Summary:

When a crowd gathered after Peter healed the lame man, he saw his chance to speak to preach to the Jews and took it.  The thing he “answered” (3:12) was the marveling and the looks they gave him, as if he healed him by his own power.  Jews should have known better than to act like the dumb Gentiles in Acts 14:11-15!  That shows the sorry spiritual state Israel was in at Pentecost.  Peter went on to tell them that Christ had worked the miracle, similar to what other men of God had done in time past (Gen. 41:16; Dan. 2:28-30).

What’s holiness got to do with healing (Acts 3:12)? The holiness of the kingdom will fix all that’s wrong with the world and all that’s wrong with lame men (Isa. 35:4-8).  So when that lame man walked, the Jews should have known their God had come (Isa.  35:4) in the person of their king.  They never thought of their kingdom without thinking of their king (Lu. 19:38 cf. Mark 11:10).

Once Peter had them thinking about their king, he reminded them of what they did to Him (Acts 3:13).  The Jews loved Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, they just weren’t too sure about this Jesus guy.  In mentioning the patriarchs, Peter is reminding them that there was a time they weren’t too sure about that Moses guy.  But God told Moses to say that the patriarchs sent him (Ex. 3:15).  So in mentioning Abraham, Isaac and Jacob here, Peter is suggesting God raised up another prophet, a prophet like Moses (Deut. 18:15-18).

God “glorified” the Lord (Acts 3:15) in many ways, but Peter must be thinking of a way God glorified Him before the Jews killed Him, for that’s Peter’s point.  He said, as it were, “You killed the One God glorified.”  That had to be when He raised Lazarus (John 11:4).  So Peter’s point was, “You killed someone who could give life” (cf.3:15).

Peter mentions Pilate wanted to let Him go (Acts 3:13) be-cause the Jews were blaming Rome for killing the Lord (cf. Acts 5:28) after saying they’d be responsible (Mt. 27:24,25).

Deny (Acts 3:14) is the opposite of confess (cf. John 1:20), and they had to confess the Lord to be saved (Mt. 10:32).

They denied Him, but were getting a 2^nd chance to be saved.

Peter calls the Lord “Holy One” because that’s a name for the Father (Ps. 71:22; 78:41; 89:18; Isa. 1:4; 5:19,24, etc.).  So Peter was telling them that in denying Christ they were denying the Father.He knew that they knew the Father had someone He called “Holy One,” someone who had died and gone to hell (Ps. 16:10).  That was the Holy One that Peter said they denied, and denying Him before Pilate led to His death.

Pilate didn’t know He was God, but he knew He was “just” (Mt. 27:19-24), that is, that He hadn’t broken any of the laws of justice.  And Peter knew that the Jews knew by experience that He’d never sinned, let alone broke the law (Jo. 8:46).

When they desired a murderer instead of the Lord (Acts 3:14), that was a type of how they’ll desire Antichrist instead of Christ (Jo. 5:43).  Barabbas was a thief and a murderer (Jo. 18:40), and Antichrist will steal physical life and eternal life (Jo. 10:10).  Barabbas was guilty of sedition and insurrection (Mark 15:7; Lu. 23:18,19), and Antichrist too will rebel against Israel’s ruler and declare himself king of Israel.

“Prince of life” (Acts 3:15) means giver of life, as “Prince of Peace” (Isa. 9:6) means giver of peace.  Peter’s point is that they saved a taker of life and condemned a giver of life!

The “soundness” of the lame man (Acts 3:16) was what the nation of Israel lacked spiritually in Isaiah’s day (Isa. 1:5-7) and at Pentecost.  But if Jews joined Peter in the little flock, they could enter the kingdom, something the lame man typified when he entered the temple with Peter and John.

Finally, it wasn’t the lame man’s faith in Christ that healed him, for he hadn’t expressed any (Acts 3:1-6).  It was the faith of the apostles in the power the Lord gave them to heal people that healed him (Mt. 21:21; Mr. 11:22), i.e., faith in His name (Mark 16:17,18).  So when Paul tells you that you can do things like not let sin reign in your body (Ro. 6:12), we know the only thing keeping that from happening is your faith in what God says that you can do.  He wouldn’t say not to let it happen if you couldn’t let it happen.  So don’t!

Video available on YouTube: Peter Saw His Chance and Took It – Acts 3:12-16

Summary:

Did you ever wonder why only Peter and John are mentioned here (3:1)?  The Lord had three favorite apostles (Mark 5:36-38; 9:2; 14:32), but James seems to have fallen from favor from Luke 22:8 onward.  After that, it was always just James and John (Acts 4:13,19; 8:14).

Perhaps it was because James wanted the best seats in the house in the kingdom (Mark 10:35-37).  Of course, John did too.  But James is always mentioned before John, suggesting he was the dominant brother, and therefore the ringleader in that power grab.  So James may have been an example of how pride goes before a fall (Pr. 16:18; 29:23).

But Peter was guilty of pride too (Mark 14:27-31), and didn’t fall from among the Lord’s three favorites.  That’s why I think James counted himself out of the Lord’s favor.  He probably never forgave himself for failing the Lord—like many Christians do today.  The Lord honored his decision in Luke 22:8 to give him time to heal.  He’ll come back stronger than ever in the kingdom—and so can you if you too are still beating yourself up about some way you let the Lord down.

You wouldn’t think they’d go into the Jews’ temple (3:1) after the Lord denounced it (Mt. 23:38), but remember, He asked God to forgive them (Lu. 23:34) and He did.  So the temple continued to be God’s center of operations (cf. Acts 2:46).  That’s significant since most Bible teachers say God broke off relations with Israel at the cross and didn’t give her another chance, choosing to start something new at Pentecost instead with the Body of Christ.  But that didn’t happen until they stoned Stephen, after which God started the Body with Paul, who did stop hanging around the temple!

If James and John weren’t under the law any more, you’d also think they’d have stopped observing the law’s “hour of prayer” (3:1).  The Jews actually had three hours of prayer (Ps. 55:17), and Peter never did stop observing them (Acts 10:9), even after the age of grace began with Paul in Acts 9.  The kingdom saints also kept offering animal sacrifices (Acts 21:20).

The Lord healed lame men as a sign He was Messiah (Luke 7:22), but the disciples were supposed to give signs of that too (Isa. 8:18 cf. Jo. 13:33;21:5).  Of course, Paul healed a lame man too, but his first miracle was symbolic.  A Jew was blinded so a Gentile could be saved (Acts 13:6-13).  That’s what’s happening today in the dispensation of grace (Rom. 11:25).  Peter’s first miracle was also symbolic.

You see, the Jews had to walk with God to be saved (Ex. 16:4; Pr. 28:18).  When this lame man was laid outside the temple, too lame to enter, he symbolized the nation of Israel, too lame to walk with God into the kingdom.  Being lame “from his mother’s womb” was a symbol of how Israel’s lameness was caused by her religion (cf. Gal. 1:13-15).  The apostles did “many” miracles (Acts 2:43), too many for the Spirit to record, but the ones He did record were symbolic.

Instead of enriching the nation in the kingdom, the Jews’ religion had reduced them to the status of spiritual beggar, as symbolized by this lame man (Acts 3:3).

Peter had no money (Acts 3:4-6) for he had obeyed the Lord’s command to sell all he had and share the proceeds with the saints to be saved (Lu. 18:18,22 cf. Mt. 19:27-29).

When healers can’t heal you today, they say it’s because you don’t have enough faith.  But this lame man didn’t believe Peter could heal him!  He wasn’t expecting healing.  He wasn’t even asking for it.  This shows modern healers aren’t of God.

When God heals, He heals magnificently (Acts 3:7,8), but modern healers not so much—more proof they are not sent of God.  We see even more proof of this in that this lame man was known by everyone to be lame (Acts 3:9-11), but we can’t be as sure of the strangers “healed” on TV!

What we’re seeing with the healing of this lame man is a taste of the kingdom of heaven on earth (Isaiah 35:1,6).  Now God still knows how to heal, but He is giving you the opportunity to show others that His grace is sufficient for you instead (II Cor. 12:7-9).  Are you showing it?

Video of this lesson is also available on YouTube: An Example of Apostolic Teamwork – Acts 3:1-11

Summary:

The Lord’s disciples may have lived together in a communal state, but they ate their meat “with gladness” (2:46), so the answer is no!  Communism never produces gladness!

We know they were saved because they “continued” in the apostles’ doctrine (v.42 cf. John 8:31).  We see further evidence that they were saved when they continued in the apostles’ “fellowship” (v. 42).  In our Lord’s day, “salvation was of the Jews” (John 4:22), but after the Jews crucified the Lord, salvation wasn’t just in the Jews in general, but in the “remnant” of believing Jews in Israel (Joel 2:32).  That’s why Peter told them to “save yourselves from this untoward generation” (Acts 2:40), and get into fellowship with the believers in the Lord’s little flock of believers.

The “breaking of bread” (v. 42) can mean just eating meals (Lam. 4:4), but there’d be no need to tell us they continued eating meals!  Here that phrase refers to how they continued to observe the Lord’s Supper, where the Lord also broke bread (Mt. 26:26).  The Lord told them to observe it (Lu. 22:19), so they were observing it!

Finally, Verse 42 says they also continued in prayer, even though they were filled with the Spirit (Acts 2:4).  How much more should we who aren’t Spirit filled continue in prayer!

Fear came upon “every” soul (v. 43), even the believers.  The word “fear” here just means reverence, as it does in Psalm 89:7.  And reverence is just honor and respect, the thing kids should give fathers (Heb. 12:9) and wives should give husbands (Heb. 12:9)—and what we should give God (Phil. 2:12).  Fear also came upon unbelievers (cf. Jer. 33:9). As they saw how the believers were living unselfishly for one another, they reverenced the God that enabled them to live that way.

The “tongues” they spoke in (Acts 2:4) are here called “signs” (2:43), and signs like that ceased when the Word of God was completed (I Cor. 13:8-10).

They weren’t all “together” (v. 44) in the temple, for there were 3,000 of them (2:41).  They were together in spirit.

Did you ever wonder who told them to live with “all things common” (v. 44,45)?  Luke hadn’t recorded Peter saying so, but he mentions the “many other words” he preached that day (v. 40).  Since he spoke those words in response to the question of how to be saved (Acts 2:37), we know he told them to do what the Lord said to do to be saved and sell all they had and share the proceeds with others (Luke 18:18-22).

Pentecost was a taste of the kingdom, but this is not how they’ll live in the kingdom.  At Pentecost, no man called anything his own (Acts 4:32), but they will in the kingdom (Micah 4:3,4).  But these disciples were heading into the Tribulation, when the Beast will make it impossible to buy or sell without his mark (Rev. 13:17,18).  They’ll need to share with one another to get through that.  After that, they’ll hunger and thirst no more (Rev. 7:13-16).

You couldn’t continue “daily” in the temple (2:46), or in church for that matter, for you have to go to work!  How come they didn’t?  It was because part of what they sold was their means of making a living (Luke 5:10,11,27,28).  This matches how the Jews will be “a kingdom of priests” in the kingdom (Ex. 19:6).  Priests weren’t allowed to work!  They were allowed to keep their primary houses though, and so eat bread from house to house (2:46).  That’s because they weren’t allowed to sell their inheritance (I Ki. 21:1-16).

“Singleness of heart” (2:46) means they didn’t have a double heart, and so could keep rank and stay focused in times of war (I Chron. 12:33).  That’s what the Spirit-filled disciples had at Pentecost, a laser-like focus on serving the Lord!  The kind Paul says we should have too (Eph. 5:18).  Isn’t that what you give your boss (Col. 3:22)?  Why not the Lord?

This kind of living caused them to have favor with the unbelievers (2:47 cf. Pr. 16:7).  “Such as should be saved” are not some elect group God chose to be saved.  Peter’s already told us who should be saved—those who call on the Lord! (Acts 2:21).

Video of this message is also available on YouTube: Were the Lord’s Disciples Communists? – Acts 2:41-47