Beggar Or Believer

Turn with me to Acts chapter 3, book of Acts chapter 3, as we continue on in our study in the book of Acts. We're just going to look at the first 10 verses this morning. Acts chapter 3. If you don't have a Bible, there should be one in the pew there somewhere. Look down the pew kind of forlornly, and maybe somebody will hand you one if you don't have one. I want you to follow

along. If you don't have one, if you don't have a Bible, then take one. It's yours. Just take it home so you can have a Bible. Acts chapter 3, verse 1. One day Peter and John were going up to the temple at the time of prayer at three in the afternoon. And now a man crippled from birth was being carried to the temple gate called Beautiful, where he was put every day to beg

from those going into the temple courts. When he saw Peter and John about to enter, he asked them for money. And Peter looked straight at him, as did John. And then Peter said, look at us. And so the man gave them his attention, expecting to get something from them. And then Peter said, silver or gold, I do not have. But what I have, I give you. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth,

walk. And taking him by the right hand, he helped him up. And instantly, the man's feet and ankles became strong. He jumped to his feet and began to walk. And then he went with them into the temple courts, walking and jumping and praising God. When all the people saw him walking and praising God, they recognized him as the same man who used to sit begging at

the temple gate called Beautiful. And they were filled with wonder and amazement at what had happened to him. I received this week a story about an eight-year-old boy from Chula Vista, California, who was given the home. His third grade class was given the homework assignment to explain God. Explain God. That's kind of difficult for us, I think, as older people. But

I think you'll find interesting what he wrote. Eight years old, from Chula Vista, California. He says, quote, one of God's main jobs is making people. He makes them to replace the ones that die so there'll be enough people to take care of things here on earth. He doesn't make grownups, just babies, I think, because they are smaller and easier to make. That way, he doesn't have to take up his valuable time teaching them to talk and walk. He can just

leave that to mothers and fathers. God's second most important job is listening, to prayers. An awful lot of this goes on since some people, like preachers and things, pray at times besides bedtime. God doesn't have time to listen to the radio or TV on account of this. And since he hears everything, not only prayers, there must be a terrible lot of noise in his ears unless he has thought of a way to turn it off. God sees everything and hears

everything and is everywhere, which keeps him pretty busy. So he shouldn't go wasting his time by going over your parents' head and asking for something that they said you couldn't have. Atheists are people who don't believe in God. I don't think there are any in Chula Vista, at least there aren't any who come to our church. Jesus is God's son. He used to do all the hard work, like walking on water and performing

miracles and trying to teach the people who didn't want to learn about God. They finally got tired of him preaching to them and they crucified him. But he was good and kind like his father and he told his father that they didn't know what they were doing and to forgive them and God said okay. His dad, God, appreciated everything that he had done and all his hard work on earth, so he told him that he didn't have to go out on the road anymore, he could stay in heaven.

So he did. And now he helps his dad out by listening to prayers and seeing things which are important for God to take care of and which ones he can take care of himself without having to bother his dad. Like a secretary, only more important of course. You can pray anytime you want and they are sure to hear you because they got it worked out so that one of them is on duty all the time. You should always go to church on Sunday because it makes

God happy and if there's anybody you want to make happy, it's God. Don't skip church to do something you think would be more fun like going to the beach. This is wrong. And besides, the sun doesn't come out at the beach until noon anyhow. If you don't believe in God, besides being an atheist, you'll be very lonely because your parents can't go everywhere with you like to camp, but God can. It's good to know

he's around you when you're scared in the dark or when you can't swim very good and you get thrown into real deep water by big kids. But you shouldn't just always think of what God can do for you. I figure God put me here and he can take me back anytime he pleases and that's why I believe in God. So how would you explain God, if that question were given to you? How would you explain what God does, what God is, why he does the things

that he does? That's the question I want us to think about as we come into chapter 3. And every time you come into the Word, I want you to think about that. Lord, why are you doing this this particular way? Ask him questions. Ask questions of the text when you read it. You'll hear me say that a lot because it helps us to understand that this is a two-way kind of conversation

and as we read, God is speaking to us, but he wants us to respond. He wants us to ask him, to talk to him like a father. And so as we come into chapter 3, let me ask you, why is this particular account here in the book of Acts? I believe, like Jesus said in John's Gospel at the end of chapter 20, that there were so many other things that Jesus did that they didn't write down, that were they to have written them down, the earth couldn't contain all the books that would be written because of everything that Jesus did. So we know there's just a select number of things that we have

in God's Word of the things that were done, both in the Old Testament by the prophets and in the New Testament by Jesus and the apostles, the disciples. So there were many other things that probably could have been recorded for us. Why at this particular point in our study of the history of the church, in our study of the history of the church, in the book of Acts, why did God put this here? What's significant about this? Because

nothing is insignificant with God. God never does anything that is unimportant. Nothing and no one is unimportant or insignificant to God. So as you are here this morning, may you catch that as we begin. That as alone as you may be, maybe you're in certain circumstances and you're alone in your situation and you feel unimportant. You feel like God's forgotten

you. You don't see any particular significance or purpose right now in your life. No, it's okay because as we begin nothing is insignificant with God. No one is insignificant to God. And we'll see this as we go through this. So Lord, what is it you want us to see? Why is it that you put this account here like this in the book of Acts? And I prayed that this past week preparing for today and I believe the Lord opened up

at least to my understanding that as you read on through the next few chapters, you see that God is getting ready to move his church. He's getting ready to move the church out of Jerusalem. Now not everybody's going to leave they'll still be the church in Jerusalem, but he's going to move. its extent, now the extent of its outreach beyond the city walls of Jerusalem. He's going to move

it out into Judea, the county or the country area around Jerusalem. Then he's going to move it on to Samaria, north and a little bit east of Jerusalem, into the badlands where the Jews didn't like to travel. And then to the uttermost parts of the earth. Jesus is going to move his church. And as he prepares to move his church, just as he has promised, he is going to use

persecution to do that. Now, there are those who speculate as to whether or not the church would have moved had God not brought persecution. I doubt it. I don't know. I don't think the people were having all that great a time as it was. I mean, you look at chapter two and you think, wow, a lot of good stuff going on. They were fellowshipping together from house to house.

They were daily in the apostles' doctrine. They were daily in this koinonia, this oneness of fellowship where they sold stuff and brought everything in and they lived commonly together. They broke bread together. There was a constant, feasting together, drawing that intimacy together as they ate together and then celebrated the Lord's table. There was this constant time of prayer together. And we think, and I mentioned

last time that that was the marks of a healthy church, but we think often, I think by looking at those things that everything was cool. Well, it wasn't. As we get to chapter six, we're going to find out that they had some dissension within the ranks. Many of the people that had come to Jerusalem were from different areas of the world. And they came to celebrate the, right here,

the Feast of Pentecost. When they responded to God's offering, they were celebrating the offer of salvation through Christ. They virtually lost everything. They were disowned by the family. They lost, many of them lost rights to go into the marketplace and to buy food. And so they were alienated. And imagine yourself in a foreign country and this happens to you and you can't

come back here. I mean, you have a lot of good new family and friends and, but it's a strange culture. It's a strange country. And you can get an idea that it wasn't all just hunky-dory for them anyhow. So yeah, the persecution is going to be used by God to move them out. But I don't think it's just because they had grown too comfortable. In their situation, God usually uses times of stress and persecution to do some awesome things.

And they're usually things that are hard for us to explain if we were asked to explain, but we still should ask, okay, God, what do you, what do you want us to learn from this? Okay. You're getting ready to move your church. And to do that, you're going to use some persecution. Now, in the midst of that persecution, things are going to happen fast. There's not going to

be a lot of time to just sit and evaluate circumstances. So the people are going to have to flow obediently with what they know about the Lord. They're going to have to flow trusting God. There's going to have to be this trust that's come because they've given themselves to the word. They've given themselves to fellowship and prayer and breaking bread together. And they've come into this communion with the Lord, not necessarily, not only just

one another so that as the circumstances change rapidly and persecution comes in, they can flow obediently with the Lord. But alas, as we come to chapter three, we're going to find that there are still those. And this individual that we'll see in chapter three is one of them. And I think he represents a multitude. There are, there are those who are still living unaware of the Lord's presence and unaware of his moving and unaware of his

soon coming to bring this persecution to the areas around Jerusalem. They're unaware of that. Now they're daily around the routines. They're daily involved or around at least the activity of God, the activity of God's people as they're moving in and out of this area of the temple. They're around the activity of God, but they themselves never really move in with the Lord.

They're around it. They're close to the action. And yet they, themselves are empty and alone, much like the beggar of chapter three. And so I want you to kind of look at this chapter three as a warning, a wake up call, if you will. It causes us to see, it causes us to see really for the people there, it's going to cause them to see that the kingdom of God is around them. Remember when Jesus was here, he said,

the kingdom of God is among you and it will be in you. And so as the beggar, as representative of those who are around the activity of God, but they're not seeing it, they're not aware of it. It's a wake up call to say, Hey, the kingdom of God is among you. And there's a call to repentance and a call to readiness for the Lord is seeking to move. And there's persecution that's coming.

Now, as we study today in this section in chapter three, let me offer this as a parallel warning to you and me, as we are here today to worship the Lord and to read his word. Let me suggest to you that this is not only a warning to the church in Acts chapter three, but it's a warning to the church today. It's a wake up call to the church today that the kingdom of God is among us. And my goodness, as believers in Jesus Christ, the kingdom of God is within us. The kingdom of God is here.

The son of God has come. He's offered his life as a ransom for many. And as those believing cry out unto him, he gives us abundant life. He gives us that life that he promised to give us and that more abundantly. And there's a warning call to us as a church because he is coming again soon. And he's coming to move us. He's coming to move us. He's coming to move us. He's coming to move us.

He's coming to move his church out. Only this time, it's just not out into Judea and Samaria and to the uttermost parts of the earth. He's coming to move us out of this earthly sphere to that place that he has prepared for us in heaven since his ascension. And the church, I believe, is being called to readiness. It's being called to readiness. Unlike those who say that, well,

the rapture idea, the people who hold to the rapture of the church have this escapist mentality. They want to just kind of hole up and wait for the rapture and not expose themselves to danger. On the contrary, may I say that God's warnings are explicit and particular. And when we see this day coming, there are things that we should be about. We need to be assembling

ourselves together, encouraging one another. The more we see this day approaching and reaching out all the more, being about our father's business as the servants who anticipate their master's coming, not holing up. I'm not saying, well, the rapture's coming. You can hole up and not do anything. It sparks just the reverse in my heart. It sparks an urgency that people around me need to

know about Jesus. And I am going to more unashamedly share with them. And I pray that sparks that in you. This is a warning call. God's coming soon to move his church, to move his church out. And I believe there's going to be some persecution before that happens. I'm not advocating a mid-trib rapture, but I'm not saying that in this culture, we're going to escape the

persecution of God as we have so far to this point in this century. It's coming. It's coming upon us. It's going to come fast, quickly. And as children of God, we need to be prepared and ready to flow with the Lord, whatever he's going to do. We probably won't get a real quick understanding of why he's doing what he's doing. So we're just going to have to, because of our fellowship with

him, our relationship with him, our time in prayer together with him, flow obediently. But just like in the book of Acts, there were those who were around all of the activity and yet not a part of it. So today in the church, there are those who are around all the activity. There are some of you here that are here. And you've come and you're around the activity. You see the people coming in and out and worshiping

and praising God, but you feel isolated and alone. And it's probably because either number one, you've never asked Jesus into your heart. You've never come into the temple. You've never come into that relationship with the Lord. Or number two, you've taken your focus off of him. You've gotten away from these things that we're going to talk about this morning that the disciples did to keep

their focus on the Lord. And you've moved your focus off of God and off of his promises and onto your circumstances. And you've gotten sidetracked. You've gotten derailed. And we need for God to do what we sang about this morning, light to fire again, get my focus back upon you. And so I hope you see this morning as a wake-up call to that as we move into Acts chapter three. Again, as we look at these

few verses this morning, I'm going to ask you to seek to identify with one of the characters in these 10 verses. As I've shared before, I'm reading the series by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins. I finished Left Behind and I finished Tribulation Force and I'm in the latest sequel. Nikolai, who is the Antichrist. And it's an exciting trilogy of stories. I like it. And I have

found myself identifying specifically with one of the characters in these books, which is the intent of the author. Whenever you read something or when you go to the movies, the author or the filmmaker wants you to identify, wants you to be drawn into the plot, wants you to be drawn into the story. When you read a book, try and put yourself into the book. See yourself as living at the time that you're reading about and being one of the characters within the story that you're reading.

You get a whole lot more out of it. Well, God's no different. Giving us his word, he wants us to, when we read it, put ourselves into it. And maybe that's a lot of the reasons you may not get things out of it at times is you don't put yourself into it. You see it as a book of facts instead of a living book that's presenting a living God. And you don't take time to put yourself into the story.

But as you read the Old Testament, put yourself where David was or where Daniel was or where Micah the prophet was. When you read about these individuals, put yourself there. As you come to the end of the story, put yourself in the story. And as you read the Old Testament, come into the New Testament and you're reading the Gospels, put yourself there as you were walking with Jesus. Imagine what it would have been like on the hills when he fed the 5,000. Imagine what

it would have been like as one of the disciples in the boat as he walked on the water out to them. Put yourself in the parables. And as we come to the book of Acts, put yourself here as we go through the different circumstances in the book of Acts. And right now in these first 10 verses of chapter 3, I want you to identify with one of the characters in chapter 3. And you look and you

go, well, in those 10 verses, I only see three of them. Yeah, that's all. There's Peter and John and a beggar. But I want you to see about identifying with one of the characters in chapter 3. Peter and John are believers. So you have the believers and you have the beggar. And you will identify with one of those two because as God has written this, he's the author of this. He wants us

to identify with one of the characters and be drawn into the story. So as to do this, let's consider the characteristics of these two sets of characters. Let's consider the beggar and the believers and do some comparisons of the two groups. First of all, since the text starts with believers in verse 1, let's start with the believers. Verse 1. One day, Peter and John were

going up to the temple at the time of prayer at 3 a.m. in the afternoon. The first thing we see about the believers, and we saw it last week, we emphasized it as we were doing our study in Acts chapter 2, is that they were devoted to prayer. Chapter 2, verse 42. They were devoted to prayer. Their prayer to them was a lifestyle. It wasn't just something you do at meals or bedtime. It was a lifestyle. And they were coming at the time of

prayer, it says. If you're reading King James, it says at the ninth hour, I believe. In NIV, it says at three in the afternoon. And this would have been the third time of prayer, of community prayer for the Jews at the temple area. And we talked about this last week. Three times during the day, the Jews would give themselves to prayer. If they were in Jerusalem, they would

come to the temple. If they weren't, they would go to the synagogues. If they weren't around any of those, the devoted Jews would just take time to pray. At the third hour, at nine o'clock in the morning, the day dawn started at six in the morning. So then the third hour of the day was at nine. And then the sixth hour was at noon. And the ninth hour was at three in the afternoon. And those

three times a day, the devout Jews would take time to gather and pray together. And we talked about that before. This is called the time of the evening sacrifice. This would have been the last sacrifice that the priests would have been offering at the temple. It's a time when Zacharias, the father of John the Baptist, was in the holy place inside the temple, up against the curtain that

separated the holy place from the most holy place, where the Ark of the Covenant was. And right there against the curtain would have been the altar of incense, an altar overlaid with gold. And it had a fire continually burning. And there was incense that was sprinkled on top of that to offer an aroma that filled the temple. And it was representative of the prayers of the people that

were being offered up to the Lord. So at the time of prayer, at the altar of prayer, Zacharias saw Gabriel, who came to bring Zacharias a message about his soon-to-be-born son that would be dedicated to the Lord and be the prophet that would precede the coming of Messiah. And I want you to see these things as you read the word. Things recur. Not only when you read, note the times that things are repeated within the verses.

A number of times, in Wednesday night, we're looking at Samuel. We're in 1 Samuel. And we were in chapter 7. And if you read 1 Samuel chapter 7, you'll notice that the word mizpah is used seven times in chapter 7. Why is that? God has reasons. So when God repeats himself, ask him why and seek to find out why. Well, here we find that it's a time of prayer and God's going to do a

mighty work. He's going to reveal himself mightily, just like he revealed himself to Zacharias at the time of prayer. And he's going to do a mighty work. He's going to reveal himself mightily, just like he revealed himself to Zacharias at the time of prayer. And if you go through the word, you'll find that that's consistent throughout the word, that God usually reveals himself to people of

prayer at the times that they pray. You go back to Daniel. Daniel was given to prayer three times a day, even though he was in Babylon. He would give himself to prayer and he would go to his house and go upstairs in his house and open the shutters to the east towards Jerusalem. And he would kneel down and pray three times a day, these three particular prayer times. And God did some

tremendous things. Revealing things to Daniel during his prayer time, gave him interpretations to dreams, gave him visions, gave him the understanding when he prayed. He was praying about, well, he read Jeremiah's scrolls. And haven't we been here about 70 years and it's time for us to be about ready to go back to the land? And God answered Daniel, sent Gabriel again at the time of Daniel's prayer, after Daniel

had been praying and fasting. God reveals things to those who pray. And of the prophetess in the temple. And you find as Joseph and Mary were bringing Jesus into the temple area to dedicate him before the Lord, they run across this old lady named Anna. She's been a widow for about 70 years. And she's been in the temple. And in verse 36 of chapter 2 of Luke, it says that she was given to

worshiping night and day in the temple and fasting and praying. She gave herself to the worship of God and to fasting and praying. And as a result of that, God let her see his Messiah. And she knew that. She knew that's who it was. God reveals things to those who are consistently seeking him in prayer. His power is demonstrated to those who are consistently seeking him in prayer. Matthew chapter 17, the disciples,

Peter, James, and John come down with Jesus after they've been up on the Mount of Transfiguration. They've seen Jesus transfigured into all of his radiant glory. Saw Moses and Elijah there with him. They come down the mountain. And at the bottom of the mountain are his disciples and this father who has a demon-possessed boy that the disciples were unable, to cast the demon out of. And the father comes to Jesus as they come down off the mountain. And he

begs Jesus to cast him out. He says, I brought him to your disciples, but your disciples were unable to cast him out. And Jesus said, oh, you faithless generation. He admonishes him. Why? And he casts out the demon. And then the disciples come to him and they ask, why? How come we were unable to cast him out? And Jesus said, as you remember, this kind comes out only by prayer and fasting. Now,

let me ask you, when Jesus said that, was he giving the formula for the hard to get out demons? You know, we go through that. We go through that. We go through that. We go through that. We go through life and we run into these hard to get out demons that are pretty difficult. Then we give ourselves to prayer and fasting. Was he giving a formula? A lot of people think so. A lot of people

think, well, you know, got some, got some tough times ahead. I better pray and fast. That's okay thinking. But Jesus wasn't saying this is a formula for getting out demons. Jesus was implying this is a lifestyle you haven't been living. This kind of comes out only by prayer and fasting, i.e. you ain't been praying and fasting. Jesus, when he talked to the disciples said, he assumed, he said,

when you pray and fast, don't do it like the Pharisees do. Make a big show, but keep your face clean and don't, don't let it be known to others that you're fasting. He didn't say if you fast, he said when you fast. So let me ask you, when was the last time you fasted? And is it something you do on a consistent basis in your Christian walk? Let me go one step further. When was the last time you prayed other than at meals or at bedtime? When was the

last time you set yourself apart with the Lord and sought his face? May I ask you then why you get upset when things don't seem to go right? May I ask you why when you get upset, you don't seem like you're seeing the power of God? Why do you think that is? God shows us in his word, he reveals himself to those who seek him. If you seek me, you shall find me. If you search for me with all

your heart. It needs to be a part of our daily Christian walk. It needs to be a part of our daily Christian lifestyle. As you look at Peter and John, you look at those that I mentioned, Daniel and Anna and a lot of the other Old Testament prophets and now the New Testament disciples. These were things that were non-negotiables in their life. John Corson, pastor of Calvary Chapel in Applegate, Oregon, mentioned that in his commentary and it really

struck me. These were non-negotiables in Peter and John's life now. Non-negotiables in their spiritual walk. Let me ask you, what are some non-negotiables in your spiritual walk? Non-negotiable means something that you don't give up for any reason. Something that's non-negotiable. You do it no matter what. You look at Daniel's life. Prayer was a non-negotiable. Edict given, 90 days, no praying to any God other than the king. What did

Daniel do? It was a non-negotiable. He went, opened the doors of his house, faced east and prayed three times a day just as was his custom. It was non-negotiable to Daniel. Doesn't matter what anybody says, I'm going to do it. What are some spiritual non-negotiables in your life? You see, I think many of us who are honest with ourselves, the spiritual things are the first to go.

I'm going to have prayer and I'm going to have time with God early in the morning. And then what happens inevitably? Something happens to keep you up late all night or you get up in the morning and you've got, you got to rush around and get the kids ready because you overslept. The alarm didn't go off or it went off and you just slammed it off and you're off and running. And the first

thing you've done is sacrificed a non-negotiable. You sacrifice that time with God. Oh, but then, you know, I'm going to give to the Lord. And what's the first thing that always happens? Something breaks down. It always does. You can guarantee it. Yeah, I'm going to give this to you. I'm going to give this to you. I'm going to give this to you. I'm going to give this to you.

I'm going to tithe. I'm going to start committing, worshiping you with the sustenance that you've given me because that's what you want me to do. And inevitably, you can just anticipate the car breaks down, the washer breaks down. Something's going to break down. You're going to need finances for something. Guaranteed all the time. No, no bogus nothing about that. That will indeed happen.

What's the first thing to go? Retire. It's not a non-negotiable too often. And so let me say it again. If we don't have these non-negotiables, we're going to have to retire. We're going to these things in our spiritual life that we're going to do no matter what. Does that make any difference? The circumstances don't make any difference. What's happening? Then how can we

expect to see God move when God moves? How can we look at what goes on here in the book of Acts and think, well, why aren't you doing that now, Lord? He is in some mighty ways. Stuff is happening. We need to get our eyes open. This is a wake-up call because stuff's happening. Stuff's coming down. God's moving in some fantastic ways. And if we're not seeing it, maybe it's because we've

given up something. Maybe it's because we've given up something. Maybe it's because we've given up something. Maybe it's because we've given up something. Maybe it's because we've given up something. Some of those things that need to be non-negotiables in our lives. It was in the lives of these believers, Peter and John. Let's look at the beggar now for a second. Verse 2. Now a man crippled from

birth was being carried to the temple gate called Beautiful, where he was put every day to beg from those going into the temple courts. Let's look at the beggar. Let's look at the beggar. Now I call him the beggar. Why do I call him the beggar? That's what I think. He says right there, he's put every day to beg from those going into the temple courts. If you have a study Bible at the heading

there of chapter 3, mine says Peter heals a crippled beggar. How do we see him? He's a beggar. How does God see him? Look at verse 2. Now a man. First thing that God sees is God prompted Luke to record is now a man. Let me ask you this morning how you see people around you. When you look at people around you, how do you see them? Oh, there's the officer, or there's the teacher,

or there's the construction worker. He's a construction worker. She's a teacher. He's a paramedic, whatever. See, oftentimes we look at people for what they do. Let me ask you, how do you see yourself? Who are you? Who are you? If I were to come up to you and say, hi there, who are you? You would begin to tell me more than likely about what you do. I am a student. I'm a, you know, whatever, which tells me about what you do rather than who you are. And so

often we find our self-esteem in what we do. And so if we're unemployed, we have a low self-esteem. Why? Because we identify ourselves with what we do. And too often then we set ourselves according to class, grade scale by what we do. Well, I'm only a, I'm just a teacher. I'm just a housewife. God sees you as a man or as a woman that he created. And you are precious in his sight. The

same intensity that he put into creating Adam and Eve, he put into knitting you together. And he sees you first as who you are beyond your circumstances. And there was a man and God signed for that. And God's heart went out to him for that. God's heart went after him because he saw there a man. And he sees you this morning as you are precious in his sight. And then we're told he was crippled

from birth. A man who was crippled from birth. Luke is the one writing the book of Acts. Luke, as you know, was a physician. And the Greek that he wrote this in was very descriptive, has a lot of medical terminology in it. If you look down at verse seven, it tells us that this man, when he was healed, his feet and ankles became strong, which indicates that the medical

deformity that he had, was congenital. It was crippled from birth. He was born with this infirmity and it involved his ankles and his feet. Very probably related to the idea of the club footedness that we see today. Very severe where the feet are turned in. Lisa, my daughter, my oldest, was born with a severe bilateral club feet. Her feet turned in and on her left foot, her heel bone was actually above

her ankle bone. And her foot was turned way in and up against the side of her leg. And had we not had the modern, the blessing of being born in a day where the modern technology was not available to us, we would not have been able to live. And so, she was there to do the surgery. Apart from God healing her supernaturally, she'd have been crippled in a wheelchair, never able to walk. And so, that's how this man was, congenitally

crippled from birth. May I cause you to just kind of let your mind float with this one and see this guy as representative? Both these people are. Both the characters, sets of characters in this section are representative. The beggar is like every one of us. All of mankind is born crippled because we are all born with the seed of sin, inherited from Adam. We're not born,

as a psychologist, I want to tell you, with a clean slate. And you do what you do later on, and then that adds to your slate. And if you do more good than you're bad, then you add to your slate goodness, and you're okay. That's not according to scripture. We're all born with the seed of sin. We are all born dead. We're born crippled from birth. And I want you to see that, at least in identifying

here with the beggar, because we are born in sin, and we need a savior. Now, the next thing we're told is he was a beggar, and he was carried every day to the temple gate, the gate called Beautiful. Let me take that and break that down. He was carried to the temple gate every day. Let me say that with a little more inflection here. Every day, he was carried to the temple gate. Every day, day in and day out, he was carried to

the temple gate every day, over and over. And he had a mundane existence, in his own opinion, and in the opinion of the writer. There was this attitude of a mundane. It's just the same thing. Every day, he's carried to the temple gate, back and forth, back and forth. And he was dependent upon people for that. He couldn't do that himself. So he was dependent upon others to carry him from

place to place. And he needed to be there. Obviously, the three times during a prayer were the high traffic times. That's when he could have the most chance of getting something from the people that passed by. So three times a day, nine, noon, and three, they had to be carried to the temple gate, and wait, and then carried back home. And then at noon, for the lunch crowd that came

through, and then carried home. And then three o'clock for the late afternoon crowd, and probably there until five. So from nine to five, and then carried back home. And then at noon, for the five, it was just the back and forth, mundane life. You relate every day? You go back to work and back home. Every day, it's the same thing. Same old grind. Stand at the same bay and punch

out the same product, or sit at the same desk and type the same kind of reports, and just a mundane kind of life. And I wonder why I'm doing it. I wonder why I'm here. Let me go back to the thing that said the idea that he was dependent upon other people, too. For three different times a day, they had to carry him around. Probably to everything he had to go to, they had to obviously

carry him around. He was dependent upon them for his very existence. How about you? No, I do my thing. Is that right? You see, there are so often situations and circumstances that happen in our lives that cause us to be dependent. We think we're dependent upon people around us. Why would you not like to move from here? Maybe you want to move from here. Maybe you're tired of the mundane,

and you want to move. Why would you not want to move? Well, family, people around. I've got good friends. I hate to relocate and move because I have good friends. Okay, well, God wants you to move. Oh, I don't know. I'd be awful hard because I hate to leave my friends. I mean, family, that's right. We become dependent upon other people. Maybe on your job, you work with somebody else

that's real good, and you just, you know, you work in the same area, and you know how each other thinks, and you can get that thing done, and you just become dependent upon one another. Well, what if God wants to move that person out of there? What if he wants to move you somewhere else? Well, I hate to because I'm dependent. You know, don't take that person out of there.

Best person away because we just flow together on the job. How about your family? How about your immediate family? Oh, you know, I love my family. I love my wife and my kids, or my husband and my kids, whatever your situation, or my kids if you're a single parent. Love my kids. Don't. You know, the thought of anything happening to my kids, just, it would just kill me. It would

just crush me. Well, they're going to grow up and leave home, probably, hopefully, for a healthy relationship that needs to happen. What's going to happen to you when that happens? Or what's going to happen if God does decide to take one of them home? You see, we can, you know, become so dependent upon other people that we lose our sight of what God's wanting to

do. We become dependent upon other people for our needs. Do you look to others for your happiness? If you're not happy, is it somebody else's fault, that husband, or that wife, or those kids? I mean, to tell you, you know, that person at work just gets my goat, and I just, I'm not happy because I have to work around them. Well, see, then your existence depends upon other people, and you're

no different from this beggar. Now, he was placed, it says, outside of the gate called Beautiful. That's the east gate. If you go to Jerusalem today, the east gate is blocked shut. There's cinder blocks that have blocked the east gate shut. It's the entrance that comes off of the Mount of Olives. You come down the Mount of Olives across the Kidron Valley, which is,

you think Kidron Valley. To me, I'm thinking Big Valley, Barbara Stanwyck, you know, miles and miles. The Kidron Valley is a few hundred feet across. You come down the Mount of Olives and across the Kidron Valley and up to the, to the temple, or to the city area, and there's, the east gate. Now, today, there's a graveyard in front of it, and like I said, the doors are

blocked shut. On our tour, we, we walked around the Temple Mount, and they said, now, down over here is the east gate, and somebody, one of our tour started to go down the stairs there to take a picture of the east gate, and boy, the Arab guards came running over there with machine guns yelling at him, saying, get out of there. They don't want you down there. You don't go down there at all, and they have put a cemetery, a Muslim cemetery, in front of that entrance to the east gate. Why? Well, because they know that Jewish prophecy says that when Messiah comes, he's going

up, and they know that the Jews can't touch a dead body, or they're desecrated, so they put a cemetery in front of the east gate, thinking that somehow they're going to thwart Messiah's entering to the city by those kinds of things, and all you got to do is go back and read Zechariah, and when Jesus' foot touches the Mount of Olives, and it slits in half, and everything crumbles, that whole section is just going to fall down, and he's just going to walk right, right through it into the temple, but this is the east gate. It's the east entrance into the temple, right into the temple court, and he's placed there at the gate called Beautiful, and this is probably the, the area

where there's the most activity of the people. There's the most activity of worshipers coming in, and those coming for prayer. There's all of this activity daily, all of this activity coming in to the temple area to worship, and, and for prayer, but this guy never goes in. He's at the gate, but he never goes in. Can't go in. Can't get himself in there. He's around the activity. He sees it

happening. He sees the worshipers. He sees the prayers. He probably saw Jesus go by several times, but to him, he saw people only as potential help. He never involved himself as a worshiper. He was around it, but never involved himself in a relationship with God. He just saw people as potential help for his problems and his needs, but he probably never thought about these people and

their possible needs. Think about the people that you're sitting around this morning. Why is it, do you suppose, that you know certain people here and not other people? Is it because maybe we haven't really taken the time to get to know the other people, and the people that we know we feel comfortable with, and we help meet each other's needs. We get along together. We like each other,

and, and so we have, this little relational group here, and yet there's all these other people here who have needs, who have relational needs, and yet we just kind of make friends usually based on who scratches my back, who I really relate to, who I really like, and we don't consider the fact that other people have possible needs, and this became routine living for him. Day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, all these people around him, and evidences of God moving all around him, and he evidently never saw them, and never considered, that God even knew he existed, that God never even cared about his existence, and, and maybe you're

that way this morning. Maybe you're here, and you feel that way. You're, you know you need to be in church, just like the eight-year-old boy said, don't want to make God mad, but for all intents and purposes, you are sitting here this morning, and you're alone, and, and as far as you're concerned, God has no idea that you're here. Let's see what God did. Verse three, he saw Peter and

John, this beggar did, coming about to enter, and he asked them for money, and Peter looked straight at him, as did John, and then Peter said, look at us, and so the man gave him his attention, expecting to get something from them. Peter and John walked by, and verse four says, and Peter looked straight at him, as did John. Now let me ask you a question again, to ask you the text. How long had this guy been sitting here? Day in and day out? We don't know. He'd been born this way, so probably

from the first instance that he could learn how beggars like himself, people deformed like himself, how they work, the other people, he was probably there. He's probably been there for a long time, probably been bringing in there for quite a while. When you think about it, think about some of the other occurrences in the Gospels that we read about, the man who, he came to the pool of Bethesda every day. He was carried there around the pool of Bethesda, and they believed that an angel would come and stir the waters, and when the waters were stirred, they believed, it was their superstition, that the first one who got down into the water would be healed of whatever infirmity he had, and so daily there were probably hundreds, if not

thousands of people that were brought, or came and crowded around this pool of Bethesda, and we're told in one particular account that there was a man who had been crippled, or deformed, for 38 years, most of his life, and he'd evidently been coming there. Another case, we're told that Jesus encountered a man born blind. He had been born blind when he met Jesus, and Jesus healed him. Now, in both of those instances, there were others around who were sick. I mean, at the pool

of Bethesda, everybody that was there was sick, needing some kind of touch from the Lord, and yet Jesus chose to heal that one man only at that particular time. So now let's come back to here. This guy at the gate, beautiful, the east gate, and I mentioned Jesus probably saw him. Does that make you stop and think? I mean, there's an idea that you have that Jesus healed everybody that

he came in contact with. Not so. There are times we read that Jesus was at a certain place, and everybody that came to that particular place, he healed, and he healed people day and night at this particular place, but there are other times just like this, where he chooses not to heal for some reason. Why? I have no idea, but Jesus probably, the times he walked in and out of the temple,

saw this guy, this beggar sitting there. Now, Peter and John had been going to the temple too, regularly. We don't know how long after Acts chapter 2 that this occurrence in chapter 3 happens, whether it's weeks or days or months later, but they'd evidently been walking in and out. This guy had been carried and sat there every day. They saw him day in and day

out sitting there. Why then did they look right now? Why then right now? What was the deal about right now? May I suggest to you that they were sensitive to God's voice. They were sensitive to God's moving. God wanted to move right then, right now with this guy. How'd they know that? You got to go back to that. Back to verse 1, and you got to go back into Acts chapter 2, verse 42. They were dedicated to

prayer. They gave themselves to prayer. They were in this prayer relationship with God, and God moves in the lives of people who pray. Now, let me take that back. God moves, and the people who pray see him moving. Well, God's never told me to do that in somebody's life. Well, back to verse 1, back to Acts 2, 42. Is this a non-negotiable in your life prayer? Is it something you're

given to? Is it something that you won't sacrifice for anything else? Why this time? Because this is when God wanted to move, and they were sensitive to that because they've been walking with him daily, regularly in prayer. Now, he said, Peter said to this beggar, look at me. Focus your gaze on me. And the man looked at him and saw that Peter was looking at

him. I don't know about you, but I am usually given to when I see somebody that's begging or see somebody that has kind of a handicap, and they're at a certain, I don't know about you, but I have a real tendency to, you know, to kind of look away. Maybe you're not, when we lived out in Denver and worked downtown in downtown Denver, the streets are lined with beggars, people asking for money, coming up to you for everything. And you just kind of walk, and you just kind of, you're trying to avoid it at all costs, trying not to make eye contact.

But here, they focused their gaze on him. And again, I believe it's because God was prompting their hearts to do that, prompting their hearts now to draw him intimately into their lives for this particular work that God was wanting to do. Now, let me bring out some things here where this is concerned. Jesus made a statement that a lot of people wrestle with. He talked about, remember the poor?

He said, the poor you're going to have with you all the time, but I'm only going to be here a short time. And it implies in that statement that he was putting down the poor. He wasn't. He was saying there are particular things that need to be done, and you need to be aware of those particular things and do them. May I suggest to you that daily in your life are things that need

to be done. You are surrounded by needs. You are surrounded by things that you have to do at your job, as well as at home. You've got all those lists of things you've got to get done. The roof still needs fixing. You've still got to try and paint before the snow comes. And you've got all these things that have to be done. And then all of a sudden you have these people that God brings into your life, and

they have these needs. And you see that, and it's real easy to get frustrated, isn't it? I mean, am I alone in that? I get frustrated all the time, it seems like, because there's all these things that have to be done. I know they have to be done. And then God keeps bringing these needs in, people with needs that have things that, you know, from my family to everybody else around. And one thing I

want you to notice is when you read the Gospels, it says, Jesus was never harried or frustrated. What am I going to do? The only time he prayed with real intense pain was in the Garden of Gethsemane. And that was just because he was allowing the reality of that situation to come upon him. But he had all these myriads of people coming, and he had to teach, and he had to feed them, and he had to heal. But he's never going,

you know, I've got to get to, I'm late now, you know. You never read about him being frustrated or harried. Why is that? Well, I believe it's because Jesus was obedient to the Father. And he tells us that often in John chapter 6, well, in all of John's Gospel, that he only does what he sees the Father doing. Now, there's a key to survival in that statement. I only do what I

see my Father doing. What's God doing? He's doing everything. He's holding the world together. You know, I mean, the universe is held in this. What's he talking about? There are certain things that God wants to accomplish through us, and Jesus was obedient to that. May I suggest that that same is true for us today? There are certain things that God wants to accomplish through you

and I, and the enemy will throw everything else in the way, because it's a need. It's a need. It's a need. It's a, I got, it's a wonderful thing, you know, nice, great thing to do, good thing to do, nice things to do. But you and I will get sucked into what's, what's Navigators brings out. It's called the tyranny of the urgent. This is urgent. It's a need. It has to be done now. Yeah, but is it

something that's absolutely necessary? And there needs to be a discerning every day in our lives between what's urgent that's just going to consume our time, and we'll get through, and we're going to be frustrated and harried, and it's really not going to make a whole lot of difference if we did that or not, and what things are absolutely necessary that God wants to do. And how do you discern that? Verse 1 in chapter 2, verse 4.

There has to be a commitment to prayer. There has to be a consistency in our lives where prayer is concerned. Why did they look at this guy? Because God was saying, now's the time. I want to move in this particular circumstance. And if you look to God first, you'll be able to look at the world and see what's needed. And when you get frustrated and harried, take a step back and see

how long it's been since you've had that quiet, consistent time with the Lord. And I bet they're related. Verse 6, then Peter said, and I like it better in King James, silver and gold have I not, but such as I have, give I thee in the name of Jesus Christ, of Nazareth, rise up and walk. Now let's look at that first statement. Silver and gold have I none. Was that true? Well, yes and no. They probably didn't have anything on them. But if

you go back to Acts chapter 2 again, it says that everybody sold what they had. And in Acts chapter 4, we're going to see that the people sold their homes and stuff, and they brought the money to the apostles' feet, laid it at their feet. So did they have access to silver and gold? Probably. But that wasn't what this guy needed at the time. How did they know that? Chapter 3, verse 1,

Acts 2, 42. They were consistent in prayer, and God spoke to their heart. That's not what he needed. He didn't need silver and gold. Boy, does that fly in the face of prosperity gospel. Don't need it. You don't need. That's not what you need. Now, when we get our eyes off of the Lord and off of the holiness of our walk with him, bad things happen. Thomas Aquinas, one of the fathers of

the church down through history, was said to have gone to Rome on a visit one time and went to see the Pope. And he was shown into the treasury where the Pope was with several others counting money. And he walked in at what appeared to be an awkward moment. And so Thomas Aquinas turned to back out, and the Pope noticed him there and said, well, no longer can the church say silver and gold, have I none. And Thomas Aquinas kept walking out, and he turned, and he said, yes, and no longer can

the church say to the impotent man, rise up and walk. When the church sacrifices purity for prosperity, it loses its power. When we see as the church, our goal is to make it big in this world, is to have the things of this world, we lose the power of God. God wants us just utterly and totally dependent upon God. And so he said, well, no longer can the church say silver and gold,

but this beggar was dependent upon others. He was dependent upon the silver and gold. Verse 7, it says, and taking him by the right hand, Peter helped him up, and instantly the man's feet and ankles became strong. Let me ask you another question, just to think about, why does it say there that he took him by the right hand? What significance is that? Well, probably when they

came up to him, and verse 4, Peter looked straight at him, and John, did they focus, they fastened their eyes on him, and they said to him, look at us. And it says, verse 5, the man gave him his attention, expecting to get something from them, it was probably a John looks at him and says, look at us, and the guy goes, hey, he's wanting something. He reached his hand up, he responded when Peter and John said, focus on us, look at us, and he responded, and he raised his right hand, and Peter reaches down and grabs that hand and says, I don't have any silver or gold, but what I have I give you in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk, and he helps him to his feet, he pulls him up, and instantly the man's

feet and legs were healed, and he went walking and leaping and praising God. Let me draw this to a close real quick by saying that the guy was reaching out to what he thought was his sustenance, dependency upon other people, and yet they took him and brought him right into the throne room of God. They reached down, and with the word of God, they touched his heart. With a power outside of himself, he was helped to his feet, and he was brought then into the temple courts, it says. They took him into the temple courts. He went past the gate, finally,

into the temple courts, walking and leaping and praising God. May I ask you this, if you are at that point where you are empty and alone, and like the beggar, you're kind of looking around for somebody to make you happy, for something to happen to meet your need, and you're kind of hoping maybe something is said today that will give you the buzz that's needed, or you're going to meet somebody here that will just kind of be that individual that will help meet that need, and so you're kind of here today, and as that beggar reached his hand out, you're kind of reaching your hand out spiritually, seeking for that need to be met, and may I say that God is reaching down to you right now,

and he wants to grab that hand. I see that hand, God said, and he's reaching down, and he wants to grab that hand, and he wants to pull you to your feet, and he wants you to be whole before him spiritually, and whether or not you have a physical infirmity, and God's wanting to heal that, he may today. I don't know, but he wants to draw you into his presence. You've been sitting outside the gate for too long. You've seen the activity going by and have not felt a

part of it, and he wants to bring you past the gate into the temple courts to fellowship, with him. I cannot meet your need. Nobody here can meet your need. Your need is to be in that relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ, and as you're reaching out, his hand is reaching down to pull you up, and he wants to supernaturally, by the power of his spirit, raise you to your feet and bring you into his presence, and the man went walking, it says, and leaping and praising God.

In Isaiah 35, 6, it said, when Messiah comes, the kingdom of God will be realized because the lame man will leap like a heart. Here was evidence to the people around, those who were kind of in this spiritual lethargy, seeing all the activity but not being a part of it. Here was evidence to them that the kingdom of God was there. Here's a lame man leaping like a heart.

You know, I've seen God work in several of your lives where you have been lame. You've been set aside because of the activity of Satan. He has set you aside, and yet you've come to the Lord. You've laid your burden at the foot of the cross, and God has filled you with his spirit, raised you to your feet, and I see activity in your life that is the evidence of God's working in your life, and there are others.

I know that are overwhelmed by your circumstances. God wants to raise you up this morning. This is a warning call. It's a cry. Jesus is coming soon, and he's moving his church to another location, and before he comes, there's going to be this activity, and I believe we're going to see persecution in this country soon, and when it happens, it's going to happen so fast. Unless

you're yielded to have your heart set on the Lord, it's going to overtake you with despair, but God's calling to come on in. Come on in and spend time with me. Father, help us this morning to do just that. As we come to your table, may we just make this a point of recommitment, of rededication, a time to set some spiritual non-negotiables in our lives, Lord, that no matter what the circumstances around us, we're not going to give these things up. You are our God, and there is none else. We have a home built without

hands in the heavens. This place is not our home. We're pilgrims passing through, and rather than having a mundane existence, God, may we see that as a mission field that you've given us to reach out and tell others about the love of Jesus Christ, and how soon he's coming, and how short the time is before that happens, and the persecution that we're going to have to deal with. God, may you set those things in our heart this morning, and either beggar or believer, they all ended up the same as believers, for the beggar responded to the offer of the gospel. So whether we identify

with the beggar or the believer this morning, may we end up the same, walking and leaping and praising God. It's in Jesus' name that we pray. Amen. This is the first Sunday of the month.