Welcome to this podcast from Harvest Community Church of Huntersville, North Carolina, where our vision is to make disciples who make disciples. I'm your host, Liz Stefanini. Continuing our series through the New Testament book of Acts, we come today to Acts chapter 9, verse 32 to 43. I heard a podcast this week from Focus on the Family, July 12th podcast. It featured Dwayne Miller, the pastor of Pinnacle Church near Dallas, Texas, and a lot of it was his speaking at a church in Pennsylvania. Pastor Miller described a life situation that happened to him. He developed a terrible infection in his bronchial area. And his voice became where you could hardly understand him. He could hardly speak and he had pressure. He said it felt like somebody was choking him. constantly. So he goes to the doctor, they give him steroids, it gets temporarily better. But then his doctor refers him to the Baylor School of Medicine. He has a team of 13 physicians that are all trying to figure it out. And his case was so rare that over the years he saw more than 200 doctors from all around the world because they just, they were like, we, we can't figure out what's going on with you. His doctor, you know, scoped, did everything, ran all the tests and said to him, you need to take a leave of absence from your church of six months. You need to go somewhere away from your hometown where nobody knows you. And I do not want you to speak for six months. So they did that. He took a six month leave. He and his wife went to wherever they went and he didn't talk. And then he came back at the end of the six months and the doctor was going to visit, visit him again. And you know, they had videoed and everything and they looked at it and his voice was no different. And he said, am I ever going to be able to preach again? And the doctor said, I honestly don't know until we diagnose you, we won't be able to know what your prognosis is. And so he resigned from pastoring the church. At that point, he had two daughters in college and he's thinking, how am I going to be able to keep my daughters in school? So he got a job as a private investigator that was back in 1992 when there was the banking crisis and the SNL crisis. And he went to work for a federal agent agency, uh, And and he didn't have to talk all he had to do was do the research and write the reports on computer So that's what he did and that was going along his daughters were staying in college He thought it was great. And then one day about a month later They just stopped giving him jobs And he called them and he said why? What what's wrong? Is it did I do anything wrong? And they said well, no, we're just doing a little reorganization And he never heard from them again About a month later, um, he got a letter from his insurance, his group insurance company that said, uh, we've discovered that your condition, all the treatment they're giving you for your condition is experimental. So we're dropping you from coverage. And by the way, here's $18,000 worth of bills that we told you we were going to pay that you need to pay. The next month, he got a letter from his disability insurance that said, you know, your disability doesn't fit what Social Security classifies as disability, so we're dropping your disability coverage. So this man has lost his job, his other job, his voice. And people had told him, well, you are, maybe you ought to write, you could be a writer. So he, he, he put out some, uh, book proposals to a couple of Christian publishers and months went by and he didn't hear anything from them. Finally, one day he decided, you know what? I want to find out what happened to that federal agency. And so he calls and he does some research. He gets somebody on the inside to find out. And what they discovered was he was doing 80% of the work of all the cases in the Houston area. He's in Houston, Texas area. And they were quite sure the agency was quite sure that there were so many of them that somebody was going to challenge them in court. And they were afraid they would put him on the stand in court. And because of his voice, inability that the judge and the jury would not be able to understand him. So that's why they cut him off. And the same day he heard that he got letters from both of the Christian book publishers and said, we can't publish you. He goes home, he sits down in his chair and he says, God, I'm tired of this. This isn't funny and this isn't fun. I want out." And he said, the only thing I thought about was committing suicide. And he went upstairs and he got a 12-gauge shotgun and he brought it downstairs with him and sat in his chair holding that shotgun for four hours. And people afterwards ask him, why didn't you pull the trigger? And he said, I only have one answer. It's the grace of God. Dwayne Miller was a man that knew God and loved God, but was going through something incredibly difficult and he wanted healing. He needed healing. He prayed for God to give him healing. He sought doctors to help him with healing and he didn't get it. And that reminds me, that story reminds me, I encourage you to go listen to that podcast, it's awesome. It reminds us that there's some things that only God can do. And healing is one of them. Well, a couple of those things appear today in our passage, which is Acts chapter nine. Before I get to Acts chapter nine, I put up some other verses there, Psalm 103. one to four because Dwayne Miller did not commit suicide and he had gotten involved in a very large church and in a very large Sunday school class with three or four hundred people and they asked him to teach and he said I can't teach and he sounded kind of like this. but they miked him and he said he would scream into the mic. And after teaching for 45 minutes, he said, I'd be dripped with perspiration. It was that. So he was scheduled the next Sunday after he's sitting in the chair, he was scheduled to teach. And they, he said, my father raised me that when you commit to do something, you do it, whether you feel like it or not. And he said, so I went to teach the class that day. Four years or they were on a set curriculum and four years earlier the curriculum had been decided and his passage for that day was Psalm 103 Praise the Lord my soul all my inmost being praise his holy name and Praise the Lord my soul and forget not all his benefits, who forgives all your sins, who heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the pit. And he stood there and he taught Psalm 103 to those people that day. He heals all your diseases. When does God heal all our diseases? How does God heal all our diseases? Well, let's take a glance at Acts chapter 9. Let's look at this incredible passage and let me set the context before I read it to you. Luke, the author of Acts, he has recorded the conversion of Saul. It was a miraculous conversion and after that Saul's calling, his conversion, his calling, near the end of Acts chapter nine, now he is refocusing his attention on Peter. Peter had been kind of the leading character in Acts, and now we had, we heard about Paul and his conversion, we had Philip, but now he comes back to Peter, and there's some miraculous events in the ministry of Peter, and let's read about them. Acts chapter nine, verse 32. As Peter traveled about the country, He went to visit the Lord's people who lived in Lydda. There he found a man named Aeneas who was paralyzed and had been bedridden for eight years. Aeneas, Peter said to him, Jesus Christ heals you. Get up and roll up your mat. Immediately Aeneas got up. All those who lived in Lydda and Sharon saw him and turned to the Lord. In Joppa, there was a disciple named Tabitha. In Greek, her name is Dorcas. She was always doing good and helping the poor. About that time, she became sick and died. And her body was washed and placed in an upstairs room. Lita was near Joppa. So when the disciples heard that Peter was in Lita, they sent two men and urged him, please come at once. Now, the reason why they urge such haste, of course, in those days, when somebody died, they didn't do like we did a ball and bomb and have a funeral a couple of days later, whatever they, they generally buried them within hours, usually on the very same day. So Tabitha has died. Peter's 10 or 12 miles away. And they're like, come quickly. So verse 38, Peter went with them and when he arrived, he was taken upstairs to the room and all the widows stood around him crying and showing him the robes and other clothing that Dorcas had made while she was still with them. Peter sent them all out of the room and he got down on his knees and prayed. Turning to the dead woman, he said, Tabitha, Get up. She opened her eyes. And seeing Peter. She sat up. He took her by the hand. And. Helped her to her feet. Then he called for the believers especially the widows and presented her to them alive. This became known as you can imagine all over Joppa. And many people believed in the Lord. Peter stayed in Joppa for some time with a tenor named Simon. Now, before I get to the primary theme of this passage, There are some secondary themes and sometimes as you read commentators you'll hear about this. There's three that I want to mention just to give you a sweep of what's going on here. None of these are the main point of the passage. But they are themes that are here. And the first one is Peter's pastoral ministry. We see it in verse 32. As Peter traveled around the country, he went to visit the Lord's people who lived in Lydda. Now we think about Peter as this great, powerful proclaimer of the gospel, which he was, and God used him to heal people and do all kinds of miracles. But he also followed up with people. He came along. He had a pastoral ministry. He visited them. He encouraged them. Second, Secondary theme here is Dorcas ministry to the poor We see that in 36 and 39 Dorcas was known for her kindness to the poor She was constantly doing good deeds In fact when she passed what happened all the widows gathered around and when Peter showed up, what did they do? They said look look at all these clothes she made for us and And this passage as it concludes is also a little bit about Peter stepping out of his comfort zones. A little verse at the end, we could easily skip it, skip over it. Peter stayed in Joppa for some time with a tanner named Simon. That was a big deal for a Jewish person. because tanners were considered unclean, ceremonially unclean. They were ostracized. They worked with dead animals, of course. And so the tanner shop would be out on the outskirts of town and nobody wanted anything to do with the tanner, especially a fastidious Jew like Peter. But already we began to see that God is starting to shape Peter out of his comfort zones and he's willing to stay with this Tanner. That's going to launch us right into Acts chapter 10 next week because Acts chapter 10, Peter's really going to go out of his comfort zones. Well, all of those are interesting and important but secondary themes. The key theme that we want to focus on this morning revolves around these two miracles. The healing of Aeneas and the raising of the dead of Tabitha. If you've been at Harvest for a while, you know, as we go through Acts, we always try to be careful to point out the difference between what is described and what is prescribed. There are things in the book of Acts that are described for us. They happened, the author tells us about them, but he doesn't prescribe them that they always have to be done that way. They're just described for us. And these two miracles are some of them. You know, there are a lot of extreme positions on healing in the Christian world. On the one hand, you have people that the so-called faith healers that are, you know, having public meetings and they're quote healing people and they're charging people money and they're doing it really publicly like that. And then on the other end of the spectrum, you have people that deny that God does any healing. The book of Acts is gone, long gone. And so there's no healing. And those are kind of extreme positions. Well, based on Acts chapter nine, verse 32 to 43, we're gonna try to give you this morning a biblical position. We're gonna try to show you what God teaches about things like miracles. I think the best thing that we can do when we come to a passage that we know is not prescribed for everybody, there's no command, hey, if you're a believer, you go out and heal people. That's not a command. But it's a description of it. So what do we do? I think the question to ask is, as we look at, is what do we learn about God here? When we read this passage, what do we learn about God? What do we learn about miracles? And there are three things that we learn about God in miracles, and let's walk through them this morning. The first one is this. God can do miracles for people. When we read this, I want you to know that today in the year 2021, God can do miracles for people. We see this and we see that God did a miracle. At verse 32, Peter travels about the country. He went to visit the Lord's people who lived in Lydia. There he found a man named Aeneas who was paralyzed. and had been bedridden for eight years. Think about that. Eight years. Most of us, if we have to stay in bed for eight days, we're beyond ourself, right? This was eight years bedridden, paralyzed. And what does Peter do? Verse 34, Aeneas, Jesus Christ heals you, get up and roll up your mat and immediately Aeneas got up. You know what? The focus of this story is not on Peter. It's not what a great miracle worker Peter is. It's not about all of the wonderful ways that Peter learned how to heal people. Look what he says, Jesus Christ heals you. The focus is on Jesus. The focus is on the power of God to heal. Peter knew that. He recognized that. He wanted Aeneas to know that. He wanted everybody who was going to hear the story to know that this is all about Jesus and his power. Jesus Christ heals you. He didn't say, if you have enough faith, Aeneas, you will be healed. He didn't say if you follow all of the right formula, you will be healed. He said, Jesus Christ heals you, period. The focus is on Jesus. Now, the second miracle happened with Tabitha, right? Verse 36, here's this woman named Tabitha, always doing good and helping the poor. About that time, she became sick and died, and her body was washed and placed in an upstairs room. Lydda was near Joppa, so when the disciples heard that Peter was in Lydda, they sent two men to him and urged him, please come at once. I explained that earlier, why there was urgency for him to get there. And look what Happens the widows are standing around they're crying. They're showing the coats. Look here. Look Peter. Look what she did And look what Peter does in verse 40 Peter sent them all out of the room Hey, wait a minute Peter, don't you want anybody to see your great miracle working power? No, he sent them all out of the room He got down on his knees and prayed Turning to the dead woman, he said, Tabitha, get up. She opened her eyes and seeing Peter, she sat up. Now contrast Peter's attitudes and actions with the so-called modern faith healers who want everybody's attention. Maybe it's televised. Maybe you got to buy a ticket to get in there. And Peter's like, no, it's not about that. Everybody get out of the room. And the typical Jewish male, the posture of prayer, the most common posture of prayer would be to be standing unusual that Peter gets on his knees and praise. I think it's stressing Peter's submission to God in this moment. And so verse 41, he took her by the hand and helped her to her feet. And he called for the believers, especially the widows and presented her to them alive. So that is the first principle this morning. That's the first thing we learn about God is that God can do miracles. The second principle is just as important, maybe more important for the focus of the passage. And that is that God can use miracles for gospel impact. Not only can God do miracles, he can use them for gospel impact. Look what happens with Aeneas. When Aeneas is healed, there in verse 35, all those who lived in Lydda and Sharon saw him and what did they do? Turn to the Lord. Miracles are happening for gospel impact. Same thing in the second miracle with Tabitha. After that miracle happened, verse 42, it became known all over Joppa, and many people believed in the Lord. Now, not every gospel impact requires a miracle to happen, nor does every miracle lead to gospel impact, but in the Bible, miracles often do lead to gospel impact. That's the second thing we learn about God and miracles. The third thing we have to broaden out to some other scripture. The third principle we learn is that this is not saying that God always does miracles. We read about it and it's great and it's wonderful and we praise God for it. But because it's there in Acts chapter nine does not mean that God is always going to do miracles the way we want them and when we want them. In Genesis 20, Abraham prayed and Abimelech was healed. In 2 Kings 20, Hezekiah prayed after God told him he was going to die, but God gave him 15 more years of life. In Psalm 30 verse 2, David said, O Lord my God, I call to you for help and you healed me. Jesus' ministry was marked by many, many healings, but not every sick person who lived in Palestine in the first century was healed by Jesus. And not every person of faith is healed by God. Let me give you Exhibit A, maybe one of the most godly and used servants of God of all time, the Apostle Paul. Apostle Paul said in 2 Corinthians chapter 12 verse 7, therefore in order for me to become, from becoming conceited I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. Three times. Paul was close to God, right? He was a godly man. He was in the will of God. And he had some physical affliction, some thorn, and he pleaded. But here's what God said to him. My grace is sufficient for you. For my power is made perfect in weakness. Therefore, I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses so that Christ power may rest on me. That is why for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses and insults and hardships and persecutions and difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong. So God does not always do miracles. He can do miracles. He does do miracles. He can use miracles for gospel impact, but He doesn't always do miracles. So here's what God's word for us is this morning. When God builds His church, the power and miracles of Jesus draw unbelievers to Him. That's what we see happening here. We see miracles. We see a healing. We see a resurrection. We see gospel impact because people see it and hear about it and turn to the Lord. Now what timeless principles do we discover about this subject. I want to give you a few of these. And I think it's really, really important when we deal with an issue like this, it's really, really important because we're dealing with something that is unique, but there are timeless principles. And let me give you some timeless principles from God's word as we start to wrap it up. First of all, the priority of spiritual healing. Isaiah 53 verse five, talking about the Messiah hundreds of years before Jesus ever came said, but he was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. The punishment that brought us peace was upon him. And by his wounds, we are healed. That's spiritual healing. The context of Isaiah 53 is spiritual healing. In fact, first Peter two Verse 24, he himself bore our sins in his body on the cross so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness by his wounds, you have been healed. The second timeless principle is there is a prescription in the Bible for healing. Today, there is something that's not just described for us, but it's prescribed. If you are sick and ill and you're a believer, God gives a pattern, he gives a teaching on it. And it's James chapter five verse 13 to 16. Is anyone among you in trouble? Let them pray. Is anyone happy? Let them sing songs of praise. Is anyone among you sick? Let them call the elders of the church to pray over them and anoint them with oil in the name of the Lord. Notice it's the individual calling for the elders, not Elders publicly saying hey everybody come you know do this It's they call for the elders and they ask them to pray over them and anoint them in oil and the prayer offered in faith Will make the sick person. Well The Lord will raise them up if they have sinned they will be forgiven therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed the prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective and In the fall of 2011, I woke up one day not feeling well at all. It was the best shape of my life. I was running 20 to 25 miles a week. I was doing half marathons. I was in great shape. And I woke up and I was jittery and weak. And I couldn't figure out what was wrong. And over a course of time, I went several months not able to eat, not having appetite, not having energy and being nauseated 24 seven. I was nauseated from the moment I woke up to the minute I went to bed, even though I was on anti-nausea medicine. And the doctors did all of these tests and they think They said this must be an intense, unusual, long-term intestinal bacterial infection. I really could not really walk from here to that piano without just creeping. And some of you who were at Harvest at that time would remember I would lay in my office until it was time to come preach and I would come preach and I'd go lay in my office till it was time to do it the second time. And the elders of harvest came and laid hands on me and prayed over me and anointed me with oil. It wasn't like they came and the next morning I woke up and I was ready to go. This was in the fall, and I remember we had a missions trip to go to Asia planned at the end of February, and I was going to lead a team over there. And when it came to January, I thought, there's no way. I can't even hardly walk across my house, much less go to Asia. The doctors tried different medicines and some would work for just a little bit and then they would stop working and all kind of things happened. And I can't explain it. One day I just started feeling a little bit different. I started getting just a little tiny bit of energy. And then the next day a little bit more and the next day and the next day. And I was healed. I was healed. And since then I've had I never would have known that I've ever had any issue like that I can't explain it other. I don't know if it was time. I don't know if God you I know God healed me I know that I don't know if he used the elders coming I don't know if it was time the medicine or just God and his son. I know I was healed I also know that God doesn't promise to heal everyone in The way in time we want I know that There are people in my life who haven't been healed. I But I know what the scripture says. If you are sick, this is what God asks you to do. Bring it to the elders. Another timeless principle is surrender to God's will. How did Jesus teach us to pray? This is how you should pray. Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Say it with me. Your will be done. your will. We surrender to God's will. And then the last timeless principle is boasting in weaknesses. Paul again said, my grace is sufficient for you. That's what God said to him. For my power is made perfect in weaknesses therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses. So that Christ's power may rest on me. That is why for Christ's sake, I delight in weakness, weaknesses and insults and hardships and persecution and difficulties. For when I am weak, that I am strong. The title of this message is healing's highest purpose. Let me tell you what healing's highest purpose is. It is to bring glory to God by pointing people to him, both believers and unbelievers. It's not just to relieve physical suffering. Praise God when he does relieve physical suffering. But you know what? Everybody who has been healed once physically has gone on to die. Or will die, right? So it's not a permanent. Let me tell you when permanent healings are gonna happen. That's when we stand before the Lord. And there'll be no more sickness, no more pain, no more tears, no more sorrow, no more death. Because when we see him, we will be like him. That's when permanent, final healing will happen. Let's pray for miracles. Let's pray for healing, even as we surrender to God's will. Let's ask God for the kind of miracles that will make gospel impact. Because we live in a world that is dying for gospel impact. It needs Christ. And the people in your life and in your neighborhood and your family on your cul-de-sac, they need Christ. They need to see gospel impact. Nowhere in the Bible are we commanded to go out and heal people, but we are commanded to go out and make disciples. So trust God for this process. Well, I want to conclude the sermon by going back and finishing the story of Duane Miller. Remember when we last left him and I told you at the beginning, he hadn't been able to speak hardly for three years. There was the pressure on his throat constantly. And he was so discouraged, even suicidal, but he, he, he went to teach the Sunday school class that day. And this podcast. gets, it goes back and forth. He tells the story, but they also go back to the actual recording that of Psalm 103 that was recorded. And so the podcast goes back and forth. So here's what he said that Sunday morning in Dallas. To say that every single person will always be healed because Jesus died on the cross is a misinterpretation of scripture. Isaiah 53 doesn't talk about physical healing, that's not the context. On the other hand, to say that since we don't have anything after the book of Acts ended, that miracles ended is equally wrong because you've put God in a box both ways. And remember, this is Dwayne Miller speaking, the man who can hardly talk for three years. The psalmist says, I'm excited, bless the Lord. And one of his benefits is that he heals all my diseases. Then in verse four, he says, and he redeems my life from the pit. And when he, you can hear it on the tape, when he says the word pit, this raspy, quiet voice. starts getting a little bit stronger. And you listen to it and he says a few words and he pauses because he doesn't know what to do. And his voice starts getting stronger and stronger and stronger and standing in front of that Sunday school class he was healed. His voice was healed and you can hear it on the podcast, the congregation breaks out and sings the doxology. It's a powerful podcast to listen to. That's Sunday. So Monday he gets on the phone with a doctor who's been treating him all these years unsuccessfully, right? The doctor clears his schedule on Tuesday. He goes back in, he takes video of his throat and he comes back in and he says, Dwayne, I got to show you this. And he, and he shows him the time lapse, you know, video over the three years of his throat. And, and he shows scar tissue in his throat growing and growing and growing. And then he says, now Duane, let me show you the video from today. And he shows him the video from today and there's no scar tissue at all. And the doctor says, Duane, I can't understand it because that's why they call it scar tissue. Scar tissue doesn't go away. I mean, scar tissue just doesn't go away. I have no explanation for this. In fact, Duane, I have no Indication from the video I took today that you've ever had a problem with your throat And so to the congregation in Pennsylvania Dwayne Miller said this I've always asked God why And all at once God told me why when Jesus comes things are dramatically different and you can't explain it One day I'm gonna stand before the Father and And he's going to look at me and he's going to say, Dwayne, I can't find any evidence that you ever had a sin problem. Because you see folks, scar tissue is to the body what sin is to the soul. You can't get rid of it. And he says, you know, I've got a scar right here. And he said, you can't see it. I can hide it and I can cover it. And he said, you can do that with your sin, but you're going to die with it. And when Jesus comes, it's gone. All I am is an object lesson of what it means to be forgiven. God did something concrete to demonstrate an abstract principle of forgiveness. And I want you to understand tonight that my entire life is dedicated to bringing that news to people who need to know Jesus Christ. It's real. His forgiveness is real and his healing is real. And all God's people said. When God builds his church, the power and miracles of Jesus draw unbelievers to him. Let's praise God for that. Let's seek God for that. All different kinds of miracles, things that we can't do. Let's, let's ask God to do it. Well, bow your heads with me, please. Thanks again for joining us today from Harvest Community Church. This podcast is also available on our website HarvestCharlotte.com. Please go there if you want to send a question or comment, learn more about our ministries, or find out how you can donate to support the podcast.