We're continuing through Acts, as I've been going through Acts for quite some time here on my occasions to preach. So we're in the book of Acts chapter 9, verses 32 to 43 today. You can find that on page 1168 in the Pew Bible. Acts 9, 32 to 43. Hear the word of God. Now as Peter went here and there among them all, he came down also to the saints who lived in Lydda. There he found a man named Anais, bedridden for eight years, who was paralyzed. And Peter said to him, Anais, Jesus Christ heals you. Rise and make your bed. And immediately he rose, and all the residents of Lydda and Sharon saw him, and they turned to the Lord. Now there was in Joppa a disciple named Tabitha, which translated means Dorcas. She was full of good works and acts of charity. In those days, she became ill and died, and when they had washed her, they laid her in an upper room. Since Lydda was near Joppa, the disciples, hearing that Peter was there, sent two men to him, urging him, please come to us without delay. So Peter rose and went with them. And when he arrived, they took him to the upper room. All the widows stood beside him, weeping and showing tunics and other garments that Dorcas made while she was with them. But Peter put them all outside and knelt down and prayed. And turning to the body, he said, Tabitha, arise. And she opened her eyes, and when she saw Peter, she sat up. And he gave her his hand and raised her up. Then calling the saints and the widows, he presented her alive. And it became known throughout all Joppa, and many believed in the Lord. And he stayed in Joppa for many days with one Simon, a tanner. Shall we pray? Dear Heavenly Father, again we ask you to open our understanding, our minds and our hearts to your word today, that each and every one of us would benefit from what you have to say to us through your word today. We pray this all in Jesus' name, amen. Excuse me, a little froggy here. I grew up, and I know I've told this before, I grew up in an evangelical Christian church and didn't become a believer until almost exactly 38 years ago. I was 29 at the time. But growing up, my mother was kind of a closet Pentecostal. And so she used to take us to a variety of those kind of churches that people were speaking in tongues being supposedly slain in the spirit as they'd fall on the floor and supposedly under the power of the spirit. And there was always this excitement in these churches, the idea of looking for miracles to take place, people getting healed and people being blessed in extraordinary ways. And so I grew up going to those churches. They were a little scary sometimes, but nevertheless, that was in my background. But I didn't become a believer, as I said, until I was almost 30. And when I did become a believer, I kind of thought that, well, maybe, I got this notion that maybe the reason I didn't become a believer was because the main church that we attended, being just an evangelical church, maybe they didn't really qualify as a genuine church. In other words, when I looked at the Bible as a new believer, my understanding was that all this stuff that was going on in the first century with Jesus and the apostles, that that was what normative Christianity should be. That's what I figured it should be. So, when we became believers, Bonnie and I started to attend one of those kind of churches, a full gospel church, and we were there for nine years. But that's what I was saying, this is what a real church should be. They should not be denying the power of God and claim to be a real church. Well, it didn't take us long at that church when we realized a lot of the so-called miracles that people were claiming were not really happening. We were not seeing people instantly healed of serious diseases and certainly didn't see anybody brought back from the dead, although I remember one fellow who visited there several times saying that he'd seen a couple people raised from the dead. And I think most of the rest of the people in the church were a little skeptical of that as well. Again, none of us were there, so we couldn't know for sure. But at any rate, I just remember at a certain point that I realized, well, you know, this is not what Christianity is all about. And the fact of the matter is, lots of churches that have true believers in them do not go after all the miraculous and all the exciting things that that we see in these churches, that is, that we see sought after in these churches. And so it started to occur to me, again, even though we stayed at that church for a while, it occurred to me over time that this was not necessarily what we should be looking for. You know, Jesus one time said, it's an evil and adulterous generation that seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given except the sign of Jonah. And we need to remember that. What I want to focus on today in this passage, because it deals with a couple of miracles, is that that's not what we should be seeking. The fact that these miracles took place is genuinely true. But as Christians, we should be seeking something far beyond the miraculous, the spectacular. As a Christian, what you and I need to be seeking is Jesus. And so let's take a look at the passage and see how that goes. First of all, let's take a look at where Peter is. The previous part of the chapter we saw Saul, Saul the great persecutor of the New Testament church. He had worked for the Sanhedrin, was going around arresting people wherever they were and dragging them back to Jerusalem to be tried and in some cases even be put to death. And he had gone to Damascus, and on his way to Damascus, the Lord met him there and showed him that he was going the wrong way. That is not physically, but spiritually, that he was going against God. And so he had this incredible conversion at that point, where he came to know Jesus Christ, and that turned his whole life around, of course. And as a result of that, he quit persecuting the church, because he had become part of the church. And so, in verse 31, prior to where we are today, it says, So the church throughout all Judea and Galilee and Samaria had peace and was being built up, and walking in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit, it multiplied. So because he stopped persecuting the church, the church was able to have a great growth period of peace because they were not under that heavy attack that they were under with Saul. And of course then he became known as Paul. But at any rate, so during that time, we were told earlier that the apostles stayed primarily in Jerusalem. They didn't do much traveling during the time of persecution, and they were left alone, probably for the reason that they still remained pretty much in their Jewish traditions. Even though they were believers, they still kept their Jewish traditions while living in Jerusalem. They were not bothered. But at this point, Peter decided it is time to go and start looking around at some of the Jewish believers that maybe were not so strict that were living in other places outside of Jerusalem and Judea. So he goes up to this place called Lydda. And that's where our passage begins. So he starts his travels at this point to see what's going on. By the way, in case you never heard this story, supposedly Saint George slayed a dragon in the city of Lydda. That may be an apocryphal story, but that's what makes Lydda somewhat a famous city. But at any rate, so Peter goes there, and while he's there, this first miracle we see happens. He raises a man from the dead. And God can certainly miraculously heal. When I said what I said earlier about the churches we went to, I'm not saying that God can't do those things. He may very well do miraculous things in healing today, and maybe some of you have even known of some miraculous healings. It's just not necessarily something that, again, is considered the normal means of what Christianity should expect, as Christians, we should expect these days. But at this time, this was an age where miracles were taking place regularly, and we see this one. And so, it said, he found this man named Anais, who had been bedridden for eight years and was paralyzed. And remember now, Peter and John had also, going into the temple, seen a man who was paralyzed from birth. Peter reached out and he was healed, and the man was immediately healed miraculously. This man was bedridden for eight years. Perhaps he had already heard the story of the man at the temple, so he was probably looking for the possibility that he would receive a healing. So, Peter says to him, Anais, Jesus Christ heals you, rise and make your bed. So, in other words, you don't need to be laying in this bed anymore. Wherever he was at, you can get up and go. And he did, immediately arose and it says all the residents of Lydda and Sharon saw him and they turned to the Lord. We'll get back to that. But at any rate, the fact of the matter is this man was healed. So again, God can heal miraculously. I'm not going to say he can't or doesn't. And God can resuscitate the dead also, as we see in the next passage. I use the words resuscitate because God also is going to resurrect everyone someday. But in the case, when we see somebody that's brought back from the dead in the Bible, they are merely resuscitated. In other words, they're going to have to die again someday. But their life is extended here on earth because they've been restored to physical life, but it's still in a fallen body that has not been perfected yet. So anyway, he can resuscitate. We've seen many occasions of that in the Bible. Jesus is Raising of Jairus' daughter, the little girl who had died. Lazarus, Jesus was raised. And of course, Paul raised Eutychus. Paul preached too long, and Eutychus fell asleep and fell out of the window. I hope I don't make anybody fall asleep. There's nobody sitting in the window at any rate. But at any rate, the poor young fellow fell out of the window and fell a few stories down, but Paul was able to restore him to life miraculously. And of course, even in the Old Testament, we saw stories of Elijah and Elisha who raised people from the dead. So it's not unheard of in the Old Testament or the New Testament. But again, it was during a particular time and particular circumstances that these things took place. Let's take, again, a look at Tabitha's story, after it says, starting at verse 36, that this Tabitha who lived in Joppa, which was a seaport city, maybe about 11 miles away from Lyddon, that she died. Her name is Tabitha, it says translated it means Dorcas, which means gazelle. So I always picture her as a very lively person during her life before she died. She was a very active kind of a person with a name like gazelle, I would think. At any rate, she was known for her good works and acts of charity. So she had built this legacy of taking care of the widows where she lived. She apparently had some means, so she was able to make all these coats and such for these widows that were there when she died. They were there kind of showing that legacy, their appreciation of what she had done. It's a reminder of us that our good works are something that we can certainly do in this life. There are different ways that God can use you. to bless other people, so that's what she did. It may seem like little to some people, but it certainly didn't seem little to those widows who had coats to keep them warm when it got very, very cold in Joppa in the wintertime. So anyway, it says she became ill and died, and they washed her body and laid her in an upper room. The upper room might have been where they met for worship. The washing of the body was something that was traditionally done by the Jews as a ritual, a religious ritual, when someone died before they buried them. And the word got out that Peter was nearby, and so a couple of the men went to get him. Again, Peter had not raised anybody from the dead at this point, but they knew that Jesus had, and they knew that Peter was doing miracles. figured, well, maybe we'll give it a shot. Maybe he will indeed be able to raise Tabitha from the dead. So he goes there, and there's the widow sitting there with her tunics and so on. And he tells them to all get outside. And he kneeled down and prayed. And turning to the body, he said, Tabitha, arise. And she opened her eyes. And remember, when Jesus healed Jairus' daughter, it was very similar. As a matter of fact, the wording is very interesting. This lady's name is Tabitha. When Jesus spoke to the little girl, he said, Talitha, Kumi, which means in Aramaic, little girl, I say to you, rise. So there's an interesting play on words between Tabitha and Talitha. So at any rate, but here. Peter has her, it says she opened her eyes, and he took her by the hand and encouraged her, and she rose. And he called everyone in, and he presented her alive. And again, it became known throughout all of Joppa. And once again, we see many people believed. And so, both of these cases, again, are miracles. God can heal miraculous. God can, if he chooses, resuscitate the dead. He's going to raise us all someday to resurrected bodies. But as Christians, we need to be mindful of some things. We need to be careful we don't get caught up in foolish things, including some of the things that are labeled as Christian. Christian science is not Christian, by the way. It's very pagan. It's a belief that the physical world is an illusion, which is foolishness. We know that we are physical beings. We're in a physical world. We're spiritual beings as well. Spiritual and the physical both exist. But they say that the physical is an illusion. They say that, in other words, there is no such thing as matter. and that you're all a spiritual being and that's all you are. So disease then is not real. It's a mental error as far as Christian science teaches. And you may have heard the story, the story of the woman who's a Christian scientist and she goes to her practitioner. They don't call them pastors, they call them practitioners. She goes to him and she says, my husband is really, really sick at home. And the practitioner says to her, oh no, no, no, no, your husband's not sick. He just thinks he's sick. There's no such thing as illness. He's not sick. Go home and tell him he needs to get that notion, that's a false notion, he needs to get it out of his head and he'll be fine. So she goes home, and the next day she comes back and he says to her, so what's the story with your husband? She goes, well, I went home and I told him that it was just in his head that he was sick. And the practitioner says, well, how is he doing? She says, well, today he thinks he's dead. Anyway, that's what happens if you become a Christian scientist and believe that kind of silliness. But again, Christians can get caught up in stuff and try to Christianize it. I mean, the black arts, for instance. And people get involved in New Age stuff, and Christians try to syncretize that with their Christianity. And of course, there are witches, witch doctors, shamans, the Native American practice. Some people think the Native Americans are some version of Christianity, and the Great Spirit is God. Sorry. If they don't know Lord Jesus Christ, they're not worshiping the true God and the practices that they are doing are not Christian and they're not endorsed by God. But again, even within the Christian world itself, through such groups as the faith movement, which again, borderline if not actually are descended into the idea of cult. There are people who believe things about healings and miracles and such that are not true. There was a story in the news a few years back, and you may have heard it. There was a husband and wife that had a little boy, and I believe he had diabetes. And he became very, very sick and people were saying, well, you need to take him to the doctor. Well, they didn't take him to the doctor because they said, oh no, the church that they were in believed that you should grab hold by faith of healing and you can claim healing and somehow you can be sure that if you really have strong enough faith that you'll have a healing. And so they were supposedly claiming his healing. Taking verses like Isaiah, by his stripes we are healed, and saying therefore everybody's guaranteed a healing if you just have strong enough faith. And so anyway, the little boy got sicker and sicker, and finally he really was getting so bad people were saying he needs to go to the hospital. And they, oh no, no, God's going to heal him. Well, after so many days, the little boy died. And they still insisted that God was going to, at this point, bring him back from the dead. They were still so strongly holding on to this false notion that they believed that God was actually going to restore him even though he was dead. He never did get brought back from the dead. He died and of course the parents faced some legal issues because of that. But God's not obligated to do anything. We cannot obligate God to do anything. We need to be careful with that. God was not obligated to save you. And he's certainly not obligated to do anything that you can treat him like a genie in the bottle that make him do what you want him to do, which is precisely what this is. This is a form of idolatry, when you try to force God's hand on something. And we need to be careful of that. But God can heal, and God can heal through natural means, too. We don't want to rule that out. I mean, everyone of us has had natural healing. The way our bodies are made, if I cut my finger, it'll bleed for a little while, but it'll eventually scab, and it'll eventually heal up, and a while later, you won't even know that it happened. or if I get some sort of a cold or something like that, my body will heal after time. It might take a week or two, but it'll heal, and I'll be back to normal. God uses, we are fearfully and wonderfully made, and that's one of the ways we are fearfully and wonderfully made, in that we can indeed be healed of things that just happen to us in our lives. So we don't want to rule out, if you're sick, that God might use natural means, or it may seem natural means, but he might do it over a period of time when you're praying for a healing. It's still, it's ultimately God that heals you because that's the way God set things up. And he set it up so that we could all count on him to heal us in many situations. But even more, we don't want to rule out medical science. Again, like this family that wanted their little boy to be healed and they didn't want to take him to the hospital. God, we call this common grace, God has given wisdom to the world that even the unbelieving world, even the unbelieving medical world or scientific world, if they are following what God has presented to them, they can learn great, wonderful things about his world and be able to use them, including with medicine. Think of the things that have happened in just recent years, how medicine has advanced. Why would you let your child die when all he needs is a shot of insulin? I mean, that's not even that recent. But think about how many people today, when they've gotten cancer, are alive were if it was just 20, 30, 40 years ago they would be surely dead by now because the cancer treatments weren't there. God uses this. This is God's way of healing sometimes. We don't want to turn against medicine. There's some false science that goes with some of that, but it's very clear sometimes when God is working through medicine, and we don't want to turn against that. The other day I was on my way to the library in Beaver, and I was walking down College Avenue, and as I walked by this really nice Corvette, there was a man getting out of it, and as I got close to him, he spoke to me. He had a southern accent, and he said, I'm not going to do his accent, but he said, He said, I might be a little too big for this car. And as he got out, I saw he was a pretty big fellow. And I thought there was something really unusual looking about him. I wasn't quite sure at first what I was seeing. Anyway, so we both walked into the library. And he's one of these people that never met a stranger, apparently. He just wanted to chat. And as we're going in, he said, you know, this is the first time I've driven in a long time. He says, I was in an accident. by a drunk driver, and he says, I was in the hospital for two years, and I was like, wow. He said, my face was just all smashed up, and that's when I realized what was unusual about him. His face looked kind of hard, like set. Apparently, he had a lot of plastic surgery done. And his mouth didn't move very much when he talked, but he was pleasant, and he smiled. And he said, and I had a transmission rammed into my chest right here. My jaw's dropping at this point. And he said, but, he says, I made it. He said, thankfully, I was in the Marines for 15 years. And I said, I guess that toughened you up, huh? He goes, yeah, that's why I survived. I said, that and the grace of God. And he smiled and patted me on the shoulder and said, yes, exactly. He recognized that he had, again, stuff that wouldn't have been available not too many years ago is why this guy was walking down the street talking with me, because God allows our medical professions, medical science, to do things that they couldn't do before. And he's alive and now not only able to walk and drive and live a relatively normal life it seems. But again, so God uses medical science. Never reject that in itself because God certainly does do such things. But the question then, why the miracles? Why doesn't he do them today? Why did he do them so heavily during the first century with Jesus and also with the apostles? Well, the miracles in the Bible particularly when we look at the apostles, they were not an end unto themselves. They were to show the authenticity of what these men represented. God was showing that this person is one of my servants. They couldn't do these things. They couldn't heal a cripple. They couldn't raise a woman from dead just like that if God wasn't with them. God was saying, These men are my apostles, which means sent ones. Jesus put them out, he gave them the gifts so that they could do these things, so that you could see that they indeed were God's representatives. In the first century, we didn't have the Bible, because these men were in the process of writing the Bible. So in order to authenticate who they were, God gave them these abilities. So when they'd come somewhere and they were seen to raise the dead or heal the sick or whatever, people could say, wow, yeah, God has to be with this guy. I'm going to listen to what he has to say. So once the Bible was fully written, the necessity of those things was no longer. But nevertheless, God did that to get our attention to the fact that they were who he said they were and who they said they were, that they were representative of God. But mainly, the miracles, not just pointing to them, and not just pointing that Jesus was God's representative, as we read earlier in John chapter 10, but those miracles are to get us to look at the person of Jesus Christ. And that's ultimately what he was saying in John chapter 10. He said, if you don't believe what I say, look at this, look at what I'm doing. If God wasn't with me, I wouldn't be able to do these things. And the reason God is with me is because I and the Father are one. He is in me and I am in him. We are one and I can work these miracles in a body of flesh because I'm God. And they wanted to stone him for that. So the miracles are primarily to point to Jesus. Back in the 1900s, long, long ago, previous century, there was a very well-known preacher by the name of Martin Lloyd-Jones over in Great Britain. He was a Welshman, and he was kind of a Doogie Howser. If you remember the television show Doogie Howser, the young doctor, he was very young, became a doctor. Well, Dr. Lloyd-Jones became a medical doctor, I think, at the age of 22, so he was quite a prodigy. and very well respected, up and coming doctor. Then he became a Christian and after he became a Christian he got the notion that God was calling him to the ministry rather than being a doctor. He said, this is one of the things he said in one of his sermons as a doctor, he says, we spend most of our time rendering people fit to go back to their sin. He started realizing from his particular profession, he was getting people that were maybe having, say, serious drinking problems. They'd come to him, he'd fix them back up, and they'd go back out well, and they'd start drinking heavily again. So he wasn't really putting medical, Science down, but he was simply saying for his purpose. He started thinking There's something more important than they're getting their physical health back You know we look to Jesus say what does it profit the man to gain the world and lose his soul and so? Martin Lloyd-Jones started thinking about it from those terms, and he thought you know I could do a lot more good as a doctor of the soul than I am as a doctor of the body. And so that's when he chose to be a pastor. And he was very, like I said, he was very well known. His sermons were very well received. But again, he did this because he realized how important it is that even medical science miracles are only something that can be used to point to who Jesus is. and to why we need him. Again, looking back at our passage, it says in verse 34, Jesus Christ heals you. Peter says Jesus Christ heals you. Notice he doesn't take the credit himself. Jesus used Peter as a vessel, but Peter was only a vessel. Jesus did the healing, and the same goes for raising Tabitha from the dead. And what happened? What did it point to? It didn't point to Peter. It didn't point and make him out to be this very significant guy. He was very humble about the whole thing. He realized it was God. He didn't want all those people in the room to witness the miracle and make a big scene and think he's something great. Rather, it was to point to Jesus. The healings, the miracles were to point to Jesus. And so for you and me, we need to remember, for Christians The be-all to end-all is not the miraculous. It's not seeing miracles take place and seeing people raised from the dead. If God wants to do that, I'm not going to tell him he can't. But the real thing that we should be looking to is Jesus. Now that we have His Word in its entirety, we don't need all those miracles to tell us and show who He is. We have the full gospel of Jesus Christ in the Bible in the 66 books that we now have, including those 27 books of the New Testament that were added at this time. You and I don't need to be looking for the miraculous and the spectacular. We need to be looking for the one who can save not our body alone, but our soul. Who can promise us eternal life in a resurrected body. And Jesus is the only one who can do that. And that's what we need to seek. Seek Jesus.