SPEAKER_01: Good morning.
SPEAKER_01: My name is Bob.
SPEAKER_01: Hey.
SPEAKER_01: The Old Testament reading is found in the prophet Isaiah, chapter 53, verses 5 and 6, and then verses 9 through 11.
SPEAKER_01: He was pierced because of our rebellions and crushed because of our crimes.
SPEAKER_01: He bore the punishment that made us whole.
SPEAKER_01: By his wounds, we are healed.
SPEAKER_01: Like sheep, we had all wandered away, each going its own way, but the Lord let fall on him all our crimes.
SPEAKER_01: His grave was among the wicked, his tomb with evildoers, though he had done no violence and had spoken nothing false.
SPEAKER_01: But the Lord wanted to crush him and to make him suffer.
SPEAKER_01: If his life is offered as restitution, he will see his offspring, he will enjoy long life.
SPEAKER_01: The Lord's plans will come to fruition through him.
SPEAKER_01: After his deep anguish, he will see light and he will be satisfied.
SPEAKER_01: Through his knowledge, the righteous one, my servant, will make many righteous and will bear their guilt.
SPEAKER_01: The word of the Lord.
SPEAKER_03: The New Testament reading is found in Acts chapter 3, verses 1 to 10.
SPEAKER_03: Peter and John were going up to the temple at three o'clock in the afternoon, the established prayer time.
SPEAKER_03: Meanwhile, a man crippled since birth was being carried in.
SPEAKER_03: Every day people would place him at the temple gate, known as the beautiful gate, so he could ask for money from those entering the temple.
SPEAKER_03: When he saw Peter and John about to enter, he began to ask them for a gift.
SPEAKER_03: Peter and John stared at him.
SPEAKER_03: Peter said, Look at us.
SPEAKER_03: So the man gazed at them, expecting to receive something from them.
SPEAKER_03: Peter said, I don't have any money, but I will give you what I do have.
SPEAKER_03: In the name of Jesus Christ the Nazarene, rise up and walk.
SPEAKER_03: Then he grasped the man's right hand and raised him up.
SPEAKER_03: At once his feet and ankles became strong.
SPEAKER_03: Jumping up, he began to walk around.
SPEAKER_03: He entered the temple with them, walking, leaping, and praising God.
SPEAKER_03: All the people saw him walking.
SPEAKER_03: Oh no, they recognized him as the same one who used to sit at the temple's beautiful gate asking for money.
SPEAKER_03: They were filled with amazement and surprise at what had happened to him, the word of the Lord.
SPEAKER_02: If you are able, please stand for the gospel reading found in John chapter 4, verses 12 through 14.
SPEAKER_02: I assure you that whoever believes in me will do the works that I do, they will do even greater works than these, because I am going to the Father.
SPEAKER_02: I will do whatever you ask for in my name so that the Father can be glorified in the Son.
SPEAKER_02: When you ask me for anything in my name, I will do it.
SPEAKER_02: The gospel of the Lord.
unknown: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, we are profoundly aware that in this room there are beautiful stories, but also immense suffering.
SPEAKER_00: And so, God, we ask you to meet us in those places.
SPEAKER_00: To meet us where we are today.
SPEAKER_00: Would your words speak to us clearly?
SPEAKER_00: God, will we choose to believe in your name, the power of your name, who can heal?
SPEAKER_00: Praise in Christ's name.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: You may be seated.
SPEAKER_00: For this man, it started out like every other day.
SPEAKER_00: Be carried to the temple, beg for money, have people awkwardly avoid eye contact with him.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes he would get glaring looks from those entering and leaving as if his current condition was his fault.
SPEAKER_00: For this man, he would sit outside a gate called beautiful, and he would have to live with the reality that he did not feel all that beautiful himself.
SPEAKER_00: He was broken, crippled, isolated, and avoided.
SPEAKER_00: It was a gate that led to the temple that he could be at, but he could not enter.
SPEAKER_00: For this man, his outward condition had spiritual consequences.
SPEAKER_00: Being unable to walk meant being able to experience, worship, or pray to the God that his people worshipped and prayed to.
SPEAKER_00: Just a couple months ago, there was a rabbi from Nazareth who had the power to heal, but he had been beaten and killed like a common criminal.
SPEAKER_00: Although there's been an uproar in the city ever since, as people have argued that the rabbi isn't really dead.
SPEAKER_00: Context clues from the next chapter in Acts chapter 4 will tell us that this man has been at the beautiful gate for over 40 years every day.
SPEAKER_00: For 40 years, this man has had to wonder what he or his family had done wrong to deserve him being crippled.
SPEAKER_00: For 40 years, this man has had to beg just to eat.
SPEAKER_00: For 40 years, this man has had to live as an outcast, outsider, and loner.
SPEAKER_00: For 40 years, this man has had to wonder why he was ever put on the earth.
SPEAKER_00: But today, everything is about to change.
SPEAKER_00: Today, he will be grafted into the most beautiful story being written in the world.
SPEAKER_00: Today, this man will not be carried away.
SPEAKER_00: He will be leaping through the beautiful gate and into a new life.
SPEAKER_00: Today, he will encounter two ordinary people and be led into an extraordinary life.
SPEAKER_00: Friends, if you're just joining us, we've been in a series called Kingdom Movement, and we've been looking at the story of the early church, and we spent last week looking at Acts chapter 2.
SPEAKER_00: And today we're going to pick up an Acts chapter 3, and we're going to continue in the story.
SPEAKER_00: So if you have a Bible or a smartphone with the Bible on it, it'll also be on the screens as we kind of follow along.
SPEAKER_00: But I'm going to briefly tell the story.
SPEAKER_00: But before I do that, I want to just mention that last week we talked about Acts chapter 2, verses 42 to 47.
SPEAKER_00: And you should know that the Bible, in its earliest forms, did not have chapters and verses, which means that this story is a direct outflow of what was happening in Acts chapter 2, verses 42 to 47.
SPEAKER_00: And what was happening was that these church, the early church, was devoted to the apostles' teaching.
SPEAKER_00: They were devoted to each other.
SPEAKER_00: They uh were devoted to their shared meals and to their prayers.
SPEAKER_00: They shared all their possessions and they met together regularly in the temple courts.
SPEAKER_00: And so the church's lifestyle then becomes a testimony and a means through which the Spirit will work the miraculous.
SPEAKER_00: And so today, we just, I'm going to recap the story for you.
SPEAKER_00: We just read it.
SPEAKER_00: There's a man at the gate, he's been carried there every day for years.
SPEAKER_00: And Peter and John, the early leaders of this church, are going to the temple at the established prayer time.
SPEAKER_00: We've talked about this before, but note that the miraculous is often tied to a rhythm of prayer, that the two cannot really be separated.
SPEAKER_00: That God moves when we ask him to move.
SPEAKER_00: He shows up where he is wanted, and the man asks them for a gift.
SPEAKER_00: And Peter says, I don't have any money, but what I do have, I give to you in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth.
SPEAKER_00: Get up and walk.
SPEAKER_00: And the Peter commands the man to get up and walk.
SPEAKER_00: He grabs him by the right hand, his feet and his ankles become strong.
SPEAKER_00: He jumps up, he leaps up, he enters the temple with them, walking, leaping, and praising God, and people are amazed for good reason, right?
SPEAKER_00: This is the miraculous.
SPEAKER_00: But Peter and John have probably been expecting this.
SPEAKER_00: Because their teacher, their rabbi, told them in John chapter 14, he says, I assure you that whoever believes in me will do the works that I do.
SPEAKER_00: That you're going to do this.
SPEAKER_00: They will do even greater works than these because I'm going to the Father.
SPEAKER_00: I will do whatever you ask for in my name so that the Father can be glorified in the Son.
SPEAKER_00: When you ask me for anything in my name, I will do it.
SPEAKER_00: So as we approach this text today, I just want to maybe name a couple of things.
SPEAKER_00: One is as we talk about miracles, I just know we're talking, uh we're wading into some tension here for a number of reasons.
SPEAKER_00: One is intellectual, just intellectual kind of skepticism around miracles.
SPEAKER_00: Um we're living in what philosophers and theologians are calling a disenchanted age, uh, meaning kind of we are less likely to believe in the miraculous, the supernatural, the spiritual.
SPEAKER_00: And because of the Enlightenment, for all of its gifts, we've kind of reduced our world to what we can see, touch, hear, feel, taste, unto our five senses.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: And so even with the rise of scientific discoveries, scientific reason, our kind of belief in miracles has maybe gone down a little bit.
SPEAKER_00: I love what Mike Cosper says.
SPEAKER_00: He says this: he says, practicing our faith feels more fruitless than talking about it.
SPEAKER_00: We're able to talk fluently about magic, and you can insert the word miracles there.
SPEAKER_00: Magic, the supernatural, uh, the enchanted, and almost certain that it doesn't exist.
SPEAKER_00: I react to the suggestion of a miracle, or for that matter, any thoughts about God, the spiritual or the transcendent with skepticism and cynicism.
SPEAKER_00: It is my default setting.
SPEAKER_00: I am programmed to expect that the world is what I can see, touch, and measure, and any thought or idea that runs against that expectation is met with resistance.
SPEAKER_00: And if you're anything like me, any talk about miracles, healing, or the supernatural will bring up some tension, some skepticism, some criticism.
SPEAKER_00: And as we read a text like this, a story like this, where the miraculous breaks out, we need some explanation.
SPEAKER_00: What just happened?
SPEAKER_00: And luckily, Peter is going to explain what happened.
SPEAKER_00: So we have the miracle, which we just read about, but we also have the rest of chapter three, which is the message of Peter explaining what just happened.
SPEAKER_00: And so after this sign, everybody rushes toward Peter, John, and this healed man.
SPEAKER_00: They go from the beautiful gate where this took place to Solomon's porch, which was a huge hallway, about 1,500 feet long.
SPEAKER_00: It was beautiful.
SPEAKER_00: And this is where the philosophers, the rabbis, the teachers uh would debate and teach.
SPEAKER_00: It was where things got settled and explained.
SPEAKER_00: This was the comment section of the temple, friends.
SPEAKER_00: This is where you got all the answers.
SPEAKER_00: But something wild and miraculous has just happened that now warrants explanation.
SPEAKER_00: And this is what miracles can do.
SPEAKER_00: They point to a new reality which prompts all sorts of questions to which the preaching of the gospel is the answer.
SPEAKER_00: And so miracles for us, here's where we're headed today, miracles point to God's in-breaking kingdom through a suffering king.
SPEAKER_00: And Peter's message gives them context for what God was doing through Christ and now through his church.
SPEAKER_00: It can also give us some context for how to think about miracles as well.
SPEAKER_00: And the first thing that we see from this story is that miracles come from God's intervention in the physical world.
SPEAKER_00: They come from God's physical intervention in the physical world.
SPEAKER_00: Like what we can see, touch, experience, what is actually there.
SPEAKER_00: Like God interacts with reality.
SPEAKER_00: So even the belief in God is the admission of miracles, that God took nothing in the very beginning and created everything, the whole vast physical universe and all that fills it.
SPEAKER_00: The source of our physical world, what we, the place we live in right now, um is from a non-physical being.
SPEAKER_00: This means that the universe is not a closed system.
SPEAKER_00: This non-physical being, which we would call God, still interacts with his world in love.
SPEAKER_00: The creator of natural laws can interrupt and suspend his own laws anytime he wants.
SPEAKER_00: And here's what Peter says in Acts chapter 3, verse 11.
SPEAKER_00: He says, While the healed man clung to Peter and John, all the people rushed toward them.
SPEAKER_00: Seeing this, Peter addressed all the people.
SPEAKER_00: He says, Israelites, why are you amazed?
SPEAKER_00: Why are you staring at us as if we made him walk?
SPEAKER_00: He's saying, We didn't do this, God did this.
SPEAKER_00: The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of our ancestors, has glorified his servant Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And then he says all the way in verse 15, he says, You killed the author of life, the very one whom God raised from the dead.
SPEAKER_00: We are witnesses of this.
SPEAKER_00: Peter's saying, We didn't do this, God did this.
SPEAKER_00: The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God who interacts with his people and is writing a beautiful story in the world, the God, you're coming to the temple to worship.
SPEAKER_00: This is the same God that glorified Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: So all those miracles that Jesus would do, all the feedings, all the miraculous, the settling of the storms, the healings, the exorcisms, these were God's divine stamp of approval on the person of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And that Jesus, being God, knew how to interact with the physical world.
SPEAKER_00: Dallas Willard calls Jesus the master of molecules, which I think is awesome.
SPEAKER_00: Here's what he says: he says, at the literally mundane level, Jesus knew how to transform the molecular structure of water to make it wine.
SPEAKER_00: That knowledge also allowed him to take a few pieces of bread and some little fish and feed thousands of people.
SPEAKER_00: He could create matter from the energy he knew how to access from the heavens right where he was.
SPEAKER_00: He knew how to transform the tissues of the human body from sickness to health and from death to life.
SPEAKER_00: He knew how to suspend gravity, interrupt weather patterns, and eliminate unfruitful trees without a saw or without an axe.
SPEAKER_00: I wish I could do that in my backyard.
SPEAKER_00: Just eliminate the trees I don't want without a saw or an axe.
SPEAKER_00: And what Peter is saying, you killed this man.
SPEAKER_00: You killed the author of life.
SPEAKER_00: When presented with life or death, you chose death.
SPEAKER_00: But God the Father has raised the Son from the dead through the power of the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: And guess what?
SPEAKER_00: This is how this crippled man can walk today.
SPEAKER_00: Because God has always been on the side of life, wholeness, and goodness.
SPEAKER_00: So the first thing we see is God's, the miracles of God are God's physical intervention in his world.
SPEAKER_00: The second thing we see is that miracles are about bringing wholeness to a broken world.
SPEAKER_00: And I love what many, so many theologians and pastors and writers have talked about that miracles actually reveal what's truly natural.
SPEAKER_00: They are signs that point to what is supposed to be.
SPEAKER_00: Here's what Peter says about this man.
SPEAKER_00: He says this in verse 16.
SPEAKER_00: He says, His name itself, the name of Jesus, has made this man strong.
SPEAKER_00: That is, because of faith in Jesus' name, God has strengthened this man whom you see and know.
SPEAKER_00: The faith that comes through Jesus gave him complete health, wholeness, shalom, right before your eyes.
SPEAKER_00: God has restored what's been broken and weakened by a fallen world.
SPEAKER_00: Tim Keller, who is paraphrasing C.S.
SPEAKER_00: Lewis, says this.
SPEAKER_00: He says, Miracles are not a suspension of the natural order, but a return to the natural order.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus' healings are the only natural things in a world that is unnatural, demonized, and wounded.
SPEAKER_00: There's a beautiful moment in Exodus chapter 15 when God reveals another one of his names.
SPEAKER_00: In Exodus 15, he says, My name is Rapha, the God who heals.
SPEAKER_00: And this term Rapha is actually a sewing term.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know a lot about sewing myself, but I'm really grateful for it because I'm always ripping clothes.
SPEAKER_00: But so those of you who sow know that when you're sowing, you're bringing things together that have been pulled apart.
SPEAKER_00: And God saying, My name is Rapha, I am the God who brings things together.
SPEAKER_00: What has been fractured, broken, pulled apart.
SPEAKER_00: I am putting these things back together in a beautiful way.
SPEAKER_00: So what's happening in this man is actually a much deeper work.
SPEAKER_00: Miracles are not just pleasantries or like nice tricks, like, look what I can do.
SPEAKER_00: Miracles are about mending what's been broken and filling the emptiness people feel without God.
SPEAKER_00: That what God is doing for this man, because of his disability, he was prevented from going into the temple.
SPEAKER_00: And so God heals that very part of himself that prevents him from experiencing God.
SPEAKER_00: That God wants to heal the parts of us that keep us from experiencing life with him.
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to tell a story, and I just I want you to just maybe notice your reaction.
SPEAKER_00: I'll tell you my initial reaction, but I want to note it, just notice your reaction as I tell this story.
SPEAKER_00: Every summer, our youth group goes to a conference up north called Desperation Conference.
SPEAKER_00: And every year there are thousands of students, middle school and high school students, who gather in the same room for three days to worship, pray, engage with teaching, to talk about what God is up to in the world, and to be empowered as the next generation.
SPEAKER_00: It's really beautiful, but it's also really stinky in that room as well.
SPEAKER_00: I I love what happens in the room.
SPEAKER_00: But the morning sessions, what we do every morning is we just spend some time in worship and prayer.
SPEAKER_00: There's no teaching, there's no amazing speaker.
SPEAKER_00: We we worship and we pray with all these teenagers.
SPEAKER_00: And these teenagers get after it.
SPEAKER_00: They worship and pray in some beautiful ways.
SPEAKER_00: One of the mornings we were praying for healing in the room.
SPEAKER_00: And the team up north were like, hey, Pastor Brock, will you pray for physical healing in the room?
SPEAKER_00: I'm like, yeah, uh, uh, sure.
SPEAKER_00: Um maybe we should do that like going in one-on-one settings or like in smaller groups, like maybe not this size of the room.
SPEAKER_00: Like, no, I think we need to pray over everyone in the room.
SPEAKER_00: And like, yeah, sounds good.
SPEAKER_00: Um, and I would just say, I would just say, my initial kind of tension or um what I was feeling in that moment was um the pain of people who have been prayed for and not been made well.
SPEAKER_00: What I was feeling in that moment, I was I was wondering if this is what I was supposed to do was um the pain of my older brother who has a chronic illness.
SPEAKER_00: We prayed for him for years.
SPEAKER_00: The pain of people who have been prayed over but haven't received the healing that they've prayed for.
SPEAKER_00: And as I went up to pray, uh I just was like doing some of the caveats that um I just knew that needed to happen.
SPEAKER_00: That we God works through medicine and doctors and um through in in miraculous ways through how far we've come in medicine, but also all temp all physical healing on this side of new creation is temporary.
SPEAKER_00: That people will get sick again, that people who are healed um they they will experience death.
SPEAKER_00: Um, like that is a part of our reality on this side of new creation.
SPEAKER_00: And then I just began to pray um into some of these miracles, praying for people.
SPEAKER_00: And then I walked off the stage after praying, and I was like, Well, that was a bust.
SPEAKER_00: There goes that.
SPEAKER_00: Uh and just I'm being honest with you.
SPEAKER_00: Um, and I that afternoon I was walking through the lobby, and there's a youth pastor that just comes running, sprinting towards me, and I'm like, What's what?
SPEAKER_00: What's wrong?
SPEAKER_00: Like, did what did one of my students do something?
SPEAKER_00: What did the what they do?
SPEAKER_00: And this youth pastor, she said, her scars are gone.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm I'm like, You got you gotta give me some more information here.
SPEAKER_00: Like, what are you what are you talking about?
SPEAKER_00: She said they had a student in their youth group who she had several scars all over her arms just due to self-harm.
SPEAKER_00: And this was every time she saw these scars, she experienced the guilt, the shame, the isolation.
SPEAKER_00: Um and she believed that God didn't love her because of what she had done.
SPEAKER_00: And she had prayed with a group of her friends in this room during this time, and she lifted her sleeves and the scars were completely gone.
SPEAKER_00: And there were witnesses of it, and they're miraculous.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm and I what's happening in me is just like what?
SPEAKER_00: Just amazement.
SPEAKER_00: Like amazement that God still wants to work in these miraculous ways, that God still heals in these ways, that God is still putting things back together in these ways.
SPEAKER_00: And what's happening at this man of the temple is that he was being kept from experiencing a deeper life with God because of his physical condition.
SPEAKER_00: What happens when he's healed in verse 8 is says he was walking, leaping, and praising God.
SPEAKER_00: And this word leaping is a really fun word in Greek.
SPEAKER_00: It's the Greek word halomai, which means to spring forth, to leap up, or to bubble up.
SPEAKER_00: Which this word is used in one other time in the New Testament, and it's in John chapter 4, when Jesus is speaking with a Samaritan woman at the well.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus talks about having access to a living water that becomes in people a spring, leaping, bubbling up.
SPEAKER_00: That this is the work of Jesus to an eternal kind of life.
SPEAKER_00: And as we talk about Living water, I do need to note that objectively, spindrift is the best sparkling water.
SPEAKER_00: And so you could say, Amen.
SPEAKER_00: So this man now, he is living the spindrift kind of life.
SPEAKER_00: But what elicits this kind of response?
SPEAKER_00: Obviously, being able to walk, but the reality of not being able to walk triggered a much deeper emptiness in this man's life.
SPEAKER_00: Because what happens is he enters the temple with Peter and John.
SPEAKER_00: Again, this man's disability was keeping him from encountering God.
SPEAKER_00: And what happens is Peter grabs him by the right hand, which is important because this is covenant language.
SPEAKER_00: And he he brings him up and they walk into together.
SPEAKER_00: He's saying, You are now grafted into what God is doing in this movement through Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: There was more than one miracle in this man's life.
SPEAKER_00: It was the strengthening of this man's body, but also him being able to experience and worship to the and pray to the God that he had never been able to experience or worship before.
SPEAKER_00: But what happens for many of us is sometimes very different.
SPEAKER_00: Again, the problem for many of us is not an intellectual problem, but an emotional problem.
SPEAKER_00: Why did God heal that person, but my friend got sick?
SPEAKER_00: Why hasn't God healed me?
SPEAKER_00: Why did that person have to die after so many times of praying for them?
SPEAKER_00: And this is where Peter brings up a really interesting tension that we're just going to have to wrestle with.
SPEAKER_00: He says this in verse 18, he says, but this is how God fulfilled what he foretold through all the prophets, that his Christ would suffer.
SPEAKER_00: And that wholeness actually comes about through the suffering Christ.
SPEAKER_00: We saw that in Isaiah 53, that Jesus bore the punishment that makes us whole.
SPEAKER_00: And what was purchased on the cross was way more than just the forgiveness of sins, it was our healing, our wholeness.
SPEAKER_00: That all things will come to fruition, wholeness and being put to rights through this suffering servant's life, death, and resurrection.
SPEAKER_00: What this suffering servant named Jesus, he would say really, really difficult things like he would say, pick up your cross, pick up an instrument of death, and follow me.
SPEAKER_00: Deny yourself.
SPEAKER_00: He would say things like, In this world, you're going to have trouble.
SPEAKER_00: He would say, Blessed are those who mourn.
SPEAKER_00: Blessed are the poor.
SPEAKER_00: If you want to be great in the kingdom of God, you need to become the servant of many.
SPEAKER_00: Which brings us to this theological reality that a robust theology of miracles must be partnered with a robust theology of suffering.
SPEAKER_00: That we have to hold the two intention together.
SPEAKER_00: Here's what Leslie Nubigan says.
SPEAKER_00: He says, it's clear from the New Testament that the early church saw itself as living in the time between the times, the time when Jesus, having exposed and disarmed the powers of darkness, is seated at the right hand of God until the time when his reign shall be unveiled in all its glory among the nations.
SPEAKER_00: This time is marked by suffering and by the presence of signs of the kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: This in-between space and time will have crucifixion and resurrection.
SPEAKER_00: It will have suffering and it will have signs.
SPEAKER_00: It will have the denial of self in order to discover the self.
SPEAKER_00: And here's what happens.
SPEAKER_00: The beautiful piece of this, too, is that through our suffering, God can also make us whole.
SPEAKER_00: Through our suffering, God can offer us wholeness, bring us back together as well.
SPEAKER_00: And many times God wants to repurpose our pain and suffering.
SPEAKER_00: And please hear me.
SPEAKER_00: I do not want to discount anybody's pain or suffering in this room.
SPEAKER_00: I don't want to minimize, push aside the real pain of illness, disease, heartache, struggle.
SPEAKER_00: But I want to remind us that in God's kingdom we follow a crucified king who can take our pain and repurpose it.
SPEAKER_00: That every bit of suffering we experience in this age can serve a redemptive purpose, and oftentimes God purifies, cleanses, and enlarges our souls through struggle.
SPEAKER_00: This is something you're gonna have to wrestle with for yourself.
SPEAKER_00: And here's a few places to start.
SPEAKER_00: Romans 5 is a great place to start.
SPEAKER_00: He says that struggle, suffering, gives us endurance, strength of character, hope of salvation.
SPEAKER_00: Another great place to start is James chapter 1.
SPEAKER_00: He says suffering can be an opportunity for joy.
SPEAKER_00: Endurance can grow in these places.
SPEAKER_00: This leads to maturity and to wholeness.
SPEAKER_00: Another great place to start is Romans 8.
SPEAKER_00: He says in verse 18 that our present suffering is nothing to the future glory we're going to experience with Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And that God can take everything that happens to us and repurpose it for good.
SPEAKER_00: To illustrate this, I want to talk about some dessert.
SPEAKER_00: There is a restaurant in Modena, Italy.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not gonna say its name because I can't pronounce it, but it's led by a chef named Massimo Batura.
SPEAKER_00: And it holds the highest possible honor of three Michelin stars, which it's had since 2011.
SPEAKER_00: It was named the number one best restaurant in the world twice, 2016 and 2018.
SPEAKER_00: Um, and this is a really incredibly intimate environment.
SPEAKER_00: There's only 12 tables, it's got the nice jazz music playing, you can probably picture it in your mind right now.
SPEAKER_00: And during a dinner service one night, there was a sous-chef whose name was Taka Kondo.
SPEAKER_00: He was plating the final two lemon tarts of the night.
SPEAKER_00: And as he reached for a plate, um, he smashed it against the counter, and the plate shatters into pieces.
SPEAKER_00: And in a high-stakes, three Michelin star environment, this is usually a huge disaster.
SPEAKER_00: Taka Kondo, the chef, at that moment, reported actually wanting to die in that moment.
SPEAKER_00: It was that serious.
SPEAKER_00: But chef Massimo Batura walks over.
SPEAKER_00: But instead of getting angry, he was mesmerized by what he saw.
SPEAKER_00: He saw that the broken lemon tart looked more beautiful and real than the perfect one.
SPEAKER_00: To him, the reconstruction of the break represented the fragile beauty of life.
SPEAKER_00: And Batura told Taka, take Taka, he says, that's amazing.
SPEAKER_00: Let's do it again.
SPEAKER_00: Do it again.
SPEAKER_00: Whatever you just did, do it again.
SPEAKER_00: And they spent the next few minutes intentionally breaking the second tart to match the first.
SPEAKER_00: And this dish is now named.
SPEAKER_00: Um, it's still, they still make it today.
SPEAKER_00: The name of the dish is called, Oops, I dropped the lemon tart.
SPEAKER_00: Friends, I wish I could do that.
SPEAKER_00: I wish I could break something and say, ha ha, I meant to do that.
SPEAKER_00: When something happens on accident, I wish I could say, I it's beautiful, see, I just I meant it to do it that way.
SPEAKER_00: But here's what we know about God is God has a special capacity to take the broken things in our lives and make them beautiful.
SPEAKER_00: And a special capacity to make us beautiful through our suffering.
SPEAKER_00: And this is a miracle that God brings wholeness from the things that are fractured.
SPEAKER_00: I love what the Anglican priest Tish Harrison Warren says about suffering.
SPEAKER_00: She says, Christians have always looked to suffering not only as a place of pain, but as a place of meeting God.
SPEAKER_00: Suffering does not only happen to us, it happened, it works in us.
SPEAKER_00: She says, I'm afraid of the dark, which we can talk call pain or suffering, but increasingly I'm more afraid of missing the kind of beauty and growth that can only be found there.
SPEAKER_00: Friends, the most beautiful people I know, people whose character I would consider a miracle in and of itself, are people who have known struggle, suffering, and loss, and they've allowed Jesus to repurpose it for their own wholeness.
SPEAKER_00: So we know that God can bring wholeness from what's broken, but the third thing we see in the story is that miracles ultimately point to the restoration of all things.
SPEAKER_00: My good friend and one of the elders at our church, Lawrence Ku, he uses the illustration of the trailer in the movie, as I've heard him speak before.
SPEAKER_00: I love Batman The Dark Knight.
SPEAKER_00: I'm ready, you guys know this.
SPEAKER_00: Um, I just watch the trailers sometimes just because I'm like, I don't have time for the three-hour movie, but I've got time for the trailer.
SPEAKER_00: And what miracles are is they are a trailer to the movie that God is going to one day do completely and fully.
SPEAKER_00: That miracles are like the movie trailer giving us a glimpse of what's going to play out in the future.
SPEAKER_00: And Peter explains that we can experience some relief now.
SPEAKER_00: We can experience the reality of the trailer because the movie is coming.
SPEAKER_00: Here's what he says in Acts chapter 3, verse 19.
SPEAKER_00: He says, Change your hearts and lives, turn back to God so that your sins may be wiped away.
SPEAKER_00: Then the Lord will provide a season of relief from the distress of this age, and he will send Jesus, whom he handpicked to be your Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus must now remain in heaven until the restoration of all things, about which God spoke long ago through his holy prophets.
SPEAKER_00: And as Micah and the band come up to get ready to lead us to the table, the good news is that God will actually give us a taste now of what we can fully experience to expect from him in the future.
SPEAKER_00: There's a a beautiful picture here.
SPEAKER_00: Um this is commonly what's referred to as the Agnus Day.
SPEAKER_00: A lot of times it will be represented, there's a lamb here.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes the cross is not actually there, but there's a flag with the cross on it.
SPEAKER_00: But it's become a symbol of the church for thousands of years.
SPEAKER_00: And it represents the Lamb of God, the slain Lamb of God who has the power to open the scroll in Revelation.
SPEAKER_00: And you can see just from this picture, some pictures uh will have this.
SPEAKER_00: Uh this one does.
SPEAKER_00: You can see the blood, if you look closely, pouring forth from his chest and straight into a chalice.
SPEAKER_00: That the slain lamb actually becomes nourishment and life for us.
SPEAKER_00: That he was pierced for our transgressions, that the price Jesus paid was, yes, our forgiveness of sins, but it's our very life.
SPEAKER_00: It's our very healing, it's our very wholeness.
SPEAKER_00: What Peter is saying, he says, turn and follow the slain lamb.
SPEAKER_00: Follow the slain lamb right into eternity.
SPEAKER_00: He's got living water that he wants to give to you, that can for you become bubbling up for you, a spring in eternal life.
SPEAKER_00: That God wants to heal some places for us right now.
SPEAKER_00: And friends, uh, I would be I would regret if we just talked about healing but didn't pray for it.
SPEAKER_00: If we just taught about it or preached on it, but didn't pray for it.
SPEAKER_00: Um I I want to keep this this picture up as we pray for healing.
SPEAKER_00: Um, that you know that what Christ has done for you, that he's healed you spiritually, but I believe there's actually some more healing he wants to do in this room today.
SPEAKER_00: And Peter says this phrase, he wants to give us a season of relief.
SPEAKER_00: I think people need to experience some relief in this room right now.
SPEAKER_00: And that word relief can be translated in a few different ways.
SPEAKER_00: It can be translated as relief, rest, or refreshment.
SPEAKER_00: So, friends, we're just gonna pray for a few different uh of those areas right now.
SPEAKER_00: If you um if you need relief in this room right now, if you're experiencing, I you have experienced sickness after sickness, you got a diagnosis, um, you have physical ailments right now that you are experiencing pain and suffering, and it's messing with your life and it's prohibiting you from experiencing God in profound ways.
SPEAKER_00: Um, I'm just gonna ask you just to open your hands where you are right now.
SPEAKER_00: Just to open your hands.
SPEAKER_00: If you see someone with their hands open, just feel free to lay a hand on them or um or put your hands towards them.
SPEAKER_00: God, we pray for relief in this room right now.
SPEAKER_00: That you are the God who heals, you are the God who brings things together into wholeness.
SPEAKER_00: God, we believe that the miraculous comes with the reality of the kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: So, Holy Spirit, I pray for healing in this room right now.
SPEAKER_00: I pray that the next doctor visit would be a breakthrough.
SPEAKER_00: I pray there would be answers.
SPEAKER_00: I pray that the surgery would go flawless for whoever needs that.
SPEAKER_00: God, I pray just right now that you would heal in this moment.
SPEAKER_00: You would manipulate the molecules and particles and the tissues to bring wholeness and healing to those who are suffering right now.
SPEAKER_00: God, we pray this in Christ's name.
SPEAKER_00: The second way that we can translate that word, season of relief, is rest.
SPEAKER_00: That you might be in this room and you are physically exhausted, whether from work or from taking care of someone, um, or just you find yourself burnt out, that you you just need to experience some rest.
SPEAKER_00: You need peace, wholeness, shalom.
SPEAKER_00: If that's you, I'm just gonna ask you to open your hands, just wherever you're at.
SPEAKER_00: God, we pray for rest in this room right now.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus, you tell us to come to you, everyone who is labor and weary and burdened, and you will give us rest.
SPEAKER_00: So, Jesus, I pray for divine rest in this room.
SPEAKER_00: I pray for naps, I pray for good sleep, I pray for wholeness to come to our physical bodies, I pray for mental clarity.
SPEAKER_00: God, would you bring those rest who need to experience your rest?
SPEAKER_00: As we look forward to the eternal rest to come, would you give people a glimpse of that in their life right now?
SPEAKER_00: In Christ's name we pray.
SPEAKER_00: The final way we can translate that word season of relief is just refreshment.
SPEAKER_00: So maybe you're in this room and you are just feeling despair.
SPEAKER_00: You are feeling spiritually dry.
SPEAKER_00: You are feeling maybe you've experienced anxiety, depression, a lack of hope, and maybe no sense of joy in your life right now.
SPEAKER_00: And maybe that's because of something that's happened to you, or maybe you're just you can point to like, man, here's where I've messed up.
SPEAKER_00: And you just need God to bring you refreshment, nourishment through what the slain lamb has purchased for you.
SPEAKER_00: If that's you, I'm just going to encourage you to open your hands.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus, I pray for divine refreshment in this room right now.
SPEAKER_00: God, I pray people who have walked in without hope would leave with hope.
SPEAKER_00: Those who have walked in with no joy would leave leaping, praising God.
SPEAKER_00: God, I pray for those who just sense an emptiness in their life.
SPEAKER_00: Would you meet them in that place?
SPEAKER_00: God, we believe that you can work, you can act.
SPEAKER_00: You you are the God of miracles, you're the God who heals.
SPEAKER_00: And so, God, we trust you with that.
SPEAKER_00: God, we trust that you're going to continue to work in our lives.
SPEAKER_00: We pray that you would give us everything that we need, whether it's friendships or therapists or spiritual directors, God, people to help us to experience the life that you have on offer, life in your kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: And God, for every one of us, we trust that you are bringing us back together into wholeness.
SPEAKER_00: God, thank you for what you did for us on the cross.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for what's on offer.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you that we get to follow the risen Christ and the slain Lamb right into eternity, right into healing, right into goodness, beauty, and wholeness.
SPEAKER_00: Praise this in Christ's name.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you.