Do We Need More Miracles?
DO WE NEED MORE MIRACLES? Trinity
Acts 9:32-43 22.9.19
Christianity would be okay if Paul had not spoilt it with his thing against women and gay love, James with his rules and Peter with his doctrines. Just the simple Jesus would be enough.
So a common view goes. It may be common enough, but it ignores the facts. The first theme that comes to us from the last part of Acts ch 9 today is that:
- JESUS CONTINUES HIS MINISTRY THROUGH THE APOSTLES
We were with Paul last week – we’ll come back to him in chapter 13. Let’s run with Peter for a bit.
We read in 9:32 that Peter “went here and there” among the new Christians converted in Jerusalem, but who are now scattered all over the place. One of them is Aeneas, a man who has been paralysed for 8 years. Peter comes to him and says: “Aeneas, Jesus Christ heals you; rise and make your bed.” And immediately he rose. (v34)
Anyone who has been trying to get his teenage children out of bed, and then make their bed, knows what a miracle this is.
Peter hasn’t healed Aeneas. Jesus has. Just like he healed that other paralysed man back in Mark 2 – the man lowered through the roof by his friends. That man also rose, packed up his bed, and walked home.
15 kilometres up the road is Joppa, where a lady named Dorcas, or Tabitha, lived. She used to. She has now died. Her body has been washed and laid out in an upstairs room.
Does this also sound like something out of Mark’s gospel? The room is full of people. They are all put outside. The door is closed. Jesus says to the little dead girl “Talitha cumi” which means “get up”. Peter says “Tabitha cumi”. The little girl lives; Tabitha lives. They are each presented alive to their family members and friends.
Two miracles, almost the same in detail as the stories of Jesus we read in Mark 2 and Mark 5. The similarities are not an accident. The apostles are not staring their own miracle crusade. Luke wants us to see Jesus still at work, now through the apostles.
When he began writing the book of Acts, Luke says “In the first book [my gospel], I have dealt with all that Jesus BEGAN to do and teach …” (Acts 1:1).
The story of the apostles is the ongoing story of Jesus – what he CONTINUED to do and teach. When they heal, it is in his name. When they speak, they say words that he gave them. The kingdom they are building is not theirs but his. The wonderful stories in the book of Acts are more his stories than theirs.
Luke is not saying that the apostles stand in the same place as Jesus. There are obviously some big differences between Jesus and the men he chooses to be the foundation of his kingdom but to choose Jesus is to have also the apostles. You can’t have the real Jesus apart from also having apostolic Christianity.
So far, so good. So, here is Jesus, at the start. Then we have the apostles next down the track. Here we are in 2019.
Some things are the same for us as for the apostles and some things are different.
- Healing the sick and raising the dead by a word? We are never told to do that, or expect to do that, or to expect that will happen to us. Even for the apostles, these things are winding down. The gospels tell us of more than 30 miracles like this that Jesus did, over 3 years. The apostles did maybe 10 over 30 years.
- Words? Yes, Jesus expected the apostles to pass on the very same words he gave them to the next generation, for the one after that. Look at the Pastoral letters to see that.
- How about real love that is the outworking of those words? Yes, that’s to be a primary quality for all those who belong to Jesus, all the way along the line.
Not only do The apostles continue Jesus’ ministry, but:
- EVERYTHING CHANGES WITH THAT MINISTRY
I’ll mention 3 things that change:
Firstly, small people matter
Who is Aeneas? Hardly a high-flyer. Who is Tabitha? Just a lady who knew how to sew. Neither is from New York, but more like Moonbi or Willow Tree. They are nobodies from ‘Nowheresville’.
Or are they? They weren’t written up in the Jerusalem Times, but here we are, reading about them 40 generations later? Maybe in God’s kingdom little people do matter.
I’ll bet if you can quote Bible verses from memory, not one of them is from the last chapter of Romans. It reads as more or less a list of more than 30 people by name whom Paul knew, most of whom are unknown to us.
They are names which God has preserved as though their owners matter because they do – to Jesus. It’s as though in the family of Jesus there are not any small people.
Aeneas and Tabitha matter to Jesus, they matter to Peter – Peter the preacher to thousands and right hand man to Jesus!
Some of us think we’re small because we are young, or don’t stand out the front of church, or aren’t as smart as someone else, or we have a personal history that is not respectable. There are no small people in the family of Jesus. Every child of God matters to Jesus.
Secondly, deeds of love matter
What can we say about Tabitha? “She was full of good works and acts of charity.” (v36b) The mourners who meet Peter in Tabitha’s house showed him their “tunics and other garments that Dorcas made while she was with them” (v39b).
Here we are in the middle of a story full of long sermons, heroic actions and sacrificial evangelism and we read about what this lady has been doing at her sewing machine.
It is because we are good evangelicals who know that salvation is by grace and not by works, so that no one can boast, we may think it is even dangerous to talk about someone being “full of good works and acts of charity”.
Listen carefully: if we think stories like this don’t fit into God’s story, or that loving sacrificial actions do not matter, then we’ve got the wrong story. They have always fitted. They have always mattered. They are a living and essential part of the story.
They are such a natural part of the story that you can say there is something very seriously wrong when someone belongs to Jesus, but isn’t plunged into love for others and deeds of mercy.
The jumper knitted, the meal taken, the children cared for, the bed given to someone overnight … the time invested into serving in a church program run, the personal time surrendered for others, the money given away, the conversation with someone uncool … these are the kind of things that happen when Jesus changes people, as surely as night follows day.
As a way to be right with God? Of course not but what happens when Jesus makes a person right with God.
We are all part of a “serve-me” culture where “me-time” is primary. That is why the gospel of Jesus is so radical. That is why we need to read about Tabitha. Even after she has died, her deeds of mercy live on as her friends testify to her love.
What changes when Jesus’ ministry comes to us?
- Small people matter 2. Deeds of love matter
Thirdly, old divisions no longer matter
Lydda where Aeneas lives is not Jerusalem. Nor is Joppa where Tabitha lives. Not only are they backwater towns, but most people who live there are Gentiles, like those in today’s West Bank.
Good Jews don’t choose to go to Lydda or Joppa but that is beginning not to matter for Peter but it’s worse than that.
We read in verse 43 that where he stayed in Joppa was at the home of “one Simon, a tanner”. Tanners deal with dead animals. They are religiously dirty to a Jewish mind; they are not allowed to live in a Jewish town. So dirty, that if an engaged woman discovered that her fiancé was a tanner, she could freely break it all off without penalty.
Old beliefs are starting to unravel for Peter. For thousands of years, these people are in, and those are out. But the gospel is breaking down the old divisions and distinctions.
Through Jesus, Ethiopians and West Bank dwellers are as much in the kingdom as are Jews, tanners as much as priests, thieves and prostitutes and paedophiles as much as the “right” people.
This was revolutionary stuff. Enemies are now brothers. Dirty people are now clean. Divisions are healed.
Friends, it is still revolutionary. The most despised person in Tamworth who becomes a real Christian belongs to Jesus’ kingdom as the most respected person who does. Superior or inferior thoughts based on colour, gender, race or background religion have been blown to smithereens by the gospel.
What happens when you stand in a straight line with Jesus and with his apostles?
>> Nobody is a nobody. You stop thinking of yourself as a small person … or looking down on someone else as small.
>> You relish the privilege of giving yourself to love and good deeds … not as an optional extra, but as something that is simply part of the deal.
>> You celebrate the fact that you stand on a level playing field with others regardless of social, religious or educational categories.
After the healing of Aeneas, and the resurrection of Tabitha, what happened? Verse 35 says that “all the residents of Lydda and Sharon … turned to the Lord.” Verse 42 says “throughout all Joppa, many turned to the Lord”.
That’s Luke’s way of saying they believed the gospel. For that to happen, they had to have heard it … Peter, or Aeneas or Tabitha or Simon or someone else must have told it to them.
Were they attracted to hear the gospel by the miracles? Or by the care of Jesus for nobodies? Or the loving deeds of Tabitha? Or by seeing the way the gospel breaks down all the old barriers?
Maybe all of tha but what we may be sure about is that regardless of what won a hearing of the gospel, it was the gospel they heard, without which they could not possibly turn to Jesus.
Many of us will have been thinking about Jean Woods since she went to Jesus on Thursday. I think I have known no-one who was more passionate for people to hear his gospel than Jean.
Most recently, she encouraged us to press on with the new home base building. At 90+ she asked if she could put her name down to bake scones for the outreach cafe, and she volunteered to be there to talk to people about Jesus. Scones only won’t get people into the kingdom … but they might get people to hear the gospel.
That was off the back of evangelising through her nursing in Western and South Australia … having hundreds of young people to her Friday pizza nights, where someone could tell them about Jesus … along with thousands of others into her home … giving a room to a lady whose life was scrambled, who is now alive because of that … welcoming those Oxley High School kids to whom she taught Scripture … investing hours of prayer every day for family members, for missionaries all over the place and for every name in Keeping In Touch.
I think Jean was blind. She couldn’t see colour in people. Or smallness or bigness. Or messed-up lives. Or addresses on the wrong side of the tracks and she could not see that her rich deeds of love were very impressive. Do you see how she pointed people to Jesus?
People hanker after miracles, and think if someone gets healed, that’s really impressive. Living as though small people matter, as though deeds of love matter and as though the divisions of this world do not matter is a miracle. Lord, give us more miracles like that!
That’s the miracle of apostolic Christianity. We’ve read it today in Holy Scripture. We’ve seen it powerfully work out in a holy life.
Peter is gone. Tabitha is gone. Jean Woods is now gone.
Who will now stand in their place with the words and love of Jesus? Who will carry these things to the next generation? Contrary to the culture and contrary to the sin in our hearts.
Will I? Will you? Or you? Or you? Or you?