before He went to the cross. John chapter 17. Look at verse 1. Father, the time has come. Glorify Your Son, that Your Son may glorify You. For

You granted Him authority over all people, that He might give eternal life to all those You have given Him. Now verse 3. Now this is eternal life. And there's a colon in our language, in our text, which means He's going to define that for us. This is what eternal life is. You've given them eternal life. And now this is what eternal life is. It's not a quantity. It's not a

sum of years. It's not thousands or millions or billions of eons or years. That's not what eternity is. It has nothing to do with time. It has everything to do with location and understanding. This is eternal life, He says, that they may, and there it is again, know You. Eternal life, and the word there for know in the Greek is an experiential knowledge. Not that you just

know Bible stories about Jesus. Not that you just know the Easter story that He came in on Palm Sunday and went to the cross on Friday and was raised again from the dead on Sunday. Not that you just are able to spit back out the facts, but that you experience Him as you would experience a relationship with a brother or sister. As you would carry on conversation, and you're there, and you see their emotion, and you're concerned for them, and you feel their pain, and you experience their joy, and you know, you can tell when they're sad. You're

experiencing that relationship with somebody else. That's the know that He's talking about. This is eternal life, is to know God that way, and the Son, Jesus, He says, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. That's eternal life. And that doesn't begin when you die or at the rapture. It begins the moment you come into a saving grace relationship with Jesus Christ. The moment you said,

yes, Lord, save me based on the shed blood of Jesus on the cross. The moment you said that, you received eternal life. You received an opportunity now to know Him. You will live eternally somewhere. That fact is not in dispute. You will either live eternally with the Lord or separated from Him. You have an eternal existing body. But eternal life, true life, only comes from an experiential

knowing of God the Father, and you know Him through the Son who reveals Him to us. That's eternal life, knowing Him. One last place to go before we go back to Acts is go to 1 John, which is clear to the right. If you come to the table of content or the index, you've gone too far. Go back through Revelation and then to 3 John, 2 John, 1 John, 1 John chapter 2. Go to 1 John

chapter 2. Always been an intriguing section in 1 John to me. Chapter 2. First John chapter 2, then down to verse 12. Just listen as you're turning. 1 John chapter 2, verse 12. John says, I write to you, dear children, because your sins have been forgiven on account of His name. Now the word that he uses there for dear children is a word that indicates an infant or a baby. I write to you spiritual babies. I write to you infants,

newborns. You're just freshly born again. I write to you and you're in that new stage of coming into the body of Christ. You're just excited about what God has saved you from, that you've been redeemed. A whole new world is open to you. You're excited about the life that you're going to have in Christ now and you're saved from hell and from the old ways. The old is gone. The new has come. You're excited about that freshness, excited

about that newness. He says, I write to you. I believe this is talking. These verses, 12 through 14, are indicating levels of growth in your walk, levels of maturity as you mature as a believer. When you first come to Christ, there's that excitement about the fact that your sins have been forgiven. He says that. I write to you, dear children, because your sins have been forgiven on account of His name. You understand that and you're excited

about that. Then he says in verse 13, I write to you fathers, those of you older in the faith. Why? Because you have known Him. What is eternal life? This is the eternal life that you may know Him, the only true God, and His Son, Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. You grow in your spiritual maturity with the Lord not by the number of years that you crack off.

I don't care if you've been saved for 40, 50 years. Numbers mean nothing. Do you know Him? I don't care how many Bible verses you've memorized. I don't care how many Sunday school stories you know and can tell me about Samson and that Jezebel DeLava. Do you know Him? Are you experiencing His presence every second, every moment? Do you walk in that? You see,

that takes time. There's growth that comes in that. From the yippee, wahoo, I'm new in Christ to the time when you hit the wall and you have sickness or death in your family, or you have an incapacitating illness, and God has to become real to you in the midst of that, whether He heals you or not, and you can touch Him again and you realize His presence and you trust Him and He brings you through that one, and then there's another one, and then another one, and then another one, and you've grown to know Him to where the experiences around you are second to experiencing Him. The circumstances around you that seem to press in are secondary to my knowing Him, to my walking with Him. I want to see Him

first thing in the morning. I want to know Him before I ever get out of bed because I know what's out there. When you come to that point and it takes time, that's spiritual maturity. And so He says, I write to you, fathers, because you've known Him who is from the beginning, who's been faithful past, He'll be faithful future, therefore He'll be faithful right now to you in the midst of whatever circumstances you're in. And He says, I write

to you, young men, now that's a different word in the Greek than the other word and it literally means your teen years or adolescent years, so you're growing in your faith. Now,

when you come from the point of being a newborn in the Lord, born again, and then you realize you have a spiritual nemesis, you realize you have an enemy, that Satan is against you and he will do everything to trip you up, but we have weapons of warfare. You're like any young kid with a new sword, you know, wow, okay, let's go conquer the world, man. And you're ready to get out there and you're ready to go fight evil wherever it is. Your family's locked up in evil and your friends are locked up in evil. They need to know Jesus.

And so you're going to go out there and you're going to fight the enemy and get through, cut through that darkness. And you realize spiritual battle. You come to an understanding that you battle, not flesh and blood, but a real enemy, a spiritual enemy. But you've been given the Word of God and the armor of God and the Spirit of God to battle that. And so you kind of get your feet wet doing that. And so he says, I write to you, teenagers,

because you've overcome the evil one. You're learning how to gain victory in the midst of those times of trial. You're exercising your spiritual strength. Then he says, I write to you, dear children. Now, that's different from the children in verse 12. It's a different word. It's a word that means literally students or disciples. You're a learner. You've moved

now from that area of initial infancy in your walk with the Lord to now you're a student. You're a learner. And I write to you, dear children, why? What have you learned? Because you've known the Father. You've come to that point now where you have experienced that relationship with Him and you've seen Him through that hard time. And you're becoming a student of that. And you want to learn more about it from His Word to be prepared

for the times that you'll actually have to walk through that. So you're a student of the Word. You're a studier. You're a disciple. You're a learner of the Word. And you've come through that time of beginning to experience Him. Then he says again, verse 14, I write to you, fathers, again, same word as back in verse 13. He says, I write to you, fathers, again, it says the same thing, because you have known Him who is from the beginning.

It's exciting when you first come to Christ, but look at those who've walked with Him and have come to know Him. And they're steadfast. They're still excited about the Lord, but they've got the weather-beaten look. They've been down the road with the Lord and the Lord's been faithful. They still have a joy. They still have a mellowness, a softness, soft-spoken

sweetness about them. But you can see they've been there. And you want to be there too. And you take up the weapons of your warfare to fight that enemy. You go fight each day and it's wearing and it's tiring, but God gives you strength and you experience that from Him. And you realize that and you want to learn more about Him so that you're not just out there wielding a sword, just swinging it at everything. And you become a learner

and you begin to know about Him so that as you walk, you can come to that point again of spiritual maturity. Those who have known the Father. Then he says, I write to you young men, again, just like the teens, because you are strong and because the Word of God lives

praise Him. It's a natural fact. If I have to tell you to praise the Lord, then we're just in a part of format of service. Let's praise the Lord together. Okay, time to praise the Lord, you know. And we go through this ritual format of praise. It's a time where we come together to corporately praise the Lord, but we shouldn't have to be told to praise Him. We just come and we're coming to praise Him because we've seen Him active

in our lives this week. We're acknowledging that collectively, corporately together. When you see Him, when you know Him, you just naturally will praise Him. Praise will be the natural byproduct of seeing Him, of being in His presence. When you go to the book of Revelation, chapter 4, John's caught up into the throne room. He sees the image of light on the throne.

He doesn't realize who it is yet. He knows it's the Lord. But he sees 24 elders seated around Him, 12 on each side. And what do the elders do? The first thing we see the elders do, which represent the Old and New Testament saints, they're falling down on their faces before Him in praise, casting their crowns at His feet in worship. Just seeing Him and knowing Him causes you to praise. If you're here this morning and the discouragement

and the complaining and the weight of the world is greater on you than anything else and you've just got this weight and it's bearing down, and you're just upset with everything, then your praise has been hindered. Your praise has become incapacitated. Your praise has become handicapped and lacking. And that's because your knowing of Him has been hindered. That's what it says. They did that to Him because they knew not what they were doing.

We don't know Him. We're not experiencing Him. Our praise is handicapped. Now what happens if we're in that state, if we realize this morning we're here and our praise is handicapped because I've got all these other things weighing down on me. I've got it's tax time and it's job pressure and I've got family problems. I've got a health problem and these things are weighing in on me. And I know my praise is hindered because

I'm going through all this stuff. Okay, let me ask you a question. What will happen to you? What's the natural progression? What will happen if you just let it go? If you know your praise is handicapped because you're not knowing Him, you're spending all your time with all this stuff here in the world, what will happen to you? Well, could I be so presumptuous as to say that that's the reason Luke recorded these two specific occurrences

in the last part of Acts chapter 9? Could it possibly be that if I let my praise be handicapped and continue to become more and more lethargic that I will end up spiritually like Dorcas, a dead gazelle? May I suggest to you that that's in fact indeed the case? What do we know about Dorcas? Well, we know that she had a lot of potential. We know that she was merciful. That phrase doing good there in verse 36 is she showed mercy. She had the

of the fallen angels and the children of men and they were producing this perverted gigantic race, demonic half-human, half-demon race. When Noah was born, the parents named him Noah. I'm sure it's God's instruction or encouragement, but his name means hope. Here you have Dorcas who was a gazelle. She was evidently quick in her ministry. She probably did everything fast as a child. Ate fast and whatever. As she grew, she was just constantly

ministering to others. Her gifts of mercy were obvious. When Peter comes, they take him up into the upper room where she's laid out and the widows are standing there showing her all of the things that she made for them. It doesn't tell us how many widows were there. We can assume lots. She impacted the lives of the people around her with her deeds of mercy that were well known to those around. But she died. Her actions ceased here because

she died physically. She experienced physical death. But let me ask you now to make a spiritual application to your own life where this is concerned. When you first came to the Lord, some of you that will be recently, some of you that's been many years. When you first came to the Lord, could I say that you maybe were a veritable spiritual gazelle? You were just so excited when you first understood

what Jesus had done for you, what redemption was all about. You just couldn't get enough. You were devouring the Word of God. Everywhere you went, you took a Bible so when you had some spare time, you could sit and read the Word. Things were becoming understandable to you that you'd heard before in Sunday school, but now you began to see how they were fitting

into place. You noticed how the world around you now was fitting in just as the Bible said it was and you couldn't get enough of the Word of God. You just had to have more. And your time with the Lord was so rich, you realized that freshness of the veil being torn apart and you could touch Him. You could feel His presence. And so your prayer time was never lacking. You were constantly talking to Him in prayer and you were constantly experiencing

His hand around you so much that you just constantly were praising Him. Then what happened? You went along for a period of time and usually, relationally, in any relationship, it's about two years. When I do premaritals, I tell my premaritals that in their relationship to anticipate a two-year period. Whenever I lead somebody to the Lord or have a chance to disciple them, I tell them that there's a two-year period.

You can anticipate your first year of marriage, your first year in a dating relationship, your first year after you're saved. It's fa-la-la, the freshness of it, the freshness of new life in Christ, the freshness of a new dating relationship, the freshness of marriage. It's exciting. You're learning more about one another and experiencing things together and it's really a thrill. You move into your second year, you're kind of getting

used to one another and now you move into other things. Maybe you've changed jobs, changed houses, go from an apartment to a home, begin to have children in your second year. Things are changing. The time you get towards the end of your second year, it's like the bottom drops out of your relationship. You go, whoa, did I make a mistake here or what? It happens

with the Lord. You go on for a couple of years with the Lord and all of a sudden it seems like the bottom drops out. Where's the excitement? Where's the thrill? All of a sudden, God wants you to live by faith and not by sight, whether it's in a relationship marriage-wise or whether it's in a relationship with him. He wants you to trust him because of what he says,

not because of all of the warm fuzzies that you get out of it. People make mistakes in both marriage relationships, dating relationships, their relationship with the Lord, is they chase the warm fuzzies. So I fall out of love with you because I just don't love you anymore. I just don't feel that love anymore. No, you don't, you jerk. You're living by the flesh.

You're living by feelings rather than by faith. Same thing happens with the Lord. I don't feel him anymore. I don't get those warm fuzzies anymore. Why? It's because you don't know him anymore. You need to take time to know him instead of chasing after the warm fuzzies. Take time to get back into that knowing of him, that relationship with him. Maybe someone offended you. Maybe you got hurt somehow in some kind of a relationship,

in a church relationship, or maybe your personal life situations got bad. You had financial strains or a bummed marriage relationship or an illness, and you blamed God for that. Here I am, a believer, and you did this to me, and you kind of lay it on the Lord. Well, if you're going to do that to me, then just see if I go to church. Just see if I pay my tithe anymore. Just see if I pray or take the word anymore. You just kind of get mad

at God, and you feel like if I say that to him, God's going to come down and grovel and say, oh, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. Please, please, you know, please come to church. Please pay your tithe. Please get on my word. Or maybe things were going real great, and maybe it just kind of happened gradually. You were moving along real well with the Lord, and you were realizing the blessings of God, and you just kind of took that for granted. And

then something came up, and you missed the time of fellowship with him in your personal devotion life. And then you missed the time of just really committing something to prayer, and you just did it on your own. And then you just kind of missed fellowship with the saints one Sunday, and then another Sunday, and then a month of Sundays. And all of a sudden, dead gazelle. There's just no more spiritual life in you at all. There's just

no more concern for others in you at all. You're wrapped up with the cares of the world. You're just like anybody else in the world, seeking for number one, seeking to stock it away for you before everything hits the fan. Get out of my way. I don't want you around. And you get this kind of a bitter, anguishing anxiety that just kind of covers over you. And the things of God just kind of deplete in their meaning. They just kind of become

something to do. And you forget the value of your relationship with the Lord. Maybe the following kind of describes where you're at today. Funny how ten dollars looks so big when we take it to church, and so small when we take it to the store. Funny how big an hour serving God looks, and how small 60 minutes are when spent playing golf, or fishing, or whatever your hobby is. Funny how laborious it is to

read a chapter in the Bible, but how easy it is to read a 200 or 300 page novel. Funny how we believe what the newspapers say, but question what the Bible says. Funny how we can't think of anything to say when we pray, but we have no trouble remembering things when we're talking to a friend. Funny how we need two or three weeks in advance to fit a church event into our schedule, but we can adjust our schedule for a social event any moment. Funny, isn't it?

Praise is the result of knowing God, of experiencing His presence. You stop knowing Him, you stop experiencing His presence, and you will stop growing. You stop growing, and you handicap your praise, just like a muscle that stops working, all of a sudden becomes lethargic, and then it'll atrophy. If you are left alone that way, if you're in an area of handicapped praise, the stuff around you outweighs the fact that you're able to see the Lord and walk in that experiential knowing of Him, you will experience lethargy, you will experience spiritual paralysis, where you just can't seem to get out your Bible anymore, where you just can't seem to take time to pray anymore, and you will eventually experience

a spiritual death. That's the church of this age. That's Laodicea. That's what Laodicea is all about, and it's all around us. It's all around you every day, pulling at you. Jesus rebuked the believers in Luke chapter 19. On Palm Sunday, there was a plus side and a minus side, a positive side and a negative side to Palm Sunday. Palm Sunday is glorious to us in Christendom, because it's the day that Jesus entered Jerusalem, going to His

execution. Jesus was going to the death chamber as He came in on Palm Sunday. We beautify it with lilies and flowers, and what a wonderful thing, and have Easter egg hunts, and what a wonderful, fun time it is. And it is. It's a blessing. Jesus was going to His death to redeem us on the positive side, but on the negative side, He rebuked the people because they didn't know. They didn't know. On this thy day, on this the day of thy visitation,

you didn't know. He rebuked them. He warns us, the church of the last days, the Laodicean church. Read what He says to that church in Revelation chapter 3. I warn you, repent, buy of me salve for your eyes.