[Machine transcription]
Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father, from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
I’m going to be referring mostly to the first reading from the Book of Acts today. Maybe you’ve
noticed or not that during the Easter season there are no readings from the Old Testament.
It’s always from the Book of Acts instead. And apparently this is something that started about
the fourth century in Christian worship with the idea of during Easter to focus on celebrating
the resurrection and also looking forward from it to today’s time. So instead of looking
back to the Old Testament in that it’s just kind of an always looking forward from the
resurrection looking at the stories from the book of Acts and what happened with the apostles
the first years after Jesus had risen. So the reading, a little background first here
is that Peter and John have just healed a lame man in the temple in Jerusalem. This
guy who had been there for many years, could not walk, and they heal him and he’s clinging
to them. They’ve healed him and they’re trying to move on and the guy is like, oh
thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. I owe you guys. What can I do?”
And they’re trying to move on. And this causes a crowd, of course. And the crowd is, it says,
astounded. So, like any good preacher, if there’s a crowd, you preach, right? So Peter
does that. And Peter says to them, why do you wonder at this as if we did it? And then
And it’s interesting, Peter doesn’t go on to talk about the healing, but basically he
begins to chew out the crowd for their part in Jesus’ death.
Maybe some of the crowd there, maybe some of them were actually directly involved in
Jesus’ crucifixion.
You blew it, Peter pretty much tells them.
Basically what Peter is doing, he’s preaching the law.
I think Peter would have made a great Lutheran. I think he would have been great. But then
Peter gives them some gospel. First he talks about you guys killed Jesus, you did this,
you wanted the murderer, Barabbas, all this. But then he gives them a little gospel saying
God raised Jesus from the dead. But he stops there and kind of shifts gears and says this,
and by faith in his name has made this man strong whom you see and know and the
faith that is through Jesus has given the man perfect health in the presence
of you all. Peter says it’s by faith in Jesus that this guy was healed, not by
Peter, not by John, not by the efforts of the lame man, but by faith in Christ. Faith.
Let’s talk about faith a little bit. Faith is very central to Christianity. Actually
every religion is kind of a faith-based organization, but too often the Christian faith I think is
misunderstood. People who aren’t Christians, they see it as some sort of hopeful, wishful
thinking sort of faith. And Christians get criticized for having a blind, pie-in-the-sky,
irrational faith. And some opponents of Christianity will even say that faith is just a crutch
for weak people. So before we get more into what Peter says, let’s talk a little bit more
about faith here. The book of Hebrews, chapter 11, first verse, maybe you’re familiar, it
says basically that faith is the assurance and conviction of things hoped for and not
seen. It’s true. We can’t see what Jesus did. We can’t see that He died on the cross. We
cross and rose again. But there are witnesses to that. Peter, John, and the others, they
were witnesses. And they would go on to tell that gospel good news of Jesus to others and
then eventually even some of them to write it down to preserve it. So our faith isn’t
isn’t just some blind and hopeful, wishful thinking. Faith in Christ is faith in what
has happened. It’s faith that’s based in history. And there are witnesses to that history.
And Peter points it out in the reading. Yeah, there are witnesses, the disciples and people
that were right there, but there are other witnesses to what Jesus has done. And Peter
points them to the Old Testament, okay? He says the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac
and the God of Jacob, the God of our fathers glorified His servant Jesus. See the history
of the work of Jesus goes back into the Old Testament, prophesying about Him that He was
coming. And He was going to heal and save the world by His suffering and His death and
His resurrection. In fact, Jesus, Jesus even points to it in the Gospel reading today.
He said it in that Luke 24 reading to His disciples. This was on Easter night, the first
Easter Sunday night when Jesus comes. This was part of the whole Thomas thing, when Thomas
wasn’t there. This all is part of that event, too. But anyway, Jesus says to his disciples,
everything written about me in the law of Moses and the prophets and the Psalms must
be fulfilled. Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures and said to them,
it is written that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead and
and that repentance for the forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all
nations.”
Moses’ books, the prophets, the Psalms, all of the Old Testament tells that Jesus
was coming to die and rise again for the forgiveness of sins.
And that’s what the Christian faith is in.
In this history, in this prophecy, in these writings, in this proclamation, faith in Jesus
is what healed this lame man.
And it’s what Peter wants for the crowd too.
Peter points them to the prophecy, to the writings, the Old Testament about Jesus, and
he wants them to have faith in him too.
the same faith as the lame man. Peter wants it for the crowd, okay? So then
after talking about this faith thing, Peter gives them more gospel. Again,
Peter would have been a great Lutheran pastor. He says to them, after
all this law, then he says to them, repent. So your sins are blotted out that times
Words of refreshing may come from Christ.
Ah, great words to hear.
Words of healing for them.
After all that law,
you killed the Author of life,
but God raised Him from the dead.
Now repent so that you too
can have forgiveness and refreshing
so that you too can be healed
like the lame man.
Words of healing for them, but they are words of healing for us today, too, and we need
them.
Boy, do we need them, right?
Life sometimes is really hard, and we feel beaten up by it.
We feel just crushed by it.
We feel injured by it, and we need healing.
we need healing when when life sometimes we just kind of seem to be limping
through it when finances are tight when the future is uncertain or there’s
pressure on you from work or from school or there’s a strain in some
relationships you have or when there’s medical situations in those times faith
Faith is trusting that God can and does care for you, but we need more.
We need healing from something even more.
We need healing from our sins because sins can injure us.
Sins can cause our hearts and our conscience to kind of lamely limp around with a burden
of guilt or shame for what you’ve done, said, or even thought.
Sins make us responsible for the death of Jesus too.
My sins, your sins, do that.
And they need to be blotted out
so that we can have refreshing times from Jesus too.
We need forgiveness. We need that healing.
And it comes the same way as it does to the lame man in the reading, by faith in Jesus.
Not by our power, or our piety, or by Peter, or John’s, or anyone else’s.
It’s all by faith in the power of Jesus.
It’s faith that he’s done, faith in what he’s done for us in his death and his resurrection
from the dead.
It’s faith in the gospel good news that is in the New Testament and in the Old Testament
scriptures.
And that message has been witnessed by Peter and John and others.
See, it was really vital for Peter to talk about this to the crowd there. It was really
vital for him to talk about faith before he gave them gospel because it’s by faith that
we understand the gospel. It’s by faith that we receive the gospel’s benefits.
Maybe a familiar verse to you from Ephesians chapter 2 that says, for by grace you have
been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing. It’s the gift of God,
not a result of your works. The grace of God, the forgiveness of sins, the healing
of your soul are God’s gifts to you received by faith. This is the Christian
of faith. This is Christianity, is that faith does things. Faith isn’t just some pie in
the sky, irrational, wishful thinking kind of thing. No, faith does things. It saves
us. Peter and John knew that, and so did Martin Luther. Luther said that faith is God’s work
in us that changes us and gives us new birth. He also said, faith is a living, bold trust
in God’s grace. Faith does things. Faith receives what God gives us. Faith receives that healing
and forgiveness in Christ that He gives to us. And that’s what Christianity stands on.
Christianity stands on faith. And that’s why Luther, that’s why I think Luther said what
he did at the Diet of Worms when he was being questioned and ordered to recant. His response
to that was this, they said, they said, will you recant? And he said this, I am bound by
the Scriptures that I have quoted, and my conscience is captive to the word of God.
I cannot and will not recant anything, since it is neither safe nor right to go against
conscience. May God help me. Amen.”
Now, tradition says that Luther also inserted this before saying Amen. He said, here I stand,
I can do no other. May God help me, Amen. Now whether he said it or not, that’s where
we stand on faith, on faith in the gospel as recorded in the scriptures, the Old Testament
and the New Testament. Our faith is in that historical gospel that Christ fulfilled. Our
Faith is a faith that saves and heals.
Faith isn’t just some wishful thinking
or pie in the sky or a crutch.
I wanna talk about that a little bit here,
that faith is a crutch.
Maybe you’ve even had somebody say that to you,
kind of accuse you of being a weak person
and needing a crutch in life, this thing called faith.
Okay, here’s what you can do with them.
Two approaches here. One, just agree with them. Okay, so be it. Faith is a crutch, but
everybody in some way is lame, you know. Everybody has weaknesses. Everybody limps
around in life in some way on something, and everybody leans on a crutch of some
sort, whatever that is, drugs, alcohol, money, fame, your work, whatever, everybody leans
on a crutch of some sort. Christians, we happily stand, walk, limp, and lean on faith, faith
in the Scriptures and what has been fulfilled in Christ in them. We stand, we lean, our
crutch is God’s grace. Everybody has some sort of faith and some sort of crutch and
faith is ours. People say faith is a crutch, just say yeah, but faith is a really good
crutch. Better than yours. That’s one. Another one, do this. Disagree with them. Say, no,
I disagree. Faith is not a crutch. Faith is a stretcher. Because no one can even limp
into God’s forgiveness and healing. He carries you there. He takes you there. You can’t get
there, He comes and gets you. And faith is receiving those gifts. Faith is a stretcher
that takes us into that grace and that mercy and that healing. And like that healed, I
call it the not-so-lame man now, he clung to Peter and John, we cling to God by faith.
healed by His grace in Jesus Christ. So, fellow lame people, let’s keep clinging to God.
Stand on the Scriptures and receive His healing by faith. That is Christianity. Amen.
Now may the peace of God which passes all understanding keep your hearts and your minds
in Christ Jesus, our Lord. Amen.
