We're going to turn to uh the book of Acts, chapter three. And before we do, I just wanted to uh sort of ask you, you don't have to respond to this, but how often do you experience a day where you sort of wake up and grunt through the day? Um yeah, so we we do sometimes. We grunt through it. And whether we're in contracting, whether we're teaching, whether we're in the medical field, whether we're driving a truck, whatever it might be, um, raising a family on the home front or home alone, sometimes we just walk through the day. And it's not a bad thing, but the goal is not survival. The goal is not just to walk through life. This message this morning, as I was preparing for it, um, it ministered to me in a way that I hope it ministers to you. It reminded me, it convicted me, it inspired me, and it again began to transform the way that I was walking through my days. What's embedded in this message this morning will add vibrancy to your life. It'll change the way that you walk into the day and through the day, it'll change the way that you see and engage people. It'll help bring change and growth to you. It can honor God. This is really beautifully rich. And I've got to confess, I've probably read through this passage dozens of times in my life. It's hit me differently this time. It hit me in a way it was a God thing. It just opened my eyes, and um I'm actually smiling as I'm sharing this. It helped remind me of this incredible privilege I have to see and engage people, the privilege I have to be a blessing to the people in my life because of the love of God and God's love for people. And um, I've been excited about it. I've been trying to practice this increasingly over the days that I've been preparing for this message, and it um it's changed the way that I walk into situations, it's changed the way that I see and engage people, and I have a lot of room to grow, and I'm excited about that, and I hope you will be too. Returning to Acts chapter 3. This is the the church at this point has come to life. The Spirit of God has come down, it's indwelled his followers, the people have gone out. Thousands of people have now come to a saving faith in Jesus Christ. Kind of awesome. It's church is beginning to explode right in Jerusalem, where it started. And this is where we're picking up, as Peter and John, the early members of the church, are beginning to live it out and walk it out. So we pick up in verse one. It says, Now Peter and John were going up to the temple at the time of prayer at three in the afternoon. Now a man who was lame from birth was being carried to the temple gate called Beautiful, where he was put every day to beg from those going into the temple courts. And when Peter and John were about to, or excuse me, when he saw Peter and John about to enter, he asked them for money. I want to pause and put this into a little bit of context for you, because I want you to sort of crawl into this historical story. This literally happened, and I want you to appreciate what's going on here. So Peter and John, two of the original twelve apostles, there are thousands at this point, but these are two of the original apostles, were going up to the temple. And you might back up and go, well, time out here. I thought these were Christians. Shouldn't they be going to church? Well, remember, the church is not a place you go. The church is the called-out people of God. We are the church, not this building or any other building. But they were still connected very tightly to the Jewish temple and to the Jewish faith. These were born-again Jews. They had discovered the Messiah. They had come to a saving faith in Jesus. And now they're growing and they're still observing the things that God had called them to do as faithful Jews. They're going to temple to pray. And there were several times of prayer, 9 o'clock, 12 o'clock, 3 o'clock, as you move through the day, where people would head up to temple. This was the big time. This was the most popular time to go. You didn't have to wake up too early for it. But you could walk up toward the end of your day, and it was a time of sacrifice. They had a morning sacrifice, an evening sacrifice, and it just made that time of prayer more vibrant, I think, for the people that were going. Well, Peter and John were heading up to the temple as faithful Jews that had found the Messiah, that had come to life as followers of Jesus Christ. It's three o'clock in the afternoon, and as they're heading up, there was a man who was lame, and he was lame from birth. Now, if you're lame from birth, okay, you've never been able to walk, you are completely dependent on the love, generosity, and care of other people. Or you die. They take you from place to place, they feed you, they provide for you. You are 100% dependent on the love and care of other people. And this man at this point had been alive, had to be for decades at this point. This was not a child, lame from birth, and now you're dependent upon the generosity of other people. And what his friends and family members would do, they'd park him someplace where he could beg for money. Not a bad thing to do. You're asking other people to help support you. Where would you go if you had to beg for money? Into the middle of the forest where there's no people or to a place where there's a lot of traffic? Well, you'd go to where people are. That's typically why you see people that are asking for money on street corners, whether it's New York City or here in Kingston. You go to where there's people, where there's traffic. But smarter than that, you go to where people are going to be more prone to giving. And where would you be more prone to giving? Than going to temple, because you want to honor God. And Jews were called, they believed in their eyes, to do almsgiving, to give to the poor. It was one of their pillars of their faith. It still is today for many Jews. Like we're called to be generous, but this was a very explicit, specific step of obedience and worship that they would provide to God. So now you've got Peter and John, this crowd of people heading up to the temple, and this lame man parked at the one of the ten entrances to the temple. The temple had ten different gates to it. And we think of a gate. Like, why would we have a gate coming out there out of the playground to keep the kids from running into traffic? These were really big doors. So look at our doors. I'm not sure how tall they are, but let's call that seven feet tall. This gate was 75 feet tall. It was a big gate. This was one of the ten. The other nine were probably 60 feet tall. This gate was about 20% bigger than the other gates. It was the beautiful gate. And historians, archaeologists, theologians will debate it, but the overwhelming evidence here was it was the gate called the Nikor or Nikorn Gate. And it was called the Beautiful Gate. The other nine were not the ugly gates, coming into the big temple courts and temple areas. They were gates that were enormous, huge gates they were, and they were overlaid with gold and silver. Wow. Like we don't have that here. We're never going to have that here. Gold and silver overlaid gates. They weren't called beautiful gate. This one was called beautiful. It was made from Corinthian bronze. A bronze that would have been vibrantly just beautiful, inlaid, the decorative issues with it, but when the sun hit that, poof, it was breathtaking to them, to the point that they differentiated that from the other gates. It was also 20% bigger. It was so big, they believe it required probably 20 men, sorry, women, but 20 men at that time, that was their job, to open and close those gates. Massive gates, a beautiful, spectacular gate. It's the entrance to the temple, and there is the lame man. Now you've got pious Jews, people that are trying to be honoring to God and devout, and some of them probably trying to look good in the eyes of other people. And here's this man begging for money. That's the situation, totally dependent upon them. And Peter and John are walking up. He sees them. He sees them about to end to walk up to the temple. In the word that's used there for see, I don't, he sees them with understanding. There's something about these two guys that's different enough that he focused on them and asked them for money. But if you've ever experienced somebody typically begging for money, it is not uncommon for them to ask, but we don't typically get a whole lot of eye contact. He's had decades of asking people for money. He was a known entity, probably not a whole lot of relationship because he was lame, prohibited from entering the temple area because of the ritualistic rules that they had at the time. They had made a mess of them, by the way. Couldn't go into temple. Excluded from temple worship, this unclean guy outside the gates. And he sees Peter and John and, hey, please help. And he gets on with what he's doing. Well, Peter and John, they see him. And I love the way that they engage. Peter looks straight at him, and the word underneath that is he affixed his gaze. I mean, they focused in on him, as did John, and then Peter said, Look at us. Whoa. So he'd already turned his gaze away. Please give me money. And he's already looked away from them. Look at us. So the man gave them his attention, expecting to get something from them. Not a bad expectation. Hey, help me out. Hey, look at me. Pay attention. I'm going to engage. It's fascinating to me that the word he used there is a different word for look. It was not idone, it was bleppa. We've talked about that in other contexts. Look at me. Just look at me. You don't have to understand anything. Just look at me without understanding. And I did a head scratch about that, and I thought, what's that all about? Why would Peter and John say, look at us, but don't look at us to understand anything? Well, he wanted them to look at him because he wanted his attention not to see anything, he wanted him to listen. Take a look at what he says. Then Peter said, So this is all about what he's sharing with him. Silver or gold, I do not have, but what I do have I give you. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, walk. And taking him by the right hand, he helped him up. Miracle with a capital M. This guy had been lame from birth, decades in at this point. How many of you had trouble getting out of bed this morning? Okay. How many of you take Advil or relief? We don't move as well as we get older typically. You know, we need a crane someday to get us up. This guy hadn't moved in decades. His joints had been probably affixed. Muscles, ligaments, tendons atrophied. He didn't have strength, he didn't have mobility. Completely dependent. And Peter says, get up and do it in the name of Jesus Christ. Wow. And up he comes. And Peter does a precious thing. He doesn't just tell him to do that. He reaches down, he grabs a hold of him and makes contact with this person who is unclean in their eyes and helps them stand up. It's beautiful what Peter is doing at this point. Silver or gold, I don't have, but what I do have, I give to you. And he's bringing healing. He's doing it in the name of Jesus Christ. And we talk about the name of Christ a lot. We say it sometimes like abracadabra. In Jesus' name I pray. Amen. It means that you are praying with the authority and the power of the person that you're relating to. When we pray to the Father God, we are praying in the name of Jesus. That He is our purpose, He is our access to God. We're praying with the authority and person of Jesus Christ in that regard. It's not some abracadabra thing we stick at the end of a prayer. We're praying in faith because he is able. And in this case, they're praying in accordance with God's will, and God brought the healing. God still heals today in response to prayer. I don't believe that any individual has a gift of healing per se, but we can pray with faith, and God brings healing, and we're called to trust. He doesn't always heal in the way that we want and when we want, but he does heal. So we're called to pray, we're called to trust, we're called to give him glory no matter what. But in this case, as the church is expanding and the apostles are effectively being credentialed in the eyes of the community, that these are these are God's men, and what they're sharing is a word from God. He brought this healing and he did it in a way that was spectacular because everybody saw this guy get up, suddenly, stand up, and begin to move and jump. Take a look at what it says. Instantly the man's feet and ankles became strong. He jumped to his feet and he began to walk. And then he went with them into the temple courts, walking and jumping. Whoa, man, I had to blow people's minds. Lame, walking, jumping. We'll see him in just a minute, praising God. It is an absolute miracle of God, done in God's strength and for God's glory. He blessed that man, but in doing it, he clearly was demonstrating to the people in the name of Jesus, well, that means Jesus is alive. We serve a risen Lord, a living God. So people go out in the name of our presidents, they go out as ambassadors from our country. You don't go out in the name of somebody who's dead. They're toast, they're already out of the game. You go out in the authority in the name of somebody who's living and has the power and the stature and the authority and all the things that it takes. This is in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ that this healing happened. It's bringing glory and honor to God. It was a blessing to the man and a powerful, powerful witness to the people. I love what Peter's doing with this. He is loving this person, this untouchable person who would have been an irritant to many people. He saw him and he chose to be a blessing. He chose to engage him. And he's going to go on in just a minute, and I want to read to you what he says on the back side of this, but he's sharing a pretty powerful gospel message on the back side of this. And before he shared the gospel message, he met this man's physical needs. He asked for money, he met a physical need, which was an even greater blessing than giving him money, and he's about to share a spiritual gift as well. As you and I engage people in this world, it's good to share with the love of Jesus Christ. It is. It's good to share that we are saved by grace through faith in Jesus. It is great to do that. But generally, people need to know that you care before they care what you know. To engage them with love and tenderness, not as a project and not manipulatively, but they need to know that you care about them. We don't just go and bang somebody over the head with the Bible. That's not what he calls us to do. We're called to go love people and try to lead them to a saving faith in Jesus Christ. Peter and John are modeling this in a really beautiful way for us as we move through this. Take a look at the results of this as we move through it. When all the people saw him walking and praising God, and he's praising God at the end of verse 9, excuse me, verse 8, they recognized him as the same man who used to sit begging at the temple gate called beautiful, and they were filled with wonder and amazement at what had happened to him. I love it. Wonder and amazement. It's getting their attention, they're wondering what's going on. And then Peter, Peter blesses them with something far more important than a miracle, far more important than a physical healing to this guy. He starts sharing spiritual life. And I want to read this to you. And I want you to listen to this. I'd like you to soak it up as though you were sitting there hearing it for the first time. As a Jew who tried to be, or a person today, right with God because of their conduct, right with God because of a ritual they had gone through, or right with God because of their identification with the church or temple. Peter is speaking life. This man in verse 11, when he clung to Peter and John, all the people, utterly astounded, ran together to them in the portico called Solomon's. And when Peter saw it, he addressed the people. But you denied the holy and righteous one and asked for a murderer to be granted to you. And you killed the author of life, whom God raised from the dead. To this we are witnesses. And by his name, so he's giving glory to God, he's doing the work and the power of God, and his name, by faith in his name, has made this man strong, whom you see and know. And the faith that is through Jesus has given the man this perfect health and the presence of you all. All glory being given to God. And now, brothers, I know that you acted in ignorance, as did your rulers, but what God foretold by the mouth of all the prophets, that his Christ would suffer, he thus fulfilled. Repent, therefore, and turn back that your sins may be blotted out. I love that. He isn't beating around the bush. What he's saying is repent. Remember, turn. Turn to God. It's a change of direction, orientation, it's a change of thinking. That your sins may be blotted out. He has paid the penalty for our sin. He wipes the sin out from us as far as the east is from the west and doesn't hold it against us as a child of God. May your sins be blotted out, and I love this, that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, that he may send the Christ appointed for you, Jesus, whom heaven must receive until the time for restoring all things about which God spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets long ago. Moses said, The Lord God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your brothers. You shall listen to him in whatever he tells you. And it shall be that every soul who does not listen to that prophet shall be destroyed from the people. Ouch. And all the prophets who have spoken from Samuel and those who came after him also proclaimed these days. You are the sons of the prophets, and in the covenant that God made with your fathers, saying to Abraham, In your offspring shall all the families of the earth be blessed. God, having raised up his servant, sent him first to you to bless you by turning every one of you from your wickedness. Peter healed this guy. Spectacular miracle in front of a whole bunch of people heading to and in the temple area. The man's response to that was to get up and enjoy this newfound health that he had, but he praised God. He just reflexively and sincerely and passionately is praising God in the midst of all the people. And Peter sees that and he could have called it a day, like, woo-hoo, that was awesome. But he goes on and he takes advantage of that opportunity to share the most important thing, which is the invitation that God has to turn to him for the life and forgiveness that he offers. He doesn't miss the opportunity. I love what he's doing. This isn't just history, church. This is about you and this is about me today. And I don't want you to miss that. As we approach, um, we're gonna have a birthday party here in July, by the way. Crosspoint's gonna be 20 years old in July, so we're gonna have some cake. I'm not sure we're gonna have candles, but we're gonna have a cake. And I looked back on the history of the church here, and I thought, well, thank you, Lord, for the growth that we have experienced. And I don't mean numerically, I mean spiritually. People coming to a saving faith in Christ, growing, reproducing, blessing, serving. You have been and you are an incredibly wonderful church. Imperfect, and probably imperfect in ways I don't fully appreciate, but you are a you're a blessing to me, to this community, and to one another, and I want to thank you for who you are. As I look back on Cross Point and the history since we started here, and I was reading through this chapter over and over again over the last couple weeks, I started smiling, thinking a lot of the sayings we have here at Crosspoint, and we have four or five of them that have become sort of my vocabulary as we've moved through life here as a church, they flow out of this. One of the first sermons we did here was titled Be a Blessing. Look what Peter did for this man. He blessed him. He saw him. And I looked at that and I thought, shoot, how many people do I pass every day, every week, as I go about my life? I pass dozens of people, probably hundreds of people over the course of a week as I drive about and through the community and engage in different areas of life. How often do I really see the people that are there? How often do you see the people around you? And I don't mean that for guilt. I mean that to me it was a convicting sense of I got an opportunity in front of me and I want to embrace it. I want to increasingly, I'll never be perfect at this, and neither will you. I want to see the people in my life as I move through life. And to do that, I have to slow down. I have to slow down, not being on task and being in the moment, and I need to discipline myself to be observant, to look at the people, to look for people, and to listen to them, to observe what's going on in their lives and to care enough to engage. Just to slow the pace down and to see and engage people. And over the last couple of weeks, as I've been trying to put this into practice more and more, it has blessed my socks off. That is one of my theological terms, by the way. It has blessed my socks off as I've slowed down, and not every time, but increasingly taking advantage of the moments to stop what I was doing and just to be in the moment with somebody and to be present and to listen and to look for opportunities to bless. And every single time it has lifted me up. I trust that it's been a blessing to people, but to be a blessing. One of the things you'll also hear me say over and over and over again, because I believe it to my core. Is that you and I we make a difference. You matter. You matter more than we can get our little heads around. You have spiritual, eternal significance because of God. You have the ability, unlike any other aspect of creation, to choose to worship Him. You have the ability to be a blessing to people, to lead them closer and closer to Christ. You matter. And I say it a lot because I want you to get it and I want you to own it and I want you to share this with other people. Every single one of you, here in person, every one of you that are watching from the comfort of your home, every one of you is in a better position than anybody else on this planet to lead certain people closer to Jesus. And it doesn't mean that you need to be the one to share the gospel, but you are in a better position than anybody in the lives of certain people to lead them closer, to share about the difference that He's made in your life, to listen to them, to pray for them, to introduce them to other followers of Christ, to invite them to come to church, or to give them some information that they can look at and consider. You make a difference. You matter. Your life has incredible value and incredible purpose. And one of the other things that we talk about a lot is that as we walk through life, we want to walk through it in his strength and for his glory. It's exactly what Peter did. He didn't do the miracle, he did this in the name of Jesus Christ, in the power of God for the glory of God. I am a poster child for walking through life in my strength. I'm able to do a bunch of different things. I can do a lot of it reflexively. If I don't slow down and recognize my dependency upon Christ and walk through my days and my events and engagements, aware of him, dependent upon him. I mean, I miss a lot of opportunity. I miss an opportunity to honor God and bless people, but the things I do in my strength, the things that you do in your strength, the things that look good, feel good, maybe even are good, they don't matter to God. They don't matter to God. What matters to him is as you walk through life with him and for him, dependent upon him, that brings glory and honor to God. That pleases him, that blesses him, and it blesses you in his strength and for his glory. I say it a lot, IH S F H G, I need to be reminded of it. I think we all do as we move through life. And one of the last sayings of the few that we have is to partner up. Don't do life as a lone ranger. Don't walk through life on your own. Walk through life engaging with other people. Peter and John were going to temple. This isn't prescriptive, it's descriptive in this case. You don't have to do everything with somebody else. But when you're serving with other people, there's all sorts of opportunities and blessings that come out of that. You'll do things with somebody else that you wouldn't do on your own. You'll be better and more effective together, typically, as you're serving or with other people. There's an opportunity to help one another grow. You could pray for one another, you could hold each other accountable, you can support one another, you can correct one another. But when you partner up with somebody, and there's a lot of different ways of doing that, we tend to grow farther, faster, and we tend to have a greater impact. There's a lot that flows out of this chapter, chapter three in the book of Acts that's very, very applicable to you and to me. What I don't want to do is go way on with this and become dilutive. What I want to do is back up. I want to sort of gain elevation, look down on this from 30,000 feet, and look at what's going on here. I want to encourage you this morning to be a blessing. Okay? To be a blessing, to begin to move through life increasingly, looking for opportunities to be a blessing to other people. Because it's honoring to God, it'll bless other people, and it certainly blesses you to be a blessing and to begin to put this into practice as you walk through it. We are target rich for applying this. I mean, our lives are littered with opportunities. You want to do something weird? Just really discreetly, just glance to the left or the right or look around the room. Look around the room. Everybody you see is somebody that you could bless. Your life is filled with people, and they need you. They need you to pray for them, they need you to get to know them, they need you to encourage them, to appreciate them, to thank them, to support them. We need one another. And as you engage with other people and get out of your comfort zones in doing this, whether it's getting to know people or serving them or blessing them or listening to them, spending time with them, man, it brings, put gas in your tank. It will bless you, it will honor God. I'm not doing this as a commercial, but I want to I want to hang some flesh on the bones of this to give you some ideas of things that can be done. Any of you can push a lawnmower, a self-propelled lawnmower. We need somebody that needs help. Okay, we've got somebody coming home from the hospital. Uh Craig Dowdy will be coming home on Tuesday, I hope, after his heart surgery. We've had somebody stepping in for the last several weeks mowing a lawn, but um, that's not going to be sustainable for them. If you could help with that, it's kind of hilly. House sits here and there's hills above it and below it. I've got to work on my hill. There we go. It would be really helpful. We have people that um that need help with gardening, that aren't physically able to help with their gardening, just weeding garden beds. We have people that have asked for help helping with their flower beds. We have somebody that was just transferred to an assisted living facility that needs somebody to help care for their home. The Office of the Aging reached out this week, and we have a neat relationship with them where they don't have the resources to help people, they call us because they know that we have a heart to respond. They've got a 90-year-old out here in Hurley that needs help with the lawn. Um she's Jewish, um, doesn't have any money, and the people that have been helping her are no longer able to help. And she needs somebody to come alongside and just help with the house. The Red Cross called, and Ulstercor called this week and said, could we help with people on the backside of a fire? You have earned a reputation and it's a good one as a church that cares and a church that responds. And I tell people that we we can't guarantee the response, but I can guarantee that we'll try. So when they call, we do our best to lift up these opportunities. If you're willing to explore those opportunities and help, if you just want to get in the game and are looking for somebody to be a blessing to, call. I love connecting people with other people. That's just one of the things I love doing. Um they can help grow together, serve one another. Your neighbors in your life, bless them. Bake them cookies, take them ice cream, make them a cake, stop by and say hello. Listen to people, ask them how you could pray for them. That'll blow their circuits. Let them know that you love to pray. I really enjoy praying and be sincere about this. Is there anything I could pray for for you? And then be sincere and be diligent in praying for them. And then go ahead and follow up in time to ask how things are going. But I want to encourage you this morning to be a blessing, to get in the game because you matter, and you matter forever. This isn't just about proving somebody's life today. This is about leading people closer to our God who can literally make the difference between heaven and hell forever. So when you stand up today, after we're dismissed, I want you to realize that before you go out that door, before you quite frankly even exit the aisles that you're in, you've got opportunities to engage people, to notice people, to start practicing this, to encourage one another. And I want to encourage you to take the time to do that. And I also want to encourage you to do something. I think we did this about nine months ago, and um, I'm smiling as I say it. It was a blessing and a curse, but it was mostly a blessing. I want you to blow up my phone today. Okay? I want you to blow up my phone. For those of you that are using cell phones, have an emoji. After you've blessed somebody, just send me a thumbs up. Seriously, if you've taken the time today to bless somebody, send me a thumbs up. It'll bless me. It would encourage me, it would let me know that somebody was listening and putting this into practice, and it helps focus you on. I want to look for opportunities. The crew that was here at 8 30 today, they had fun with this before they left. The people that hung out in here afterwards, the people that hung out in Fellowship Hall, and on the way out the door, hey, I got some thumbs up coming to you. Have fun with this. This is not duty, this is not burden. This brings life to life, and glory to God for the privilege and the opportunity we have. Be a blessing. Let me ask if you would to join me in prayer. I'm going to ask for God, more importantly than me, to speak this into your life. So, Father, I um there I go again. Um, Lord, your name and these words roll off my tongue way too easily. So I just want to acknowledge um you as our God, as the one true living God. I pray that um, Lord, that you would speak this truth into each of our lives in a way that helps us to get it and to apply it, Lord, to respond in a way that honors you and brings blessing to us. Lord, I thank you for each person who's taken the time to come here and connect. And I pray that you would minister to each one of us, God, in a very tangible way this morning. Lord, please open our eyes. Please expand our hearts, Lord, that we could see and engage the people in this world around us. And I pray that we would start today. And with each act of obedience that we take, God, as we we engage people, I pray that you would receive it, Lord, as an act of worship. I pray that it would honor you and strengthen us. And um, and Lord, that you'd help us to do it again and again and again. And as we turn back to you now, Lord, in worship, I pray that we would do it as an incredibly thankful and humble people. In Jesus' name. Amen.