The Lame Man Learns To Dance Series

The lame man learns to dance Acts 3:12-26

12And when Peter saw it, he answered unto the people, Ye men of Israel, why marvel ye at this? or why look ye so earnestly on us, as though by our own power or holiness we had made this man to walk? 13The God of Abraham, and of Isaac, and of Jacob, the God of our fathers, hath glorified his Son Jesus; whom ye delivered up, and denied him in the presence of Pilate, when he was determined to let him go. 14But ye denied the Holy One and the Just, and desired a murderer to be granted unto you; 15 And killed the Prince of life, whom God hath raised from the dead; whereof we are witnesses. 16 And his name through faith in his name hath made this man strong, whom ye see and know: yea, the faith which is by him hath given him this perfect soundness in the presence of you all.

17 And now, brethren, I wot that through ignorance ye did it, as did also your rulers. 18 But those things, which God before had shewed by the mouth of all his prophets, that Christ should suffer, he hath so fulfilled. 19 Repent ye therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, when the times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord. 20 And he shall send Jesus Christ, which before was preached unto you: 21 Whom the heaven must receive until the times of restitution of all things, which God hath spoken by the mouth of all his holy prophets since the world began.

22 For Moses truly said unto the fathers, A prophet shall the Lord your God raise up unto you of your brethren, like unto me; him shall ye hear in all things whatsoever he shall say unto you. 23 And it shall come to pass, that every soul, which will not hear that prophet, shall be destroyed from among the people. 24 Yea, and all the prophets from Samuel and those that follow after, as many as have spoken, have likewise foretold of these days. 25 Ye are the children of the prophets, and of the covenant which God made with our fathers, saying unto Abraham, And in thy seed shall all the kindreds of the earth be blessed. 26 Unto you first God, having raised up his Son Jesus, sent him to bless you, in turning away every one of you from his iniquities.

All good sermons have three parts. There’s the beginning, the middle, and the end or the introduction, the theme, and the conclusion, and Peter has three here.

So, I want to focus on three things in this passage and the first one is where Peter stresses the guilt of this crowd and then second, he gives a message of both mercy and warning and then third, he gives a detailed list of the things they’ve done wrong and commands them to repent.

I The guilt of these people

Let me take you back to where we were a few weeks ago because Peter and John were on their way into the temple walking through those huge brass gates and they stopped and healed a crippled man. Now, I want you to understand that this didn’t happen somewhere in a quiet corner but as I said they were on their way into the temple area and as I told you there could have been somewhere around two million people attending the feast of Passover and everyone would be coming and going to the temple because everything related to the Passover was taking place was happening here.

So, there would be huge crowds attending every meeting and they’d be coming and going through these gates where Peter and John had healed this man right and the healing was very public and this healing would not only be witnessed by the crowds but there would have also been crowds of locals who were trying to make a few bucks off what they considered to be the tourists.

There’d be souvenir salesmen, food vendors of all kinds and people selling whatever you needed for the feasts whether it was animals for offerings or even exchange booths where they traded foreign currency for Jewish money because the leaders said you couldn’t give God pagan money and then would charge them exorbitant rates to exchange it.

And it’s interesting to look at this healing because I’m sure this crippled wasn’t the only one looking for handouts but there’d also be the blind, the deaf and everyone else who had whatever problem you can imagine.

And so, what I’m trying to do is paint a picture for you of the scene; because Peter doesn’t have to draw a crowd to listen to his message because there was already a crowd there and it also says that more came running what they heard what happened.