Sunday, October 9, 2022 AM

Sunnyside Baptist Church

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Let's go to the Lord together in prayer. Heavenly Father, we come before you today.

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We thank you for your provision in our lives. We thank you for the way that you love us and hear our prayers and give to us good things.

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Lord, we intercede for our brothers and sisters today who are sick, recovering from sickness, who are absent from us.

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Lord, we ask that you would heal them and restore them and provide for them for all of their needs.

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Especially, Lord, I pray that you would encourage them with joy today as we reflect here and elsewhere on the resurrection of our

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Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. I pray that you would help us to worship you today, to hear your word and to respond in submission to your truth that we would embrace the authority displayed of your

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Son, Jesus Christ, and that we would also embrace the work of the

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Holy Spirit in our lives to conform us to him. We ask that you would grant us these many mercies for the sake of your

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Son, Jesus Christ, with whom you are well pleased. Amen. Well, I invite you to open your

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Bibles and turn with me to Acts chapter 3. In Acts chapter 3, we'll be reading in verses 6 through 16 here in a moment.

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As we have been looking at the book of Acts, we see in chapter 1, the king in his kingdom, how he makes his promises, how he arranges the affections and the direction of his followers and prepares them for the gift of the

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Holy Spirit, that principal promise of the new covenant connected with the forgiveness of sins.

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And in chapter 2, in the day of Pentecost, we see the long -awaited, much -anticipated, thoroughly promised advent of the

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Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit comes, and he comes in such a distinct and effective way that the attention of the

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Jews in Jerusalem was diverted to the apostles, these men of Galilee who began to preach in languages they had never learned, and they were preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ.

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And to clarify what was going on, to make it make sense to the skeptics,

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Peter preached from Joel and said, what you see here in the manifestation of the

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Holy Spirit, what you are encountering here is nothing less than the new covenant, the arrival of the new covenant, the evidence of the new, and the pending judgment of the old.

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Welcome to the last days of the old covenant. Judgment is nigh, but there is salvation.

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Whoever calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. Oh, who is this

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Lord? What is his name? Peter goes on to preach from the Psalms and clarifies that this

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Lord is none other than Jesus of Nazareth, who is the Christ, the

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Son of the Living God. And they are to call, Peter preaches to his fellow Jews and says, you must call upon the name of Jesus.

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He is the Savior. You must put your faith in it. You must trust.

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Only through him will you find forgiveness. Only through him will you be delivered from this perverse generation.

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And then we see at the end of Acts 2 how Jesus builds his church. And many thousands, in fact, call upon the name of the

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Lord. They are saved. They receive the Holy Spirit. They're forgiven of their sins. And to show everyone that they are now followers of Christ, they are baptized.

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And we read the Lord builds his church, and they gather together regularly. They love one another.

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They share with each other. They worship together. And Christ builds his church.

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He advances his church. Now, just as in the days where Jesus walked with his disciples in Galilee and Judea, so also here, there is conflict.

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There is confrontation between Christ, who is the one who brings about the new covenant, conflict between him, and conflict between him and those who were the stewards of the old covenant.

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Those who centered their worship life at the temple. Those who, in fact, worshipped the temple and thought of the temple above everything else.

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Those who were part of a corrupted, rebellious, unrepentant system.

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The stewards of the old covenant. The chief priests, the scribes, the Sadducees, the

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Pharisees. These who had rejected Christ. These who had led a rebellion against Christ.

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These tenants of the vineyard, who on the arrival of the sun said, let us kill the heir that all will belong to us and cast him out of the vineyard.

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These same folks are now under the judgment of God. And yet, God is patient.

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Yet, God is long -suffering and kind. And even as these same skeptics opposed

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Christ time and again, taunted him, and scorned him, and would say things like, show us another sign.

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And what did Jesus tell them? A wicked and perverse generation seeks for a sign.

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And this generation will receive no further sign than this, the sign of Jonah.

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And as Jonah was in the belly of the fish, so the Son of Man will be in the heart of the earth.

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Even as Jonah was resurrected out of that ocean, out of the belly of the fish, and went to preach to a rebellious city, so the

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Son of Man was raised from the dead. And he sends forth his servants to preach. And how long, how long did

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Jonah say that Nineveh had before the judgment of God fell? Forty days.

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But you know, God was much more patient with Jerusalem. He said forty years.

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This generation. You have this generation until the judgment falls. And when it does, it's all over.

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And so he sends out his messengers and his followers, Christ sends them out, and they preach the gospel.

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And there's going to be a conflict. It's going to be a confrontation. And this showdown between the faithless, covenant -breaking stewards of the

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Old Covenant, and the followers of Christ, members of the

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New Covenant, that conflict that we're going to find time and again in the book of Acts begins in the temple.

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Begins at the temple. A fitting place for a showdown here in Acts chapters 3 and 4. And so that's what we're looking at here in Acts 3, the beginning of a showdown.

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And we've thought about Peter and John going up to the temple at the hour of prayer. We see the early church worshiping together at the temple.

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After all, where better, what a better place to worship Christ, the fulfillment of all these old testaments, shadows, and types, and promises, than to go to the temple and to worship.

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Besides, they numbered in the thousands, and Solomon's porch was big enough to hold them all.

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So that was a great place to go meet and to worship together. But we see

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Peter and John going up to the temple at the hour of prayer. There's a lame man lying there at the gate, beautiful.

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Lame from his mother's womb. Never allowed into that, that temple, the courts of the temple proper because of his defect.

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And they have an encounter there. And we're going to start with verse 6.

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I invite you to stand with me as I read Peter and Peter and John addressing the lame man.

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This is the word of the Lord. Then Peter said, silver and gold I do not have, but what

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I do have I give you. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth rise up and walk.

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And he took him by the right hand and lifted him up. And immediately his feet and ankle bones received strength.

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So he leaping up stood and walked and entered the temple with them, walking, leaping, and praising

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God. And all the people saw him walking and praising God. Then they knew that it was he who sat begging alms at the beautiful gate of the temple.

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And they were filled with wonder and amazement at what had happened to him. Now, as the lame man who was healed held on to Peter and John, all the people ran together to them in the porch, which is called

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Solomon's, greatly amazed. So when Peter saw it, he responded to the people. Men of Israel, why do you marvel at this?

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Or why do you look so intently at us? As though by our own power or godliness we had made this man walk.

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The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of our fathers, glorified his servant,

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Jesus, whom you delivered up and denied in the presence of Pilate when he was determined to let him go.

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But you denied the Holy One and the just and asked for a murderer to be granted to you and killed the

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Prince of Life whom God raised from the dead, of which we are witnesses. And his name, through faith in his name, has made this man strong whom you see and know.

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Yes, the faith which comes through him has given him this perfect soundness in the presence of you all.

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This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. You may be seated. Did you hear about the preacher who got saved in the pulpit?

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Hasn't happened very often, but there was a man by the name of William Haslam back in the 1800s.

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He was a Methodist. New pastor. He was interested in beautifying the church and starting up a choir and, you know, getting this thing rolling.

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But there are some folks in his congregation who were talking about things he had never experienced, things he had never known, things about a true and living faith, a warm belief in Christ, about assurance and confidence, about the forgiveness of their sins and the conviction of things that were true.

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He sensed that there was something missing in his own life. He went to go visit a friend of his, a fellow

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Methodist vicar, and he began to talk to him and the man began to talk to him about, you must be born again.

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Started sharing things from John 3 and John 7 and although they prayed together and it kind of made sense,

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William Haslam, it just didn't fit. It didn't take.

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And he was left more empty and miserable than ever. But, you know, Sunday was coming and he had to prepare something for the service and he was feeling terrible.

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So he decided he would just make a few remarks on the need for conversion. After all, his pastor friend had given him some good ideas and he thought he would just talk about that in the morning.

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And this is what he records in his journal about that morning. He said something was telling me all the time, all the time he was preaching and sharing these thoughts about conversion that he did not understand.

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Something was telling me all the time, you are no better than the Pharisees. You do not believe he has come to save you any more than they did.

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He relates, I don't remember all that I said, but I felt a wonderful light and joy coming into my soul.

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And I was beginning to see what the Pharisees did not. Whether it was in my words or my manner or my look,

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I know not, but all of a sudden a local preacher who happened to be in my congregation stood up, putting up his arms, shouted it out in Cornish fashion, the parson is converted, the parson is converted, hallelujah.

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And in another moment his voice was lost among the commotion of the congregation as they also began to call out and to rejoice.

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He says, instead of rebuking this extraordinary brawling as I would have done in former time,

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I joined in the outbreak of praise and then gave out the doxology, praise

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God from whom all blessings flow, and the people sang it over and over again.

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I thought of that story, it's one of my favorite stories. I thought of it when I was reading through Acts 3 about this man born lame, so long left there at the gate beautiful, not allowed in.

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But when he encounters the power of Jesus and was called to believe upon the name of Christ, he enters into the temple walking and leaping and praising

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God, and everybody got excited with him. I thought of that story reading this text.

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Now we've thought about together from the beginning of Acts 3 about the question of entrance, that this man born lame in that second temple

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Judaism, in that system, he was not allowed into the temple courts proper because of his defect.

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The Levitical instruction said only the descendants of Aaron who had a defect were not to approach, but they had expanded it to keep others out.

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And so every day of his life he was sent to beg at the gate beautiful to not be a financial burden to his family.

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And so he was part of the system. He was part of the system there where he sat by the gate, and those who came had been instructed by their rabbis or instructed by the

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Pharisees that they should be benevolent, and they should give gifts to the poor, and if they so happen to give alms to the poor who are closer to the temple, it would be more meritorious, more approved of by God than otherwise.

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And so this man was well known. He was at a prominent gate. He was a fixture there, a part of the system.

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But day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, decade after decade, there was no healing for that man.

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He was never allowed in to look upon the shadows of the Messiah to consider forgiveness by the sacrifice of a substitute.

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He was not allowed into the temple courts to worship together with the others who were acceptable in that system.

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He received a pittance time and again, but he never received salvation. He never received healing.

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He never received deliverance. He was never saved until he came into contact with none other than Jesus Christ through his apostles.

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Now we come to verses 7 through 11, and I want us to consider the excitement that's going on in this temple showdown.

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In fact, it's the excitement that stirs up the temple leaders later on, and they have to send out the temple guards to arrest the troublemakers.

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And so this excitement is essential to the progress of the story. But it's also important for us to consider as we consider the name of Jesus Christ and his power to save.

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So look again in verses 7 through 11. And Peter, and he took him by the right hand and lifted him up.

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And immediately his feet and ankle bones received strength. So he, leaping up, stood and walked and entered the temple with them, walking and leaping and praising

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God. And all the people saw him walking and praising God. Then they knew it was he who sat begging alms at the beautiful gate of the temple.

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And they were filled with wonder and amazement at what had happened to him. Now as the lame man who was healed held on to Peter and John, all the people ran together to them in the porch, which is called

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Solomon's, greatly amazed. You know, Luke is a doctor.

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And obviously he got the story and he was very focused on how the man was healed.

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You see, he talks about it. He says that he grabbed him by the right hand, lifted him up. And immediately, all at once, his feet received strength.

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His ankle bones received strength. One would only have to glance at the man to see one who was lame from his mother's womb, to see the atrophied legs of this man.

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They're how shiveled they were, how absolutely useless they were for any kind of travel, for any kind of standing or walking, let alone leaping.

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No strength in them at all. And yet, as Peter calls upon the man to believe in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, to believe on the one who was raised from the dead.

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If he was raised from the dead, surely he could get this man up off the ground. Jesus of Nazareth, the name of Jesus, who he is and what he has done, believe upon him.

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Peter calls this man to believe upon Christ, grabs him by the right hand, lifts him up, and immediately, this man's feet and ankle bones received strength.

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He was healed, completely, immediately healed. And, you know,

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Peter's going to make it clear in a moment, and we've already really seen it, but it wasn't

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Peter who healed him, right? He didn't say, in the name of Peter and John, rise up and walk.

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In the name of Jesus of Nazareth, in the name of Jesus Christ, rise up and walk.

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It's why at the beginning of the book of Acts, we talked about, you know, the title says the Acts of the Apostles, but actually, it's the

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Acts of the risen Lord Jesus Christ, by the power of his spirit, through his apostles.

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That's what we're looking at, that Jesus heals this man. And even as Jesus would heal the lame throughout

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Galilee and Judea, in his earthly ministry, even now here, through his specially appointed apostles, he heals this man, and there is immediate praise.

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Verse 8, so he, leaping up, stood and walked and entered the temple with them. Just imagine, decades of never being able to pass through that gate, and he's able to get up, and he walks, and he enters the temple with them, walking and leaping, and praising

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God. Now, this is a public, undeniable miracle.

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It is deserving of this type of response. It is deserving of this type of praise.

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He's walking, and leaping, and praising God. He is, not only is he living out the deliverance that he's been given, for the very first time, he can walk.

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For the very first time, he can leap. Now, he could have always praised the

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Lord, but now, he's praising God in a whole new way, because he has faith in the name of Jesus of Nazareth.

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And so, notice, he is not going to show himself to the scribes, to get their approval to enter, after so many decades of being unclean and cast out.

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He's just going in. He's got a hold of Peter and John, not because he can't stand on his own, but he doesn't want to let go of his new brothers.

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He doesn't want to let go of those who came to him, with the name of Jesus of Nazareth. And so, he's with them, and he's rejoicing and praising

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God. He is excited, as he should be. And you saw the excitement of our brother in Ivory Coast.

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You saw his excitement, as he shared his deliverance and salvation story. It's like, you know, you haven't seen a miracle,

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I'm the miracle. He's excited about the name of Jesus of Nazareth, the name of Christ, the name of the one who has saved him.

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And this man is excited, and the attention is turned to this man, and to Peter and John, whom this man is grabbing.

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So, we see in verse 9, And all the people saw him walking and praising

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God. Then they knew it was he who sat begging alms at the beautiful gate of the temple.

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This man was as a fixture of the temple as the gate itself.

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Everybody who came there, no matter what day it was, or what week it was, or what year it was, well, there he is.

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He's always there. And you know, it reminds me of the moment where Jesus and his disciples came across that blind man, begging by the side of the road.

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And the disciples asked Jesus, Who sinned, this man or his parents that he was born blind?

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They were of the mindset that the reason why a person would be born with that kind of a tragic defect was because the parents had somehow sinned in a special way.

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Or that perhaps that God, looking down the corridors of time, saw that this man was evil and unfit, and therefore afflicted him with blindness before he was even born.

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That was their mindset. Do you remember what Jesus told them? It was not for his sin, nor the sin of his parents, that this man was born blind.

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But for what reason? That God would be glorified, for the purposes of God to be manifested.

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This is why this man was born blind. And Jesus healed him, and that man caused a ruckus.

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And attention was given to the glory of God, to the gospel of the kingdom.

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So also here, this man born lame, for so often, for so long, a fixture there at the gate beautiful, where everybody could see him.

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And everybody would know that day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, the system could not heal the man.

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The system could not forgive the man. The system could not deliver the man. He was part of the system, but he had no salvation.

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And now, he's healed. And now everybody knows, hey, that's the guy.

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That's the guy who was born lame. Look at him. He's walking, and he's leaping, and he's praising

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God, and he's got a hold of those two Nazarenes, those two Galileans, those two followers of the way.

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Do you see how God arranged it all? For the glory of his son, Jesus Christ.

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And everybody gets excited. It's a contagious kind of excitement. It reminds you of the days of Jesus walking with his disciples, and as he began to heal people in the crowd, and deliver people from demons in the crowd, the multitudes got larger and larger and larger.

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And that's what's happening here in the temple. All this excitement. Well, praise is the creature's proper response to the creator.

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You know, we too often adopt the joyless pagan mindset of the world around us.

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And we fail to rejoice in the miracles of creation all around us, the beauty of God's goodness, fail to stop and wonder at the breath that we breathe, and the gifts of every day, the treasures of family, and children, and friends, and just the gift of life itself.

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We begin to look about and interpret the ups and downs, and to's and fro's of life in a secular, mere cause and effect sense, instead of remembering that God is our maker.

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He gives us life every day, that the gifts that we enjoy are directly from Him.

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Our daily bread is a gift from God. There is so much that we are to give praise to the

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Lord for, as our creator and us being his creatures. We're made in God's image expressly for that.

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That we would worship, and praise, and give honor and glory to the Lord. To be thankful in all things, at all times.

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And we have so much to give Him praise for. But look how much more excitement. How much the more do we have to praise the

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Lord for our deliverance, for our salvation, for the direct intervention into our lives where God affects a powerful transformation.

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How much the more do we have to praise Him. Look how, in the name of Jesus Christ, this lame man was restored to a position, and a place, and ability to praise

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God. This lame man, he could not walk and leap.

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Now he can. Before, he was just a dusty figure by the side of an entrance to the gate.

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Something to toss money at. But now he's a man rejoicing and praising

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God. And everybody is in wonder at this man of fire. Look how

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Jesus restores this man in the image of God to a place of worship, to a place of praise.

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He, Christ, Christ brought the man near to Him.

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And then, He puts him out as a testimony. A testimony.

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What has God done for you? What has God done for you in Christ?

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What has God saved you from? Yes, saved you from damnation and hell.

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Yes, saved you from an endless tussle with the shame and the guilt. Oh, but He also saves you from the power of sin.

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Slavery to the fear of man. Slavery to the fear of death. He delivers you from the entwining restriction of sin.

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He brings you into the joy of the Lord. He gives you new mercies every morning in Christ.

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Oh, what has He done for us? Yes, our praise should be robust.

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And as the man healed, immediately lived out that healing, so we, delivered from a far greater affliction, our death and trespasses and sins, we ought to be living out the life that we have in Christ.

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In victory and power over sin. Live it out and rejoice. Give Him praise.

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This is the proper kind of excitement. There is a kind of zeal that is no good.

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Right? There is a kind of zeal without knowledge. A kind of zeal that ignores the truth.

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A zeal that has no wisdom to it. And that can be very ineffective and perhaps even damaging.

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There is a kind of zeal for zeal's sake. Let's get excited to be excited. And that's not very helpful either.

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But brothers and sisters, there is a real genuine excitement that we are to have a kind of joy, a kind of delight that we are to have as we reflect upon the powerful, transforming deliverance of our

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Savior, Jesus Christ. We are to be excited. We are to speak about our deliverance.

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We are to talk about what we have been saved from and how we are saved now and how that salvation is going to continue to the utmost end.

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To be that testimony and draw attention to the goodness of our Lord and Savior.

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All that excitement you see naturally transitions into evangelism here in verses 12 through 16.

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And it begins with confrontation in verse 12. So when Peter saw it, he saw the amazement, the wonder, the hubbub around him.

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When Peter saw it, he responded to the people. Men of Israel, why do you marvel at this?

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Or why do you look so intently at us as though by our own power or godliness, we had made this man walk?

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Peter knew what they were thinking. Peter usually think the same way. He understood where their excitement was coming from.

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And it was coming from wrong -headed presuppositions. Presuppositions.

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They thought if you were a really godly, holy, religious person, you could affect wonders and powers.

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They very often thought that's all that Jesus was. This good and holy man who could do mighty wonders and signs.

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But that's all that he was. They didn't understand that he was the son of God. That he was God of very

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God and man of very man. God dwelling among us. And they look at Peter and John and they misunderstand.

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They got the wrong idea. They look at them as part of the system. Ah, yeah. See, they've really done well in the system.

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They're very accomplished in their religious ideas and achievements.

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And that's why they could heal this man. Because they had the secrets and the power. And Peter says, you've got it all wrong.

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Don't look at us. Don't look at us like we have something in and of ourselves to heal this man.

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Peter spoke to the man and said, it's in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth that you rise up and walk.

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It's about Christ, not about Peter, not about John. So Peter confronts the wrong -headed ideas of the audience.

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He exposes those because he doesn't want them sticking with the ineffectual system.

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And now what does he say? He continues further. He challenges them even further.

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He says, The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of our fathers, glorified his servant Jesus, whom you delivered up and denied in the presence of Pilate.

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So basically, you're opposed to God. You took the servant that God sent to you and you delivered him up to Pilate.

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You denied him in the presence of Pilate when he was determined to let him go. You denied the

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Holy One and the just. You're opposed to the Messiah and asked for a murderer to be granted to you.

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Wow, look at their guilt. Look at how condemned they are before God. And kill the

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Prince of Life, whom God raised from the dead, of which we are witnesses. You see what

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Peter does there. He brings before them the reality of their condemnation.

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First of all, he confronts them in their wrong -headedness. And then he points out how condemned they are before God.

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That they stand as men of Israel, as a part of a group who killed the

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Messiah. Who opposed the will of God. Who did this horrific evil thing.

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But they didn't thwart the will of God. They didn't ruin God's plan.

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Because we hear this confirming word that God raised him up from the dead.

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Now, Peter's doing something very important here. And we need to follow through with how he's putting this out.

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He is saying, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The God of all the scriptures.

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The God of ages past and these generations that our people have lived through.

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As God who made all these promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Has brought about those promises in none other than his servant,

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Jesus Christ. What did God promise to Abraham? What did God promise to Isaac?

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What did God promise to Jacob? He's brought it to pass in Jesus Christ. Oh, and he's his servant.

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Capital S. Servant Jesus Christ. That's the name God used about Israel back in the old covenant.

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But now he's using it of Jesus Christ. Because he's the fulfillment of this people.

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He's brought about the new covenant. No longer is it all shadow. But now the substance has come.

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And he says, God raised him from the dead.

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Of which we are witnesses. And if you want proof positive that God has raised

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Jesus of Nazareth from the dead. And that all the promises of God are kept in Christ. Just look at this man who's now walking and leaping and praising

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God. Because he was healed in the name of Jesus of Nazareth who is the Christ. Now what a wonderful preaching of the gospel of the kingdom.

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The good news of Jesus Christ. Look how

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Jesus is described in the text. He is God's servant.

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He is the Holy One. He is the Just One. He is the Prince of Life.

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What a wonderful Savior. Now how compelling is this? Peter says it's not about us.

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And it's not about you being more holy and good and getting things right in your own life.

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It's not about you all being trying to attain to the level or the power we have. It's not about us.

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It's about Jesus Christ. Now you stand guilty as part of Israel of killing

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God's servant Jesus of Nazareth. But God has raised him from the dead.

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And look at the kind of deliverance that is brought about in the name of Jesus Christ.

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Look at this man. This man lame now stands. Look how powerfully he's been delivered.

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You'll notice that everything was done outside of their system. It wasn't about people looking good.

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And it wasn't about the system itself doing something that healed the man.

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No, it was Jesus. It was Jesus who healed him. It was the name of Jesus that Peter is preaching.

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And the system opposed the Messiah and killed the Christ. But God raised him back up from the dead.

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And so this man has this perfect soundness now in the presence of you all. You know,

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I can't help but think of Jesus and his disciples as they, that last week before, in that last week before he was crucified and where he rose again.

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He spent some time with his disciples in the temple. And he was speaking out against the system.

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Woe, woe, woe upon the Pharisees and the scribes and the Sadducees. And leaving the temple as they were making their way towards the

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Eastern Gate. The disciples said to Jesus, look at all these beautiful stones, right?

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Look at how amazing this place was. And it was amazing. I mean, it was one of the wonders of the ancient world.

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A magnificent building overlaid in all manner of silver and gold. And they didn't want

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Jesus to be so negative about the whole thing. Look how wonderful this place is. And Jesus said, surely

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I tell you, surely I tell you, not one stone here will be left upon the other. And this generation is going to see the destruction of the temple.

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And they did. But see how excited they all were about the silver and the gold.

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How excited they were of the stones. They actually said, look at these stones. Look at these buildings.

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Look at these stones. These marvelous stones. That's where all the excitement was in that system.

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They were excited about the beautiful stones in the temple. But now, watch what's happening in this temple showdown.

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Peter and John show up. And this man gets saved. And you know who they are?

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They're living stones. They're living stones in the temple that the son of David builds. And he's the cornerstone and the capstone.

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And he's building a temple of living stones. And look where all the excitement goes. No longer are there people looking around at the columns and the porch of Solomon or looking at the rising face of the eastern side of the temple and the massive doors and saying, oh wow, look how beautiful this place is.

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They're not excited about the temple. They're excited about these living stones. Their attention has been displaced from the old covenant shadows to the new covenant realities of deliverance and salvation and righteousness in Jesus Christ.

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And that's where our excitement has to be. In the Savior. In the Savior. Not in any system.

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Not in any system. Mankind, all mankind is the same as Israel in this regard.

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That we are as helpless to save ourselves or anybody else as much as a cripple from birth is able to stand up on his own.

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The good news comes with expectation -shattering news.

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It's not a system that saves. And man has tried many different systems.

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Just go through this process. Take these three action steps. Attend this location and go through these procedures.

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And every system that man comes up with, whether obviously religious or not, fails to save.

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Fails to transform. Fails to bring about the righteousness and the peace that is declared in Jesus Christ and in Jesus Christ alone.

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You know, the... No matter how stunning the system is.

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No matter how historical. No matter how sincere. No matter how popular the system is.

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Real, actual salvation. The transformation of a life. Not just the assuaging of guilt feelings and the erasure of shame.

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But an actual real saving. A real being born again. Being made alive or once you were dead.

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Of being brought into a new kingdom out of the dominion of darkness. That real kind of salvation is in Jesus Christ and him alone.

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And that's where our excitement needs to be redirected. That's what we need to be clear on when we share about our excitement with others.

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Because we have a Savior. An ascended Lord. And his name is Jesus. Let's pray.

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Father, I thank you for the time you've given us in your word. Thank you for the reminders that this text brings to our attention.

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We thank you for saving this man. For healing him and giving him joy in your son Jesus Christ. And using him as a lightning rod of attention.

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So that Peter and John may preach your gospel to so many. And we know that you save thousands and thousands and thousands through the preaching of your servants there in the first century.

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And we praise you today that you have saved millions and millions and billions.

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And brought them into your kingdom. And Lord, you've done so in ways that despite our weaknesses.

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And even using our weaknesses. You glorify yourself and show your strength. And so we give you the praise for you are a great