SPEAKER_02 0:00

My name is David. Thank you. The old testament reading is found in Deuteronomy 25. Now two people have a disagreement. And they entered into litigation. And their case is decided. With the judges declaring one person legally right and the other person legally liable. If the guilty party is to be beaten, the presiding judge will have that person lie down and be punished in his presence. The number of blows is measured in measured with the guilt determined. Give no more than forty blows. If more than that is given, that fellow Israelite would be completely disgraced in your eyes. The word of the Lord.

SPEAKER_01 1:35

Okay. Good morning, church. Hello, my name is David, and coincidentally, the New Testament reading is found in Acts 5, verses 12 through 16. The apostles performed many signs and wonders among the people. They would come together regularly at Solomon's porch. No one from outside the church dared to join them, even though the people spoke highly of them. Indeed, more and more believers in the Lord, large numbers of both men and women were added to the church. As a result, they would even bring the sick out into the main streets and lay them on cots and mats, so that at least Peter's shadow could fall on some of them as he passed by. Even large numbers of persons from towns around Jerusalem would gather, bringing the sick and those harassed by unclean spirits. Everyone was healed with the word of the Lord.

SPEAKER_03 3:00

Thank you for standing for the reading of the Gospel. Today's Gospel is Luke 7, verses 20 through 23. When they reached Jesus, they said, John the Baptist sent us to you. He asks, are you the one who is coming? Or should we look for someone else? Right then, Jesus healed many of their diseases, illnesses, and evil spirits, and he gave sight to a number of the blind people. Then he replied to John's disciples, Go, report to John what you have seen and heard. Those who were blind are able to see. Those who were crippled now walk. People with skin diseases are cleansed. Those who were deaf now hear. Those who were dead are raised up. And good news is preached to the poor. Happy is anyone who doesn't stumble along the way because of me. The gospel of the Lord.

SPEAKER_00 4:32

Please remain standing with me as we pray this morning, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, we ask that you would move among us today. That as we even read those texts from the New Testament, from the gospel, and hear of how the power of God can work among people, we ask that you would do it again. That you'd work among us in seen and unseen ways, putting us back together, forming us into the image of Jesus, making us holy and whole in your name. Pray all this in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. And all God's people said, Amen. You may be seated. Good morning, everyone. David is going to have a conversation with me after service about my Old Testament reading selections. But it's part of the joy of being a pastor, you're like, oh, which one am I going to choose this week? But happy Easter time. Today is the fifth Sunday in Easter. We have two more weeks to keep the feast together. And then it'll be Pentecost Sunday. We get to celebrate the gift of the Spirit. As I said before, my name's Jason. If you're new or newer, we're absolutely delighted that you're here. And hello to everybody who's watching online or who'll be watching later. I know there is some kind of stomach bug that's been going on for the last couple of weeks. We pray for all of you who are recovering from that or dealing with that. May Jesus heal you in his name. Several years ago, uh Sarah and I went uh on a trip to California where uh we spent the trip driving up the Pacific Coast Highway uh from Santa Monica to Monterey and then coming back down again. And so we had all these different stops, you know, planned out along the way to see, visit Big Sur and other places. Absolutely breathtaking uh trip. And I have this one moment that I'll never forget where we were uh walking around uh Moro Bay and walking around the rock that was out there. And uh we came, you know, walking out to the rock, and on the way we, you know, passed several groups of people. And then as we were walking back, we saw one of those groups again. And this young woman, probably in her 20s, uh, just came up to me out of the blue and she said, Hey, can I ask you a question? I was like, Yes. And she goes, Are you a youth pastor? Um and I was like, uh she's like, We just walked by you and I bet my friend that you were. And then she dared me to come up and ask. And I was like, Well, I was, I'm now just like a regular pastor. And then she was running back to her friend, uh, absolutely sad. He was, I guess there's a look. Um, I haven't quite figured out what it is yet, but every time I look in the mirror, I'm apparently seeing that. Uh, it reminded me uh a few years later, I was I was reminded of that moment when I was watching Spider-Man Away from Home. Uh something remember, maybe the greatest moment in that movie is Tom Holland, who is the current Spider-Man and the best Spider-Man, uh, was was joined by the two previous actors who played Spider-Man, uh Andrew Garfield, who's the second best Spider-Man, and Toby Maguire, who shall remain nameless. Um, but he's I offended some people again. We're like three minutes in. Um but they're in this moment and they're getting ready to go out to battle. And Andrew Garfield, uh, his Spider-Man character, looks at uh Toby Maguire's Spider-Man character and says, uh, are you going to battle dressed as a cool youth pastor? Uh, or are you did you bring your Spidey suit? And he's basically wearing this. Um I guess I'm living into it. Uh that movie, Spider-Man Away from Home, for those of you who are really familiar with the Marvel cinematic universe, is part of phase four um in the Marvel Universe development. Uh, and it's the place that they're introducing the idea of the multiverse. This is how the other two Spider-Mans uh kind of come into the current Spider-Man storyline is this idea that there are all these parallel universes, and they can, when things happen, sort of intersect with one another, that there's times where other universes within the Marvel world break into this one, and there's sort of appearances or sightings from there. I think that idea could work as a metaphor for the kingdom of God. I think it can work in some way. Of course, as a metaphor, it's going to break down in all kinds of ways. And um, but the idea that there is another reality that breaks into this one. Another reality that appears. Or for us, a true and genuine future that has made its way into the present and is appearing in some way among us. This is really kind of what's happening throughout the book of Acts. So if you've got a Bible, you can turn with me to Acts chapter 5, verse 12, or you can follow along in the screens. Uh, we're making our way through this book in a series called the Kingdom Movement. If you haven't been a part of the series so far, uh, Acts is part two of a two-volume work by an author named Luke. And one of Luke's goals in the book of Acts is to emphasize the continuity between the ministry of Jesus in the Gospel of Luke and the ministry of Jesus in and through the church in the book of Acts. So we see that in Luke's gospel, Jesus announced the kingdom of God. He announced its arrival, and then he demonstrated that the kingdom was here in healing and in deliverance. And then eventually, this ministry of proclaiming and demonstrating the kingdom led to a conflict between Jesus and the powers that be in his day, and ultimately led to his suffering and to his death and his resurrection. In Acts, then the church continues on with this. They announced and demonstrated the kingdom of God. They announced the kingdom is here, and they're going about in a ministry of healing and deliverance. This ministry leads to a conflict between the church and the powers that be, beginning with the Jewish leaders in Jerusalem, particularly those centered around the temple, and then eventually with the Roman Caesar. And ultimately their allegiance to Jesus and to his kingdom leads to their suffering and to their death and the hope of their resurrection. This conflict first occurs in Acts chapter three and four, where we read several weeks ago about a man who was healed near the gate called Beautiful. And after he was healed, Peter and John were arrested. And now in Acts chapter 5, we get a second occurrence of healing and deliverance and conflict. And so we're going to read that passage again, Acts chapter 5, verse 12. The apostles performed many signs and many wonders among the people. They would come together regularly at Solomon's porch, which was also the name of the coffee shop in the town that I had seminary in, you know, just because we're Bible people like that. No one from outside the church dared to join them. They sort of stood at a distance in awe. Even though the people spoke really highly of them, indeed, more and more believers in the Lord, large numbers of men and women were added to the church. And as a result, they would even bring the sick out into the main streets and lay them on cots and mats. So at the very least, maybe Peter's shadow could fall on some of them as he passed by. Even large numbers of persons from around the town, the towns around Jerusalem would gather, bringing their sick and those who were harassed by unclean spirits, and everyone was healed. So we see in Acts chapter three, we have one person being healed. And now by Acts chapter five, we see large numbers of people being healed. And even more people being added to their number. In Acts chapter 3, they were healed by the apostle's word, where they just said, Silver and gold have I none, but stand up, rise up in the name of Jesus. Now here they're seemingly probably healed by touch, primarily, when they're performing signs and wonders, probably a sense of laying hands on people and praying for them. But we even have this moment where they're being healed by Peter's shadow. We're like, what in the world? There's some evidence in the ancient world that the idea was like to touch someone's shadow was to touch their soul. And so that's probably some superstitious idea that is getting brought into this, like maybe Peter's shadow. It's at least a little stitch, if it's not superstitious. And somehow, like God's being kind in the middle of that, people are getting healed. This is just one of the many odd ways by which people seem to be healed in the New Testament. Later on in Acts, we'll read about a moment where people were taking these small claws that had touched Paul's skin and then taking that and placing it on their people, and then they're healed. We see something similar with Jesus, where they're touching the hem of his garments, and then they get healed. And on more than one occasion, Jesus spit on someone and they were healed. Um, I'm really glad that that wasn't more normalized in the operations of the church. Uh, that was one of Jesus' practices that we just haven't continued uh fully and probably for specific reasons. We won't get into that today. But if you're new or newer to faith or to church, uh praying for healing, praying for the sick, praying for deliverance, for freedom, for wholeness, this is a normal part of Christian life and experience. The Bible invites us to pray bold prayers, to ask God in bold and extravagant sort of ways, to ask him to act, to ask him to do what we consider to be the miraculous, and encourages us, the Bible, to pray for one another. So not just ask ourselves to God, but even have other people ask on our behalf, hey, would you pray for me? Would you ask God to heal me, to touch me, to provide for me, to do what I need to see happen? And typically that, of course, does happen by people laying hands on one another, sometimes anointing with oil rather than with saliva. Um, but this is a normal part. And I know many of us here from hearing some of your stories, many here have experienced moments where in prayer you have been healed, or you've been a part of situations or stories where you've heard or seen people being healed. And have that sort of sense, even on any given Sunday, kind of an expectation as we gather together looking for that, longing for that, hoping for more of that. I am. One of the prayers I pray on Sunday morning is as I'm walking around and setting up and praying over the building, it's like, Jesus, would you heal people this morning? Would you do the things that only you can do? And not just praying for physical healing, but the restoration of wholeness for all of us. That there is emotional healing and spiritual healing and relational healing, all of those things that I think God wants to bring into our lives. And so we have these moments where we read that passage, we're like, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. And there are also other moments, sometimes even sitting right next to one another, where we are also personally and even quite painfully familiar with unanswered prayers for healing. Where we've prayed and we've prayed and we've prayed, and it doesn't seem as if anything happened. And in fact, we have numerous stories where this well, the way that the prayers were not answered, and that person passed. And then we're wrestling in some way of how do we continue to pray bold prayers and hold on to the grief and loss and lament that we're feeling in the questions that come along with that. Sometimes, even when we read the statement, everyone was healed. We can feel conflicted, we can be really grateful, like, yes, that's awesome. Everybody there in that moment, they were healed. And then almost immediately, like, and why not here? Why not now? Why does that seem to be incompatible with my own experience? And so we can read a statement like that and find it difficult to believe. We can wonder why it's not true for us, or why it's not true all the time, everywhere, with every single prayer. And sometimes what will happen is we'll just begin to have all kinds of questions running through our mind, and we wonder like, is there something wrong with God? Or is there something wrong with us? And we can vacillate going, I don't know how to wrestle with these things. I think part of that wrestling is that we are largely democratic in the way that we think and view the worlds. Democratic meaning that we tend to see the world through a lens of fairness. As we believe that what God does for one, he should do all the time for everyone. If he's going to do it for one person, he should do it for all people. If not, it's not fair. Any of you who have children, you know this kind of tension that we live with in our homes. We actually, I think, if we're really honest, we would prefer that either God heals everybody or he heals no one. The sum is the hard place for us. It like touches on something that just seems unfair. Maybe the greatest description of this ever uh came in veggie tales. Uh, silly songs with Larry, for those of you who grew up watching that or were thankful for it when you were parenting your kids. And it's the water buffalo song where Larry sings this song, it's like, everybody's got a water buffalo, mine is fast, but yours is slow. And he sang this song like everybody's got one. And then Bob the Tomato comes rushing in and says, Stop this, write this instant. What do you think you're doing? You can't say that everyone has a water buffalo when not everyone has a water buffalo. Can you imagine the nasty letters that we're going to get saying, Where's my water buffalo? Why don't I have a water buffalo? Are you prepared to deal with that? I don't think so, so stop being so silly. We're like, yeah, you can't say everyone was healed. Well, not everyone gets healed all the time, everywhere. We're like, ugh, there's a fairness to us that's hard to reconcile. But I think there's a part then that goes, well, we don't want to impugn God's character. We don't want to suggest that God's not fair, that he's not just, that he's not kind. So sometimes we'll go from that into something else. Like, well, maybe we're the ones that are missing something. And so, like, well, maybe we don't know the formula. And we can get into formulaic sort of thinking where there is some sort of pattern or cheat code to this. There's a series of words or actions. If I can go up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A, start, I will get 99 lives on Contra. Uh, that's a little joke for you 80s NES fans. Um, but if I can just crack the code, then God will heal. So I must not know the code, but there must be one, because that satisfies our sense of fairness. But there's a word for that, it's called magic. It's not the way of Jesus. We are taught to pray in certain ways, and we're encouraged to fast and all of those things. But that's not about formulas. That is about faith, it's about trust. But that sometimes pushes us into thinking about miracles and healings and things on economic terms. Where it's not so much for us maybe about what we say and what we do and the order that we do it in, but we start to think, well, maybe it's about how much faith that I have. And we start to think of faith as a currency to exchange. If I just have enough faith, then I can purchase my answers to prayer from God. That if I can build up my deposits, then I can make this withdrawal. And we can start to Feel like maybe my prayers aren't answered because I don't have enough faith. Some of you have been in moments where someone said that to you in a very painful and heartbreaking context, that it's been really difficult to recover life with God since then. The Bible, of course, sure does place a lot of emphasis on faith and the importance of it. But faith in the scriptures is a relational idea, not a financial one. It's about trusting in God's ability and willingness to heal, trusting that he is a loving Father who wants us to ask him about everything and to bring all of our cares and concerns to him. And it's about trusting God when healing doesn't come when and how we want it to come. So faith matters, but it's not on an economic sort of term. So sometimes we'll go to a place of thinking about this. Well, there must be maybe another reason, and sometimes we'll think, well, there must be an apostolic answer. In other words, this must only be something that happens with the apostles. That these things happened with Jesus and they happened with his first disciples, and then when they died, that was all over. And those things just don't happen anymore. There's no more healings, there's no more miracles, that they ceased either when the last disciple died or when the scriptures were finalized. There's some theological traditions that kind of hold on to that. Or maybe we find ourselves maybe in some darker moments of going, well, maybe my view of God is wrong, maybe God is just really vindictive. Maybe God is personally and directly punishing me for something that I did or failed to do. And our thoughts about God start to move away from who He has revealed Himself to be. We can begin to believe that God is more punitive than He is merciful. And so we find ourselves kind of looking for these kinds of answers. How do I make sense of this sometimes but not always? How do I make sense of all of this? And what's really interesting is when we look at the New Testament as a whole, it resists the kind of either-or explanations. It resists those kind of simplistic places that we're like, okay, well, maybe it's this reason. Instead, the New Testament seems to embrace a lot of complexity and even mystery around this. We find a glimpse of that in the very next passage, Acts 5, 17. It says the high priest, together with his allies, the Sadducees, was overcome with jealousy. The word there is zeal. So it's probably not a sense that they were jealous of the apostles, as they were felt like they needed to protect the ways of God and the ways of the temple. So they were zealous about protecting the way things have always been done. And they seized the apostles and they made a public show of putting them in prison. And then here's what happens: an angel from the Lord comes and opened the prison doors during the night and let them out. And so the next morning they get up and they go back to the temple and they start preaching. Meanwhile, the high priest and the colleagues that have no clue what's happened. They're gathered together to start talking about what are we going to do with these guys? Then they send for the apostles and somebody comes back and says, they're not there. They learned about the prison break. And then they hear they're out preaching again. So they sent guards to arrest them again, and this confrontation ensues between the apostles and the religious leaders. The council is furious. They want to kill them. That's their solution. Like, let's just kill these guys. Then one of the members, a man named Kamaliel, he talked them down. He says, Listen, if this is a human endeavor, this is just going to die out like all of the others. But if this is from God, you won't be able to stop it. So just let them go and wait and see. And then we read this after calling the apostles back, they had them beaten. And they ordered them not to speak in the name of Jesus, then they'll let them go. And the apostles left the council rejoicing because they'dn't been regarded as worthy to suffer for the sake of the name of Jesus. And every day they continue to teach and proclaim the good news about that Jesus is the Christ, both in the temple and in homes. As noted in that Old Testament reading, they likely received 39 lashes. They were probably beaten to the point where it could have killed them. It didn't, but they suffered greatly. Probably marks that they lived with for the rest of their days. And here, those who had healed others are now scarred. And we're left with questions like, well, why didn't the angel let them out that time? Why didn't the angel stop the beating? And those questions keep coming as we read the Bible, as we look at history, as we look at our own lives. In the next chapter, Stephen's going to be stoned to death. In that tradition, all but one of the original disciples of Jesus are all executed. Paul's imprisoned multiple times on two accounts for two years. The last one was for about a year before he was executed. We're like, well, why wasn't there a miraculous rescue that time? Is God not able? No, we've seen him do that. Is God not willing? Well, he did it before. So is God unfair? Or did the apostles not know the code? Did they not have it sort of figured out? Or did the apostles not have enough faith? Or were they being punished by God for doing these things in Jesus' name? They didn't think any of those answers were the right one. They had a completely different take on it. They left rejoicing that they were worthy to suffer with and for Jesus. They had a completely sort of different point of view. Now I recognize that the context of their suffering and the way that they're being beaten for the gospel is very different than a lot of the suffering that we endure in life. When it's a diagnosis or a death of a loved one or a dream that falls apart and all of those kinds of things. There's some context difference here, but throughout the scriptures, throughout history, throughout Christian life, we see that there are times of healing and deliverance, and at times that there is times of suffering and imprisonment and death. And we're invited to hold them together and recognize it's a bit of a puzzle. It's a puzzle we can't solve. It's a mystery we can't fully explain, but instead something we're to learn to embrace. Pastor Brock gave it a sermon on a very similar idea on March 22nd, which was absolutely golden. If you missed that sermon, I encourage you to go back and listen to it because I'm revisiting several of those ideas today because I think it's really important, not just for the book of Acts, but for our own discipleship to Jesus. And this is, I think, where the multiverse may be helpful. Hang with me. If we come back around to this idea, what we're taught to believe as followers of Jesus that there are two real realities. There is this world, this age, and there is the world and the age to come. And what we believe is that with Jesus, the new world, the world to come, the age to come, the new creation, resurrection life has actually broken into this world. And we now live in this unique in-between where the two worlds overlap. Where we live both in this world and in the world to come. And we find that there is a dynamic tension in the middle of that, that we live in this world with all of its powers and all of its problems, which are very much a part of our lives. And we see the kingdom of God intersecting and interjecting and appearing in wonderful and beautiful and marvelous and extraordinary sort of ways. And whenever the kingdom of God shows up, we find there's healing in some capacities, healing our existence. Theologians have referred to this as that we live in the already but not yet. We live in the place where there are miracles and there are healings and there is suffering. And the two coexist. They live side by side with one another. So what do we do with those miracles? Maybe the best way to think about them is that they are signs. They are signs that the kingdom of God is appearing among us. They are signs, they are significant, they are meaningful, they are beautiful, but they are not the goal or the destination. Instead, they point beyond themselves and they are meant to fill us with the hope that we are getting closer. Or maybe in the case of the kingdom, fill us with the hope that God is ever drawing near. God's presence is making itself known among us. And when we see those signs, it's supposed to help us to endure suffering and loss and grief and death in this world. Help us to keep going because it reminds us that there is a greater world to come. Remind us that, oh yes, the kingdom of God is present, but it is not already fully here. But someday it will be. Someday this age will end, and we'll be fully in the age to come. And in the age to come, that line, everyone will be healed, will be fully true for everyone, everywhere, at all times. Because in that space, miracles will no longer be needed because everyone will be healed. In that space, we'll all have arrived at the place that God has intended for us. New Testament scholar Craig Keener puts it this way: he says this about miracles, about healing. He says they are a foretaste, a periodic reminder in this world, and a frequent one on the cutting edge of the kingdom, in the front line of evangelism. You notice how so often some of these things are accompanied in places where people do not know Jesus yet? And all of a sudden these things are sort of breaking out, and oftentimes, maybe even in our own lives, we saw maybe more of those things early on in our faith journey than we do now. I don't think it's because our faith has gotten weaker. Maybe it's gotten stronger. And there's been some other things that are going on in the midst of life, but on the front edge of the kingdom, this is why I think so often we hear reports coming back from Alpha retreats and other places of some of the miraculous things that God did. And you're like, yes, because it's his way of demonstrating that he is the way, the truth, and the life. So then the cutting edge, but there is on the cutting edge a periodic reminder in this world of God's promise of an entire world someday made new, where there will be no more pain, and the Lamb will wipe every tear from our eyes. And as a foretaste of the kingdom, miracles are an essential part of the story. Revealing the Lord's power, compassion and plan for his people. Revealing the Lord's power, compassion and plan for his people. In other words, when miracles do happen among us, they reveal to us, they remind us that we do have a God who is able. And when they do happen among us, it reveals that our God is compassionate, that he is willing. And when they do happen among us, it reminds us of his plan that he will, maybe today, maybe not today, but someday he will answer every single one of our prayers. Someday there will be resurrection. Someday everyone will be healed. This is the great promise of the gospel. So as we prepare to come to the table today, as we come once again to the table of Jesus, we're invited every week to come to the table in faith, meaning in trust. To draw near to the God who's drawn near to us, not for the sake of more certainty, but for more proximity. And trusting that in being close to Jesus, our faith, our trust in Him begins to grow. And even in coming, we're invited to ask. To come to the table and to ask boldly. This is what's going on in my life right now. To share that with one another and to pray bold prayers that Jesus might reveal himself. And after service, we have that moment where we invite, hey, anyone who needs prayer for anything to come forward and to receive prayer, to say, okay, maybe you're walking through something, maybe there is a diagnosis or disease or there's something that's going on. We want to just keep praying and keep trusting that maybe today, maybe not today, but someday that prayer will be answered in Jesus' name. And if it's today, we're going to rejoice greatly. And if it's not today, we are going to trust Jesus together and hold on to the hope of resurrection, of asking our Father in heaven to make himself known and trusting that someday we will know in full, but we only know in parts right now. And so we say this line oftentimes at the end of our sermons, glory be to the Father, to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit. Because as it was in the beginning, the kingdom of God fully present on earth, it is now. The kingdom of God is making its way throughout our lives and throughout the earth. And it will be forever. There will be a world without ends, the world to come. And we look forward to it with great hope and faith and trust today in Jesus' name. Amen.