SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 8/24/2017
10:02 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-2 Intro to Acts 3:1-11
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Acts 3:1-11
Message of the
verses: “1 Now Peter and John were
going up to the temple at the ninth hour, the hour of prayer. 2 And a man who
had been lame from his mother’s womb was being carried along, whom they used to
set down every day at the gate of the temple which is called Beautiful, in
order to beg alms of those who were entering the temple. 3 When he saw Peter
and John about to go into the temple, he began asking to receive alms. 4 But
Peter, along with John, fixed his gaze on him and said, "Look at us!"
5 And he began to give them his attention, expecting to receive something from
them. 6 But Peter said, "I do not possess silver and gold, but what I do
have I give to you: In the name of Jesus Christ the Nazarene-walk!" 7 And
seizing him by the right hand, he raised him up; and immediately his feet and
his ankles were strengthened. 8 With a leap he stood upright and began to walk;
and he entered the temple with them, walking and leaping and praising God. 9
And all the people saw him walking and praising God; 10 and they were taking
note of him as being the one who used to sit at the Beautiful Gate of the
temple to beg alms, and they were filled with wonder and amazement at what had
happened to him. 11 While he was clinging to Peter and John, all the people ran
together to them at the so-called portico of Solomon, full of amazement.”
As we look at these first eleven verses of Acts chapter
three we see that there was a miracle done through the Apostles which caused a
man who was unable to walk to begin to walk.
We have been looking at false teachers in our last SD and will continue
to do so in this SD because it is important to know that there are false
teachers today that say that they can heal people and people line up to get
near them and also to empty their wallets to support these false teachers so it
is good to know the real from the false.
John wrote in 1 John 4:1 “Beloved, do not believe every
spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many
false prophets have gone out into the world.”
Jesus recognized the responsibility for God’s messengers
to have His teaching accredited by His works.
John 10:25 states “Jesus answered them, "I told you, and you do not
believe; the works that I do in My Father’s name, these testify of Me.” Now remember in the 12th chapter
of the book of Matthew that the Pharisees stated that the miracles that Jesus
did were done in the power of Satan. Now
of course this did not go over well with our Lord whose miracles were done
through the power of the Holy Spirit and so He told them that "Therefore I
say to you, any sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven people, but blasphemy
against the Spirit shall not be forgiven (Matthew 12:31).” This was very serious to our Lord and it is
very serious still to our Lord today as there are many false teachers out there
today who give people just enough truth so that they will believe the lies that
they are teaching which will cause them to miss heaven and end up in hell if
they don’t understand the lies they are being taught are actually lies.
I have written in earlier Spiritual Diaries that in the
infant stages of the church that the Lord gave the apostles sign gifts to validate
that what they were teaching them was true.
Jesus did the same thing in His ministry. After a while after the Bible was completed
all the truth we need is found in it. Paul
wrote in one of his letters about a friend of his who was with him who was sick
and almost died and he was thankful for prayers that were prayed for him. My point is that Paul had been used by God to
perform many miracles and yet he could not heal his sick friend during the late
stages of his ministry.
John MacArthur writes on this subject: “The miraculous sign gifts included the gift
of healing (cf. Matt. 10:1) exercised in this passage. This is one of many healings done by the
apostles (cf. Acts 2:43), selected for its impact and connection to Peter’s
inspired sermon. Unfortunately, there is
much confusion about that gift. Many
today claim to possess or have access to that gift. Their so-called healings run the gamut from
psychological ploys to outright fakes to demonic activity. A biblical understanding of the apostolic
healing ministry includes the following points:” Now MacArthur makes a number of points to
help us understand the apostolic healing ministry which we will begin to look
at this morning and then continue in our next SD.
We have talked earlier that many alleged healings are fraudulent
in our world today, as they were earlier and these so called faith healers are
called charlatans and do tricks to convince people that they have healed
someone. I have to say if this gift was
really from God as they say it is why don’t they go into the hospitals and heal
everyone there. Sometimes these fake
healers will have people in their audience who pose to be sick and then are
healed by the fake healer just to make people think it is real.
MacArthur adds “A related category of ‘healings’ involves
cures of psychosomatic illnesses. Since
such imagined diseases can produce symptomatic illnesses having no physical,
organic cause, their cure is not an illustration of the gift of healing. Jesus and the apostles healed those afflicted
with physical ailments, such as blindness, deafness, and paralysis, and organic
diseases, such as leprosy. The cure of
those conditions, and others like them however, is beyond the reach of
contemporary faith healers.” Think about
the man who was born blind in John chapter nine and what Jesus did to heal his
blindness. He put mud on the man’s eye
and told him to go and wash it off in a certain pool of water. What Jesus actually did was to give him new
eyes that he could see out of as the eyes he had never worked at all so he
needed new eyes. This was not problem
for our Lord at all as He was the One who made the first man out of the earth.
Answer to yesterday’s Bible
question: “Midian” (Judges 7:15).
Today’s Bible
question: “Which disciple went into
Jesus’ tomb?”
Answer in our next SD.
8/24/2017 10:43 AM
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