Wednesday Night Bible Study - Acts 3:11ff

As mentioned last week, I'm enjoying an opportunity to lead Bible Study on Wednesday nights here in Kampala.  It takes some prep work to lead, and I tend to lead more in discussion format.  My goal is to talk no more than 25% of the time if there are 5 people in the Bible study, and even less if there are more.  Last week there were about 8 people.  This week started off with considerably less and I had that flash of thought - what if it was so bad that no one wanted to come back this week?  By the end of Bible Study, though, the class size had grown again, so I felt better.  Bible Study is supposed to start at 5:30, so I usually leave the house around then to get to the church.  We tend to get started around 6 or so.  Then we go for about an hour from the time we actually start - except tonight we went almost to 8 because our discussion kept going and going.  And we only covered 16 verses - to the end of chapter 3!

Acts 3:11-26, Peter Speaks to the Onlookers

The roles are already reversed - the beggar who in last week's Bible Study was jumping for joy is now holding on to Peter and John and the people in the temple are the ones who come running.  Peter preaches a great sermon, starting with our own tendency to rely upon ourselves - "as if by our own power or godliness..."  Then he calls in the big names - the names everyone inside the temple courts would recognize, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  He conveys once more the recurrent theme of preaching in Acts, 1) You disowned and killed Christ 2) God raised him from the dead 3) Repent and be baptized for forgiveness of sins and you will receive the Holy Spirit. This preacher, this Peter, preaches from his own heart.  While he preaches to the crowd, "You disowned the Holy and Righteous One," he must be remembering how he himself disowned Christ.  Great preachers, it seems, are always preaching to themselves as well as to their hearers.

We spent some time in discussion about Acts 3:16, "By faith in the name of Jesus, this man whom you see and know was made strong..."  Whose faith are we talking about?  Was it the faith of the beggar?  If so, was it faith in the name of Christ Jesus - did he know who Jesus was?  Probably - if he had been begging at the temple gates for 30 years, he had certainly seen and heard of Jesus who came through Jerusalem some 8 weeks earlier.  But why isn't it clear that it is the beggar's faith?  In fact, it remains ambiguous.  It could be read as Peter and John's faith.  I'm reminded of Mark 2, the healing of the paralytic who is lowered through the roof by his friends.  The text in Mark 2 says, "When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, 'Son, your sins are forgiven.'"  It doesn't say that Jesus saw the paralytic's faith - it says when he saw their faith - the faith of the friends of the paralytic and possibly (or probably) also including the paralytic.  So in Acts 3 we ask whose faith it is through which the man is restored.  Perhaps its good that there is no answer - that it remains ambiguous. Maybe that's even the point.  Faith is not something we do that we should or could take credit for it.  While restoration comes through faith, it remains a gift from God, a gift worked in our heart that receives grace and forgiveness.  To ask whose faith it is is to ask the wrong question - it is God's faith, given to us for His purposes.  "It is Jesus' name and the faith that comes through Him that has given this complete healing" (Acts 3:16b).

The completeness of this healing will be made known further in the next chapter of Acts, when we see this man testify to what Christ has done - a testimony that demonstrates his complete restoration as a child of God.  Peter's sermon continues to work directly in the people - he uses the 2nd person pronoun, "you," over and over, making his words stick into the people who listen.  As Lutherans would say, Peter is using the law to full effect, convicting those who are hearing of their own state as sinners.

Peter also uses the language of "raising up" (verse 22 and 26) which always brings to our mind the way Christ was raised up on the cross.  There is also this unambiguous statement in the quotation that Moses makes about the Messiah, about Christ, "Anyone who does not listen to him will be completely cut off from among his people."  This makes it pretty apparent that apart from Christ there is no salvation, an assertion reiterated in the next chapter (Acts 4:12).  Peter reminds these Jewish Temple-goers that 2,000 years before their time God made a promise to Abraham, that through Abraham's offspring "all peoples on earth will be blessed."  This, Peter says, is what has come to Jerusalem in this day, that The Servant (Acts 3:13; Acts 3:26; Isaiah 52:13ff) was raised up to be a blessing, first to the Jews, and then to all people.  

Our Bible Study conversation turned then to the Holy Spirit and the question of how there could be an outpouring of the Holy Spirit if the Holy Spirit was already there.  It's a question that we spent some time on, covering such ground as the nature of God - the presence of the Holy Spirit even from Genesis 1, and how you can receive a new outpouring even when you already have something - the way you can be blessed again and again.  Praise the Lord that He has come to be our blessing! -Shauen