In Jesus Holy Name June 19, 2022
Text: Acts 3:6 Redeemer Lutheran
“Two Temples in Jerusalem”
God is on the move. There are now 3,120 new Christians in Jerusalem. They did not stop going to the temple at the time of prayer, just because they now worshiped Jesus. In Acts chapter 3 we find Peter and John going up to the temple at the time of prayer at 3 in the afternoon. The Temple, no doubt, has become one of the meeting places for the new Christian Community. Even though there are 12 gates through which a person can enter the Temple, Peter and John are entering the Temple Mount through the gate called “Beautiful”.
The Jewish historian Josephus described this gate made of fine Corinthian brass, seventy-five feet high with huge double doors, so beautiful that it “greatly excelled the other columns that were covered over with silver and gold.”
In the 1st century beggars were not allowed inside the temple. But they were placed on the steps leading into the Temple Complex because everyone knew that you earned credit with God if you gave money to the poor. This gate was used by the wealthy and well connected. They were the cream of society who needed to show their generosity.
Luke tells us that this man was placed there every day for 40 years. That also means that this man was there begging when Jesus came to the temple as well. So, why did Jesus not heal the beggar? He could have, but did not. We know that Jesus healed thousands but not everyone.
This is now the first miracle by the disciples as a result of the power of the Holy Spirit. Jesus was no longer physically present, but His Spirit was in the disciples guiding and directing. I’m sure the Holy Spirit told Peter to act… It was automatic, no time to think. The words just came out…(Read Acts 3:6-7)
God is on the move and now uses the disciples to continue to proclaim the Good News of forgiveness through Jesus, not the sacrifices in the Temple. Jesus has become the substitute for the Temple sacrifices.
The Pharisees and Sadducees thought that they had finally gotten rid of Jesus. His public ministry, His miracles drew attention away from them. They were envious. He was a Rabbi without climbing the right ladder. He had no authorization from Jerusalem to teach.
Jesus challenged their behavior and called them “hypocrites”, “white washed tombs” that looked good on the outside but full of dead men’s bones on the inside. He claimed to be God in flesh. He claimed authority to forgive sins and judge the world. They had had enough. The convinced Pilate to use Roman authority and He was crucified. That should have been the end of the Jesus story. His claim of deity was a good reason to arrest Him, put Him on trial and silence Him.
No, Jesus rose from death and the grave and now, there are, in effect, two temples in Jerusalem. One of made of stone by human hands, and one made out of human hearts in which the Spirit of Jesus now dwelt. The Jews understood that the Temple was the one place on earth where heaven and earth intersected and you received forgiveness of sins. The Temple offered forgiveness of sins by the sacrifices of lambs that were offered each day. Now Jesus, the real Temple, the real Sacrifice, offered forgiveness and healing, His resurrected body, “The Church” has become the temple of God on earth. (Leonard Sweet Jesus: A Theography p 172)
When a man crippled for 40 years starts running and jumping something significant is bound to happen. The jumping, and running and cheering of the beggar, brings curiosity. More questions are asked. People want to know. Why. How. It is time for a sermon. (Read Acts 3:11-19)
Acts 3 not only contains the first miracle by the hand of Peter but it brings a new conflict into focus. While the disciples of Jesus have been filled with power from the Holy Spirit in the previous chapter, the demonstration of this power in public brings them into conflict with the Temple establishment. The Pharisees did not believe that Jesus could be nor should be the substitute for forgiveness.
Almost a century and a half ago, Proctor & Gamble started to receive letters from enthusiastic customers. Each of the letters wanted to know where they could buy more of the soap which floats. People had quickly become enamored with the new Ivory soap which had helped them avoid sloshing around bath and laundry tubs for a slippery bar of soap. (illustration from a sermon by Rev. Ken Klaus April 22, 2018)
The executives knew they had a good thing going, so they quickly went public with the story of how a factory workman had unintentionally left a liquid batch of soap mixing longer than normal. It was an accident which had whipped air into the product, and the end result was Ivory, the soap which floats. That was the official story. It took more than 100 years before company historian, Ed Eider, revealed the truth that chemist James Gamble, son of one of the company's owners, had deliberately invented the company's winning product.
And a winning product it was. By 1890 more than 30 million bars of Ivory soap were being sold every year. For P&G, that was the good news; the bad news was, all things considered, it is easy to make soap and even easier to mix in some air. This meant P&G found themselves facing competitors who were marketing their own brands of floating soap. Desiring to keep their market share of sales, P&G launched programs which warned the public to beware of imitators.
"Accept no substitutes." They said.
Consider the situation of Austria-born Doris Gruenwald who, at the age of 22, found she was not a blood relative of the people whom she thought were her parents. It was a shock to Doris and to her folks who never imagined that when they left the hospital two decades earlier, they had been given the wrong child. Now, let me ask, if you were Doris' foster-parents, what would you do?
The hospital combed its records and come up with a list of 200 babies which might have been accidentally swapped. To find Gruenwald's biological parents, they contacted those 200 families and offered to give them a free DNA test. Of the 200 possibilities, only 30 families came forward to check things out. That's 30 out of 200. Why was the figure so low? Simple, these families and these young women didn’t want to be given a new family, and they didn’t want to accept some substitute parents.
Accept no substitutes. The truth is, we live in a disposable age. Contact lenses, plastic silverware, as well as plastic containers from takeout restaurants, aluminum foil, Christmas wrapping paper, and ten thousand other items are designed to be
used and replaced. For such products, substitution is the name of the game.
According to Peter and John, accepting no substitute ought certainly to be the rule when it comes to the selection of a Savior. As the beggar reached for Peter’s hand, hoping for money…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!" Peter reached out his hand and helped the man stand. The man's feet and ankles-atrophied by years of disability-were immediately made strong.
It was a special moment for the ex-cripple who went into the temple laughing and jumping and shouting. He was, as you might understand, positively giddy with the instantaneous change that had transformed his life. It was also a special moment for the folks who were visiting in the temple that day. They saw, and recognized, the man who no longer had to beg for a living, and they also saw how the man was pointing to the two disciples as fellows who had, in the Name of Jesus, made the impossible possible.
When these crowds approached the apostles, Peter and John quickly set things straight. "No", they said, "we didn't do this miracle by our own power or piety. This fellow is healed by the power of Jesus.
You remember Jesus, don't you? Jesus is the Fellow who was sent by God to save you from your sins, and rescue your soul from eternal death. Maybe you also remember how, when He was on trial for His life, you called for His death. On that day, you accepted a substitute for your Savior. You asked the Roman Procurator, Pontius Pilate, to crucify Jesus and free a substitute, the murderer Barabbas.
Well, you accepted a substitute, and Jesus ended up dying on a Roman cross. “The cross was not the end of the Jesus' story. Three days after He died, the living Lord Jesus came out of His tomb and let all the world know that He was the world's Savior, and anyone who believed on Him would not perish but be given everlasting life." Jesus is responsible for saving this man from his crippled condition, He can also be responsible for saving you from an eternity of punishment.
Not surprisingly, the shouting and leaping ex-cripple, along with the loud sermon from Peter and John, also produced a negative effect. The temple guards singled them out as being the cause of the disturbance and threw them into jail to await a hearing on the following day.
Today we see all kinds of substitutes being promoted and accepted over the crucified and risen Redeemer. There are numerous religions that tell you that through sacrifice and self-discipline, you must save yourself from the Day of Judgment. He resisted every temptation which seduces us, and He conquered death which had once defeated us. He alone could carry our sins, and He alone could say, "I am the Resurrection and the Life, no one comes unto the Father except through Me."
Jesus is the substitute we need for salvation. In Him we rejoice.
