Ponder Anew What the Almighty Can Do
Preached by Benjamin Vrbicek
July 12, 2020
Scripture Reading
Acts 9:32-43
32 Now as Peter went here and there among them all, he came down also to the saints who lived at Lydda. 33 There he found a man named Aeneas, bedridden for eight years, who was paralyzed. 34 And Peter said to him, “Aeneas, Jesus Christ heals you; rise and make your bed.” And immediately he rose. 35 And all the residents of Lydda and Sharon saw him, and they turned to the Lord.
36 Now there was in Joppa a disciple named Tabitha, which, translated, means Dorcas. She was full of good works and acts of charity. 37 In those days she became ill and died, and when they had washed her, they laid her in an upper room. 38 Since Lydda was near Joppa, the disciples, hearing that Peter was there, sent two men to him, urging him, “Please come to us without delay.” 39 So Peter rose and went with them. And when he arrived, they took him to the upper room. All the widows stood beside him weeping and showing tunics and other garments that Dorcas made while she was with them. 40 But Peter put them all outside, and knelt down and prayed; and turning to the body he said, “Tabitha, arise.” And she opened her eyes, and when she saw Peter she sat up. 41 And he gave her his hand and raised her up. Then, calling the saints and widows, he presented her alive. 42 And it became known throughout all Joppa, and many believed in the Lord. 43 And he stayed in Joppa for many days with one Simon, a tanner.
We are a forgetful people. Some of you couldn’t find your car keys this morning or your wallet or your purse or your Bible or where you put that thing you need for later when you’re supposed to show up at someone’s house—wait what thing and whose house?
I have about three places I always put my wallet, except for when I don’t. And when I don’t, I forget where I put it and can’t find it, and panic ensues. Some of you were just getting to know the names of people here, and then we quit meeting; and now there’s a lot of “Hey, buddy” and “Good to see you again, friend.” We are a forgetful people.
Jen Wilkin is an author and women’s Bible teacher. In her latest book she makes the statement, “It is not new truths we need; we need old truths recently forgotten” (Jen Wilkin, In His Image, p. 129).
So, I’ll ask the question: what old truths have you recently forgotten? What truths about God and his character and his ways have you forgotten? What truths have a lockdown and pandemic and what feels like a nation-wide sadness and depression caused you to, well, just sorta forget. You didn’t mean to forget, but it happened.
You probably don’t have an answer to that because by definition, a forgotten truth is forgotten. But through these stories in Acts, I believe God is calling us to ponder anew what the almighty Lord Jesus Christ can do—to un-forget the power of God to save.
We’ve been going through the book of Acts, and we’ve spent several weeks talking about Paul and his conversion. For the next few weeks, Paul fades to the background, and Peter again takes center stage. Some have called this cluster of stories the “conversion of Peter”—not meaning a conversion to Christianity but a conversion to the implications of Christianity (see Tony Merida, Acts, 143).
That’s probably not the best way to say it. But I know why someone might put it that way. It’s because, by chapter 11:18, the Lord will have reminded Peter of the truths of who he is with such power and such newness, that the kind of knowing Peter knows of God then, might have been so new and so beautiful that Peter could have almost said it was like another conversion. He could almost say that his pondering anew what the Lord can do is like knowing the Lord for the first time.
We have before us two stories that, perhaps, at first glance seem quite different. But the similarities are stronger than you might have noticed. There is the similarity of the gravity of the situation. Tragedies have taken place in both. In the first story, Peter meets a man named Aeneas who, we’re told, has been bedridden for eight years. Eight years. The other day, Facebook showed me a picture from nine years ago, and memories pounced on me. It felt like the picture was from another lifetime. My children had changed. I had changed. Where we lived had changed. Eight years is a long time for Aeneas to lay paralyzed, to never run with his children as they grew up—ifhe had children. But there were certainly eight years of unemployment and begging; long forgotten was the joy that comes at the end of a hard-worked day. When he’s healed, Peter told him to make his bed, something we do every day—or can do every day—because we get up. He couldn’t get up. There is a gravity to this tragedy. And consider the gravity of Tabitha’s death. For her to have died was hard for her, but the community was devastated. Look how her healing story begins.
Now there was in Joppa a disciple named Tabitha . . . She was full of good works and acts of charity. In those days she became ill and died, and when they had washed her, they laid her in an upper room. Since Lydda was near Joppa, the disciples, hearing that Peter was there, sent two men to him, urging him, “Please come to us without delay.” (Acts 9:36–38)
So Peter makes the 11-mile journey, likely a four-hour walk. And when he arrives, we read in the next verses that he’s ambushed by weeping widows who keep coming up to him showing all the garments that Tabitha made for them. “Look at this one, Peter.” “Oh look, Peter, she made this too.” We might liken Tabitha to a director of a women’s shelter where there’s tremendous need and no government support. Who’s going to run the shelter and do her good works and give her charity now that she’s gone? Her death left a hole in the community they don’t know how to fill—a gravity to this tragedy.
So the stories share gravity. But there is also the similarity of the result. In both stories, the Lord enabled Peter to heal, and the result of each healing was the same.
And all the residents of Lydda and Sharon saw him, and they turned to the Lord . . . . And it became known throughout all Joppa, and many believed in the Lord. (Acts 9:35, 42)
Peter pointed people to Jesus. In other words, Peter was not an itinerate Apostle who travels to make converts of himself. Peter has rock-star like fame in the Christian community, but Peter points people to the Lord Jesus. And we should be reminded here of the first words in the book of Acts where Luke tells us that his first book, what we call the gospel of Luke, he wrote about all that “Jesus began to do and teach” (1:1). The implication being that the book of Acts—the book we’re studying this morning—is what Jesus continues to do. Indeed, Peter says, “Aeneas, Jesus Christ heals you; rise and make your bed” (v. 34), not “Aeneas, I heal you; rise and make your bed.”
We don’t have a lot of details, but it’s fair to assume that a sermon must have followed each of these healings, a sermon pointing out the kindness and compassion and imminence of the Lord. The Lord’s imminence means his nearness. Peter must have preached a sermon that spoke of not only of our imminent physical diseases and deaths, but our spiritual disease and death. And just as Jesus drew near to Aeneas and to Tabitha, so he draws near to sinners. It’s what he does—it’s who he is. Jesus became like us in our humanity, but not like us in our sin—until the cross, where Jesus did become like us in our sin. He caught our spiritual disease and died.
Luke has intentionally told these two stories and linked them together in such a way that we would know that when Jesus heals physical disease and death, people will turn to Jesus for spiritual healing of disease and death. Speaking of Jesus, these two stories are also linked by the way they echo the healings of Jesus in the gospels. What Jesus is doing here (in Acts), reminds us of what he did then (in the Gospels). In John’s gospel Jesus heals a man who was paralyzed, and to that man Jesus says, “Get up, take up your bed . . . ” (John 5:8), which is almost exactly what Peter says to Aeneas. And the raising of Tabitha reminds us of the raising of a twelve-year-old daughter who died. As I read both accounts, notice how similar they are.
. . . But he put them all outside and took the child’s father and mother and those who were with him and went in where the child was. Taking her by the hand he said to her, “Talitha cumi,” which means, “Little girl, I say to you, arise.” (Mark 5:40–41)
Now look at how Luke describes the healing Jesus did through Peter of Tabitha.
But Peter put them all outside, and knelt down and prayed; and turning to the body he said, “Tabitha, arise.” And she opened her eyes, and when she saw Peter she sat up. And he gave her his hand and raised her up. (Acts 9:40–41a )
Sound familiar? It is supposed to. And not only is there the linking of the gravity among the stories, the linking of the result of turning people to the Lord, and the linking of the reminder of the way Jesus healed in the gospels, but there is also a linking of the way Jesus will heal one day in the future.
How many paralytics were in Lydda? How many dead widows in Joppa? We don’t know. But surely there were more than were healed and more than were raised. And even the one paralytic who was healed, he eventually died. And the one woman who was raised, she died again. But enough were healed, and enough were raised, to pour encouragement into the Christian community that their physical death was not the end of their story if they would turn to the Lord.
When Tabitha had died, they called Peter. I’ve been called to rooms where people have recently died; it comes with the job. Maybe someday I’ll be called to your living room, or you’ll be called to mine. What sermon shall we preach? Perhaps we’ll preach something like this: “If you are a Christian,” we’ll say to those gathered, “if you have given your sin, given your spiritual death to Jesus and you have received his life—no matter if you’ve been in the grave for 10,000 years, one day Jesus will call your name. The Good Shepherd knows the names of his sheep. You are not a number to him. And the same way Peter said ‘Aeneas . . . rise and make your bed’ and ‘Tabitha, arise’ so Jesus will say to you, ‘Arise, _____, and arise _____, and arise _____ enter into the joy of your master.’ These stories in Acts call us to ponder anew what the Lord almighty has done and is doing.
Speaking of is doing, last year a popular musician at a popular megachurch lost her young daughter. The daughter’s name was Olive. Rather than burying her right away, they called for prayer that she would wake up, that she would come back to life (cf. #wakeupolive). She didn’t.
As we study Acts, we have to keep in mind the descriptive nature of each passage (this is what happened) and the prescriptive nature of each passage (this is what should happen). I’ve never seen anyone raised from the dead. In light of Olive’s highly publicized death, and in light of our more strict interpretation of the Bible, you probably expect me to say these healings are just descriptive. And they are. But I do think, in their principle and in their pattern, even if not in their specifics, they are prescriptive. I’ll explain. I’ve never seen anyone raised from the dead, but I have seen marriages that were dead come back to life. I’ve seen adults who were abused as children find a way to forgive and not become destroyed by rage. I’ve seen people dead to God come alive to him. And these modern healings that I’ve seen, and the ones I hope you’ve seen, which is not exactly what happens in these stories in Acts, but still, our modern stories of Jesus healing call us to ponder anew to what the Lord is doing—today.
We could close in prayer and leave with our hearts warm, but stay with me for one minute. Sometimes we are culpable in our own forgetfulness. Sometimes forgetfulness is our fault. When I set my wallet on my fireplace mantle or my cell phone in the bottom of my laundry basket, and I then go crazy ransacking the house for my wallet and cell phone and car keys and laptop and my running shoes and sunglasses and earbuds, it’s because I didn’t put them where I should have put them.
These passages in Acts are not necessarily about what are called the spiritual disciplines: the study of God’s Word, prayer, and belonging to a local church—but in a way, they are. If you know we are forgetful people, that the gospel, as it were, leaks out of us, shouldn’t we build into our life patterns whereby we have daily and weekly rhythms with God and his people? If you have time to binge-watch Netflix, don’t tell me your life is so busy you can’t read your Bible, pray, and attend church. You’re making choices.
One of my roles as a pastor is to help you see things that feel unconnected as actually connected. Do you feel far from the Lord? There are many reasons this could be so. But if you don’t read your Bible, you don’t come to church, you look at things you shouldn’t see on screens, you spend more than you make, then it’s not surprising the Lord feels distant. To you, this morning, through the preaching of God’s Word, Jesus is drawing you near. He’s calling you. Come, he says, walk with me. My yoke is easy, and my burden is light.
I’ll end where I began, giving the full context of that quote from Jen Wilkin. She writes,
Every word of God is true and good, but not only that, none of them ever grow stale. The practice of asking God for a “fresh word,” a new truth personalized for us, has grown more and more popular. I don’t think any of us would argue that we have adored and adhered to the ancient words thoroughly enough that a request for new ones could be credible. Faced with uncertainty or difficulty, or just spiritual malaise, my perception is that it would feel better if the word were meant strictly for me and my circumstances. But it is not new truths we need; we need old truths recently forgotten. It is not personal truths we need, but rather shared truth preserved and passed down from one believing generation to the next, personalized to us in our current day. That shared truth is available within the pages of God’s word to me and to all who believe. (Jen Wilkin, In His Image, p. 128–29)
When you and I are faced with uncertainty or difficulty—a pandemic and racial unrest, with marriage problems or physical ailments that all the king’s horses and all the king’s men can’t seem to fix—or when we are in a spiritual malaise so thick the light to our path feels like a candle in the fog, what we need are not new truths, but old truths recently forgotten.
And whether you’ve forgotten these truths, or if you’ve never known these truths, Jesus welcomes you. If you’ve walked away from God for a decade or just the last ten days, Jesus welcomes you again. And someday, as gently as I might wake you up from a Sunday nap, Jesus will wake up the Christian from death. Until that day, let us all help one another ponder what the Lord has done, is doing, and will do.
