I’m glad I got to speak about Acts chapter 3, because chapter 3 is kind of like one of those first huge miracles of the Church after the day of Pentecost, after the Holy Spirit was given. I want to pick up on the story because...now Peter has just received the Holy Spirit. He came on 120 people. He goes out and he preaches, and in his first sermon, 3,000 people get saved. The Bible says, "And the number that was added to the Church that day was about 3,000," so to have 3,120...because the 120 people were in the upper room on the day of Pentecost when the Holy Spirit fell.
So here comes Peter, full of the Holy Spirit, empowered. Now all the things Jesus had said in His earthly ministry to them turned out to be actually true, that He would be crucified, that He would be raised from the dead, and that He would send the Holy Spirit on the Church. So now they have this absolute confidence that Jesus is the Christ, that everything He says is true, and so everything He said that is coming must be true as well. And they walk out, and they see a sight I want to read to you about.
Listen to this in Acts, chapter 3. "Now Peter and John were going up to the temple at the hour of prayer, the ninth hour. And a man lame from birth was being carried, whom they laid daily at the gate of the temple that is called the Beautiful Gate to ask alms of those entering the temple. Seeing Peter and John about to go into the temple, he asked to receive alms. And Peter directed his gaze at him, as did John, and said, ’Look at us.’
And the crippled man, "he fixed his attention on them, expecting to receive something from them. But Peter said, ’I have no silver and gold, but what I do have I give to you. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk!’ And he took him by the right hand and raised him up, and immediately his feet and ankles were made strong. And leaping up he stood and began to walk, and entered the temple with them, walking and leaping and praising God. And all the people saw him walking and praising God, and recognized him as the one who sat at the Beautiful Gate of the temple, asking for alms. And they were filled with wonder and amazement at what had happened to him."
Someone said he was asking for alms, but he got legs. Anyway...this guy’s life...now, can you imagine being deformed, in essence, being paralyzed from birth, and that your whole life’s existence is a life of a beggar? Your mom and dad are going to carry you to the Temple every day and set you down, and your livelihood is going to be a professional beggar because you can’t work, you can’t have any kind of gainful employment. So, they know religious people go to the Temple and pray, so they’re going to set him right there at this Beautiful gate of the Temple, overlaid with extra layers of gold.
So he is there begging, and when Peter and John saw him, they reached out to him, having no gold and silver to offer, but they had something way more powerful. They had the name of Jesus Christ, the One now they utterly believed that everything He had said was true.
This man’s life got off track really early at birth. Some of us are a little bit lame in our life because our life has gotten off track just a little bit. Have you ever gotten off track? You know how that feels. You thought you had it all together. Maybe you got off track in business, maybe you got off track in a relationship, maybe you got off track morally, and you just don’t know what to do about it.
Well, I’ll never forget getting off track one time...literally getting off track. We were at my farm in Louisiana. We were riding ATVs, and we were along the Amit River. Now, the Amit River is several miles long, and there were miles and miles of ATV tracks in the back. Well, I had never gone back that far, but I had one of my brothers and a bunch of my nephews out there on these ATVs, and this was back in the day when we had the three wheelers. It had the big balloon tire up front, real susceptible to flipping over.
And it’s getting dark, and it’s freezing cold that night. We’re all bundled up in jackets, going through the back of the woods and through the river. And I’m losing them. They’re so good on them, and I never rode them that much, but they leave me. I saw them going over a hill. I’m going as fast as I can to catch up with them, and I ran into a hole, but the hole was full of water, and when I went through the water, the front wheel flipped up, flipped over, threw me down in the water, and the ATV fell on top of me.
Now, it’s cold. Now I’m soaking wet, underwater with an ATV on top of me. But thanks to the crawfish protein I’d been raised on in south Louisiana, I was able to lift that machine off of me and actually got out of it. Then I started riding around. Well, now it’s even worse. Now I’m cold, I have the ATV started again, but I’m freezing cold, I’ve lost my way, there are thousands of tracks going in all kinds of directions. I don’t know how to get home.
Well, everybody has gone back to the house, which was like a camp, and they’re eating jambalaya, crawfish pie, and Fila gumbo, and I’m freezing to death, and they’re not even thinking about me because they’re feeding their face. Finally, about two hours later when I was about to give up the ghost, I see lights coming. I said, "Oh, thank God!" And they rescued me and brought me back. Someone happened to say, "Well, where’s Uncle Billy?" because for me to be in town and not be at the table was like...but they were so busy eating. That is just how it was, and I couldn’t find my way back for hours.
But some people get off track and they never find their way back. And some of you in here may have gotten off track, and I want you to know when I get through today, you’re going to say, "Thank God I heard this message. Thank God I’m off track right now..." And your ears are going to perk up right now because this is for you; this is to get you back because sometimes we struggle, get overwhelmed. We can fake it for a while, but we know sooner or later, being off track is going to catch up with us. We’re going to get in trouble. So maybe we’ve been praying, "God, open up my heart. Bring me back to that place. Bring me back to that place where I was before." And the Lord wants to do that this morning, I believe with all my heart.
Now, have you ever seen a beggar? Have you ever seen a beggar? I’ve traveled all over the world, and I’ve seen ever kind of beggar you can imagine. A lot of the beggars is Western Europe, most of time they’re from the Middle East, and they have their babies there. And you walk by and give them money, and they’re not even paying attention to you. That is what they do every day. They don’t have anything else to do but go beg. And they’ll bring their children and put a little pot...need food, and whatever. Some people throw them money and some people don’t, but they couldn’t care less. They’re going to sit there all day. They don’t have anything else to do anyway.
Other beggars are really out there with a little bit better sign, and they’re really watching you, and they fix their eyes on you. Others...I saw one in Malaysia who was just a statue, and he was like this and never moved. I watched him for 20 minutes to see who was going to blink, and he never moved. And then, there was this guy who was just covered in street grunge, and he was just lying there with his little bucket and a little sign. Did you ever see the guy on the corner who says, "Will work for food"? They really don’t want to work for food. It’s like their job.
I was in New Orleans one time, and had this guy, "Will work for food," and we stopped and said, "Hey, man, look. Come on, we have some work to do over here, and we’ll be glad to feed you afterwards and even give you a little extra money." And he says, "Oh, man, I ain’t working." He said, "Come on, move out of the way. Move out of the way." We said, "Well, I thought you would work for food. We’d give you a place to stay tonight." He says, "I stay at the Holiday Inn." He made enough money every day with that sign to stay at the Holiday Inn, eat a hot breakfast in the morning, and eat three meals a day. He didn’t want to work for food. He was just a professional beggar.
But real beggars sit on the ground or sit on the side, and they will look at you and watch you walk by every step, hoping you’ll give them something. They are expecting something from you. And this was the case of the beggar in Acts chapter 3. He looked up expecting to receive silver and gold from Peter and John. And Peter said, "You know what? I don’t have any silver and gold, but what I have, I’m going to give to you."
I think sometimes our expectations of the things of this world let us down, and we need to refocus on the person of Jesus Christ. I don’t care how good of a businessman you are, your business can fail in an economy like this. I don’t care how nice a person you are, you can have failed relationships. There is nothing that can keep you from having an accident. There is nothing that can keep you from having cancer.
My wife, the most precious girl in the world, has been battling cancer since she was 21 years old, and the last two years, pancreatic and liver cancer. They gave her 12 months to live like 24 months ago. And she battles that. It’s a burden to carry that day after day. But you know what? We go to the doctors and we get the treatments, but her focus has to be totally on God to get the strength she needs to make it through. And I watch her and I see her get that.
So, we need to refocus our expecting eyes on the One who can deliver, and God can always and will always deliver for us...because it’s easy to get off track. The reason it’s so easy to get off track is because there is so much in this world that is trying to get our attention. There are so many road signs and so much in this world through the Internet and through relationships and just through the bling of this world, that’s always trying to get out attention, and we get off track.
Someone said, "Whatever gets your attention gets you." And some things are good. They need to have your attention. I know when the first time I ever saw Charlene, she was 14 years old, and she was in the foyer walking with a bunch of girls, and I was walking in the other way, and someone stopped me and introduced me to this girl. And I thought...Mmhmm. Man, that girl is looking good.
She smiled and said, "Hello, I’m Charlene." I said, "You are Charlene, I tell you." I was smitten. I immediately went to my math class, and I sat next to Ray Carter, and I said, "Ray, I just met the girl I’m going to marry." He said, "Who?" I said, "You remember that girl walking down the foyer?" He said, "Yeah." I said, "I’m going to marry her." He said, "Ah, you’re not going to marry her." I said, "I bet you $50."
Now, what I wouldn’t have done for $50 back in those days. That was 14 years old. We started going steady that summer. I dunked her in the swimming pool, and that touched her heart. That is the kind of stuff you did back then. You just dunk them, and that was it. She was, "Oh my! What a man!" And we started going steady. Hey, we waited until we were 17 to get married. I always tell the young people, "Look, you just need to wait. Hey, we did." Hey, this coming April, we will have been married 43 years.
But some things are not good...like Charlene, she’s my everything. I’m still totally focused on her, but some things are bad to focus on. Look what Philippians says. It says, "And now, dear brothers and sisters, one final thing. Fix your thoughts on what is true, and honorable." He says focus on what is "right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise."
Are you distracted? I get so distracted sometimes on worthless things, and it just zaps all my energy, and it takes all my time away, and I find myself at the end of the day...what have I been thinking all day? There are so many better things I could have been focusing on. There are so many better things I could have given my attention to, but because I didn’t, this cost me a whole day of distraction.
Do you ever hear the phrase "pay attention"? Your mom and daddy used to tell you that. My teachers would tell me that, "Hey, pay attention." "Alright. I’ll pay attention." Well, what that means is that...the phrase actually means it’s going to cost you something to give your attention to something. So whatever you’re giving your attention to is going to begin to lead you away. You have to stop giving your attention to one thing to give your attention to something else.
I think sometimes we’re giving our attention to good things instead of great things. And when we give our attention to great things, our lives start getting better. You have to know we impact our families and all the people around us by the things we give our attention to. In Psalms, it says this...I love this. It says, "Turn my eyes from worthless things, and give me life through Your Word." None of us can see our own errors, and none of us can know where the end result is of the things we set our affections on or our attention on, but we know if we set it on good things, there will be a good outcome.
So, the question is this...Will I go for God or will I choose a worthless life? Will I focus my attention on things that will bring nothing good in my life or will I focus on good things? As Pastor Greg is doing right now, it’s always good to focus on your family. It’s always good to focus on your small group, on your local church. It’s always good to focus in prayer, and focus in reading the Word, and just eat the Word of God every day. Read the Proverbs and apply those principles to your life. It’s always good to focus on the things of God.
Proverbs says, "Look straight ahead, and fix your eyes on what lies before you." He said, "Mark out a straight path for your feet; stay on the safe path. Don’t get sidetracked; keep your feet from following evil." Now, you know your feet won’t follow evil if you don’t give it your attention, but as soon as you focus on things that are wrong and evil, you know what? You’re headed that way. It’s just a matter of time.
So this morning, some of you have been struggling with that. "Man, I’ve been giving my attention to these worthless things, and it’s just taking all of my energy, and it’s eating up my spiritual strength, and there is this sense of guilt and condemnation, and I want to get free." Today, you get free. This is a day you move from those things back to the things of God.
As you are led astray by focusing on the wrong things, burdens and the weight of it all get on your shoulders. I know the mistakes I’ve made in the past...I carry them around like big stones. It’s like, "Oh my! How much longer am I going to have to carry this?" As soon as you decide to turn from that stuff, and as soon as you decide to refocus on the Lord Jesus, you can lay those things down.
But the weight of carrying all that around...and so, the writer of Hebrews says something incredible I want to read to you. This is our instruction for this morning. It says, "Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely." Let us lay aside every weight and sin which clings. I get this picture...well, I don’t always know what sin looks like, but I see it like big leeches or something hanging on my body, and they’re just sucking the life out of me, and the spiritual life, and you’re thinking, "Oh my! I’m carrying this stuff around." And the writer of Hebrews says, "Lay it aside. Set it down. Get rid of it."
He said, "And let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith." Again, he says, "Lay that stuff down and look to Jesus." Just like Peter and John said, "Look on us," God is saying, "Look on Me. I’m the Author of your freedom. Let those things go." He said, "Lay aside every weight."
Back in December, I had surgery. They had found melanoma on the bottom of my foot. It was a level five melanoma. Now, I don’t know the difference between level five melanoma or anything else, and so I went to Google, and I typed in "melanoma level five on the foot." Big mistake. It’s always worst case scenario, isn’t that right?
So, I pulled it up, and it says, "The level five melanoma is the most dangerous cancer of all, especially if it’s on your foot because you can go for a long, long time and not diagnose it right." It’s totally misdiagnosed. And guess what? I had had it for at least a year. It had been exposed for at least a year, and it had been misdiagnosed for a year. And now, it’s this ugly thing on the bottom of my foot that is now life threatening.
I’m thinking...Oh my goodness! I have a life threatening cancer on the bottom of my foot. And I couldn’t believe it, so I had surgery December 2, and they took the ball of my foot off. It’s ugly, and it hurt. It was painful. I had to lie in bed for about six weeks with my foot elevated. Now, you know what you do when you lie on the couch for six weeks with your foot elevated? You watch television, and you eat. I was distracted. I had lost my way. I just sat there and medicated myself with food, delectable food. And I started putting on weight and putting on weight and putting on weight, and it was fun at first, but then after a while I said, "You know what? This is getting out of hand."
I knew it was a problem when I started flying, and I would get on these flights, especially these Delta Express...I call them Delta compress. You have this big horde of people coming in, and all of sudden, they squish you down to these two little skinny seats. As I was walking down the aisle of the jet, I’m looking at the fear on people’s faces. Some of them are in solemn prayer, and they’re saying, "Oh my God, I hope he doesn’t sit next to me!" And I know that is what they’re doing because I’ve prayed that prayer before myself.
And I’m thinking...These sinners! So I’m praying the same thing. I always try to ask the ladies, "Do you know if this is a guy or a girl I’m going to sit next to because we’re getting ready to crush somebody?" So I see one time this little skinny girl, and I was sitting next to her, and I’m so relieved, and she is so upset. I sit down next to her, and she kind of looks at me, tries to ignore me, and I lean over just to kind of settle it. I said, "Hey, I am so glad I don’t have to sit next to some big fat guy." And they chuckle, but they still don’t love me.
But it’s just amazing those things that come to your mind when you’ve gained a lot of weight. And some of us are like Israel. We’re leading a misguided life that is full of struggles and is full of burdens. And if you read the book of Exodus, it talks about the burdens the Egyptians had laid on Israel, and how they suffered, and how they cried out to God to be delivered from this oppressive nation. And they’re crying out, and God is hearing them because He wants them to be weightless. He wants to take the weights off of them. God wants us to live weightlessly. He wants us to lay down every weight and every burden, even the weights that are on our minds.
Do you know...I discovered through this cancer ordeal, Pastor Greg, the weight on my mind of dealing with cancer was the most difficult thing I’d ever been through. I’d be driving around and so distracted about what might be going on in my body...because if it’s a level five, it kind of gets into your lymph node canals and your blood vessels, and it can go all over your body. I’m thinking...Woe! Much of me has been eaten up. I just don’t know, and I’m thinking. I’m driving the street, and I’m fighting, and I’m trying to give it over to the Lord, and I’m running red lights, and I’m stopping two blocks before the signal light, and I’m thinking, What am I doing? I’m so distracted.
Have you ever felt that hopeless and that lost with the things that weigh on your mind, when there is guilt, and there is sin in your life, and there are wrong things? Especially if you’ve worked all your life and you’ve made a wrong financial decision, and you thought it was right, but now it’s coming back to haunt you, and you’re so distracted.
I get distracted by that kind of stuff. I know I have to fight off the urge. I love cars, and I get new car fever about every 90 days. I have it now. I went and drove a new 2010 Camaro. Come on, men, how many of you...look at it. You have that in your radar? Look at people all over this room. It’s just the Lord. But Charlene says, "Billy, we can’t afford a Camaro right now." I said, "Well, I know. That is why I say I’m going to buy one in March or April." So, I always set off about six months because I know by then I’ll change my mind. I’ve done it a million times. I’ve figured it out. And when I don’t do it, I get in trouble, see? And it’s not that I want it so bad, really. It’s because I deserve it.
In Exodus, it says, "Wherefore say unto the children of Israel, I am the Lord, and I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians." I think the Lord is saying this morning, "Listen, you’re distracted, you’re off track, you’ve taken on weight, but let Me tell you something. I will deliver you from out from under those burdens." And I think that is God’s business because Jesus died on the cross that we could be weightless.
Now, you know what I found out when you’re weightless? If you ever see this spaceship, you know, the shuttle out in space. And these guys are floating around weightlessly, and you think, What would happen if they just kept floating? They would go into oblivion, you see. They would return one day as a meteorite or something, or a falling star. But they are always tethered to the mother ship.
God says, "I want you to be free, but I want you to stay tethered to Me. And let Me lead you and guide you. Never get so far from Me in your liberty and in your freedom that you lose sight of Me because I want you really to fix your eyes on Me at all times." That is really what we need to do. Hold on to Jesus, always looking back, always looking unto Him.
When we get to heaven one day, we’re going to see the massive omnipotence, all-powerfulness of God, and we’re going to see His riches and His total loving concern for us, and we’re going to wonder why we didn’t go to Him more in prayer. We’re going to wonder why we didn’t focus more on Him on earth. We’re going to say, "God, why did I ignore You for so long, as I’m standing before you and see how easy it would have been for You to answer my prayer, for You to deliver me from this weight, and give me a clear conscience and a freedom and a liberty?" But we don’t do it because we are distracted.
That brings me to the second part of this Scripture, and I’m just going to go a few more minutes. In Acts, chapter 3, he says, "And now, brothers, I know that you acted in ignorance, as did also your rulers. But what God foretold by the mouth of all the prophets, that His Christ would suffer, He thus fulfilled. Repent therefore, and turn again, that your sins may be blotted out." You see, God is saying, "Look, I want to take the burdens of your life off of you, and I want to take the burden of sin off of you." The Scripture says He carried our sins on the Cross for us.
I’ll never forget the day I accepted Christ. We had a cattle farm, and they used to drive up tractor trailer loads of cattle feed for me to unload after school. And I would drive up there, and sometimes there would be 100-pound sacks of cottonseed cake, which was a cattle feed. As I would unload those things, the burden of each one would get heavier and heavier, but I never will forget when I laid that thing down, how free and light I felt. I almost felt weightless after about the hundredth bag.
I’ll never forget one day I went to my bedroom to pray because I was under conviction of sin. I didn’t really know how to get saved, but I began reading my next-door neighbor’s Bible, and I asked God to forgive me, and to wash me, and to take the burdens of sin off my life. It was like I took 100 pounds of sin and laid it on the ground. I walked out of there, and I thought, Man, it feels like I just put down a sack of cow feed. And that is what sin was like on my life, and God forgave me, and from that day on, I was a new man. But I had to see Him first. I had to focus on Him first.
So, today I want to pray with you that God would help you let those burdens down, and let you find freedom, and teach you how to live weightlessly in His kingdom. Let me pray for you.
Father, I thank You for what Jesus has done for us, that You gave Your life a ransom for each and every one of us in this room, that, God, it’s Your desire that we live weightless. As we stay tethered to Jesus and as we focus on You, God, we lay the burdens down. Now, Father, as I pray, there is many of us in here who have taken on burdens, maybe it’s sin, maybe we’ve given our attention to things that are worthless, and it’s beginning to eat at our life. Maybe we’ve made mistakes we’re sorry for, and we’re guilty, and we’re living in fear of being found out. God, right now, we’re just asking You, God, please take this burden from me.
With every head bowed, I just want to get a response and pray for some of you. Would you say, "You know what? I’ve made some mistakes. I’m off track right now. I’m carrying burdens I want to give back to God. I want to lay these things down, and when I raise my hand, I’m going to ask God to help me"? If that is you, I want to pray for you. Real quick, just raise your hand...Look all over the room. All over the room, we’re carrying burdens. We’re carrying burdens and weights. Thank you.
Lord Jesus, You see the hands here. God, right now, we take these burdens. We ask for forgiveness, we repent, we turn away, and we fix our eyes on You, the Author and the Perfecter of our faith. And Jesus, we lay those burdens down, and we thank You for forgiveness. In a new life and a new way, we come back on track after God. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
