"Get Up!"
Notes
Transcript
Now as Peter went here and there among them all, he came down also to the saints who lived at Lydda. There he found a man named Aeneas, bedridden for eight years, who was paralyzed. And Peter said to him, “Aeneas, Jesus Christ heals you; rise and make your bed.” And immediately he rose. And all the residents of Lydda and Sharon saw him, and they turned to the Lord.
Now there was in Joppa a disciple named Tabitha, which, translated, means Dorcas. She was full of good works and acts of charity. In those days she became ill and died, and when they had washed her, they laid her in an upper room. Since Lydda was near Joppa, the disciples, hearing that Peter was there, sent two men to him, urging him, “Please come to us without delay.” So Peter rose and went with them. And when he arrived, they took him to the upper room. All the widows stood beside him weeping and showing tunics and other garments that Dorcas made while she was with them. But Peter put them all outside, and knelt down and prayed; and turning to the body he said, “Tabitha, arise.” And she opened her eyes, and when she saw Peter she sat up. And he gave her his hand and raised her up. Then, calling the saints and widows, he presented her alive. And it became known throughout all Joppa, and many believed in the Lord. And he stayed in Joppa for many days with one Simon, a tanner.
We’re returning today to our series through the book of Acts. We’re picking up where we left off back in September. You may remember we were hearing about Saul’s conversion. Saul was a Jew, both by ethnicity and religion. He was a Pharisee, a religious leader, which led to his persecuting Christians. But Jesus appeared to him in a vision, while he was on his way to Damascus, and brought him to faith and was equipping him to spread the gospel in the years ahead.
This last part of chapter 9, though, brings us back to another well-known figure in the early church, Peter. He was one of Jesus’ 12 disciples; in fact, one of his closest disciples. We’ve heard him speak to the disciples, who were now called apostles, and to crowds. Peter had healed a lame man and others, he had been imprisoned multiple times, and he had rebuked people in sin.
We’re picking up his ministry after he had left Jerusalem and was preaching elsewhere. We’re going to hear what happened mainly in 2 cities. Jerusalem is the yellow star on this map. The first city in our passage is Lydda, the red star, to the west northwest of Jerusalem. Then Peter will be brought a little further to the northwest, to Joppa, the green star. Joppa was on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea. If it sounds familiar, it may be because that was where Jonah had tried to sail from to avoid going to Nineveh. That’s where we’re at today.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, I confess that I fell asleep long before midnight on Wednesday morning. Even being an hour ahead in Michigan, I missed watching the ball drop and seeing all the confetti blanket Times Square. And yet when I woke up and got out of bed, it was still the first day of the new year regardless of my sleep schedule. I wasn’t too disappointed.
Here we are on the first Sunday of 2020, a new year, a new decade. Perhaps some of you have made resolutions of new or renewed practices that you hope to remain committed to. Maybe there’s a goal or goals that you’re hoping to accomplish throughout this year. Some of these can be good and beneficial for us. To lose weight, to eat healthier, to exercise and relax more can all be good for multiple facets of our health. To more intentionally commit ourselves to those who we’re in relationship with, to spend more time with family—those are beneficial practices of love. To spend more time in prayer and devotions and study of God’s Word, to talk to others about our faith, to commit to a group in church or our community—all of that can help us grow as disciples.
But I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that we live in a society that often places greater significance and greater value on new things. It’s not always about better quality or how things should be, but simply not doing the same old thing, not trusting the way things have been done in the past is right or correct—to many, what’s new is assumed to always be better. Sometimes new things are better—I like new TVs compared to old, a newer truck rather than a rusted out clunker, a computer with fast wireless internet and Bible software with access to thousands of resources rather than writing everything by hand or going to a library or waiting for a book to be shipped every time I want to study something new. New things can be better, but not always or necessarily.
As believers, we turn to an old story, to an ancient truth, to these words which were recorded and compiled thousands of years ago and have had to be translated into our language and other peoples’ languages in order to be read and comprehended today. We claim a God and Savior who has always existed, who no one and nothing can replace. We believe in the same God that the believing Israelites worshiped. We believe in the same God that Peter and Paul and the Jews and Gentiles of the early church were seeking. The gospel, the good news, the reason for our hope and who we trust in is the same today as it was yesterday, as it was last year, as it always has been and always will be. As we look at our passage this morning, we’re looking for something old and something new—and no, I don’t plan to also find something borrowed, something blue.
Let’s begin by looking for something old. We hear about these 2 people. Aeneas, a man who apparently had something happen that paralyzed him. Because of his condition, he was bedridden; he could not get up. This was a man who spent his minutes, his hours, his days, up to 8 years at this point, not being able to move himself. That wasn’t how he expected his life to go; it likely wasn’t an easy or enjoyable way to live. Then there’s Tabitha, or Dorcas—if you’ve wondered why some churches have these kind of strange named women’s societies—this is it. Dorcas was a woman known for her good will, her service to the poor—we’re told she was able to make clothes. And she was loved. Rather than a long-drawn out condition, it seems rather quick, “she became sick and died.” Those who knew her mourned her passing, likely grieved by how sudden it was, but they also mourned the loss of her presence showing love to others.
The something old that we’re looking for this morning is the life-taking nature and impact of sin. No matter what period of history a person is living in, from the days of Cain’s murdering Abel to the loss of the first child conceived by David and Bathsheba to the days of Hitler and the Nazis’ genocide to our own day witnessing a loved one battle a chronic illness while getting weaker and weaker or the sudden tragic death of a friend in a vehicle accident—sin has been present. It’s because sin is present that life has been taken, and we might even go so far as to say life is mocked.
If we go back to the Garden of Eden, to Genesis 2 verses 16 and 17, we read, “And the Lord God commanded the man, ‘You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die.’” That is what God said to Adam, and Eve came to know it as well. When we read those words, we can’t just think about the action of eating. We must consider the implications of that action. God was essentially saying, “Obey me, honor me, by eating from all the other trees but this one. However, if you choose to disobey me, to turn against me, for your pleasure, for your satisfaction, the consequence of your choice will be death.” The consequence, of course, was also pain and toil and hardship, as we read in the curses of Genesis 3. Once sin was introduced into creation, by the created ones, the created ones—us, humans, cannot get rid of it or escape it on our own.
As we think about our lives, our pains, our afflictions, our struggles and temptations, even annoyances—if we think more broadly of troubles in the world, of people acting in senseless ways, persecuting, abusing, violating, harming, as we think of suffering in starvation or the devastation of natural disasters—most people are looking for a way out, for a way to get rid of all this. It’d be great to have a stress-free, pain-free, suffering-free, guaranteed-easy and only prosperous life for ourselves and for everyone we know and love and encounter, wouldn’t it? “God, why did you let Aeneas be and remain paralyzed? Why’d you even let Dorcas get sick?” The answer for why these things are present is not God’s fault. It’s rooted in the consequence of humanity’s sin.
That is what every account in Acts and in the rest of Scripture regarding pain and sorrow, disability and death goes back to. Sin and its impact shortens, it hinders, it disables that which God created us for and what created for us. Sin is the something old that shows up all throughout human history, and which ultimately, we’d like to see gone.
And yet there’s also something new in our passage, too. We see and hear the words, “Get up!” repeated. To this paralyzed man, Peter says, “‘Aeneas, Jesus Christ heals you. Get up and take care of your mat.’ Immediately Aeneas got up.” When Peter was visited by these two men urging him to come with them, the NIV sums it up that he “went with them.” That’s what he did, but the original Greek tells us that he literally got up and went with them. When we get to the dead woman, Peter sent all the mourners “out of the room; then he got down on his knees and prayed. Turning toward the dead woman, he said, ‘Tabitha, get up.’” When she came back to life, “She opened her eyes…sat up. [Peter] took her by the hand and helped her [get up] to her feet. Then he called the believers and the widows and presented her to them alive.”
Five times in this passage we find a form of the Greek word, a-nie-ste-me. Those five occurrences are the underlined parts on the screen. It’s a common word, used 108 times in the New Testament, and it’s most often referring to someone in the physical act of getting up, whether that’s standing up, whether that’s waking up. Yet what we see particularly with Tabitha is that it’s also used in reference to resurrection. It’s used several times in the gospels referring to Jesus rising from the dead as well as the promise of believers rising from the dead when Christ returns.
Getting up to stand is not something new. Miraculous healings aren’t new; we’ve seen those before in the book of Acts. The resurrection of Jesus isn’t necessarily something new. No, the new that we can see on display is that Jesus is able to give new life to that which is dead and unable to give life to itself. I said earlier that new things aren’t always or necessarily better than old things. But when Jesus is the one providing the new, we can be confident that the new is better.
Eight years is long enough to have a disability sink in. It’s long enough to be discouraged, to lose hope, to know 99.9% that this will be your future. Aeneas couldn’t fix his paralysis, and no one else had been able to either. Yet now he heard those words, “Jesus Christ heals you.” We’re not told here as we are in other places, “Your faith has healed you.” We don’t know the spiritual state of Aeneas, but you can be sure that his life was renewed on this day! Going forward, being told to get up changed everything for him.
Tabitha had died. Again, we don’t know certain details like how long she was dead. It was long enough for them to wash her body and place her in this room. Long enough for these men to travel to and from Joppa, between 20- and 25-miles roundtrip. It was long enough for Peter to arrive and be present with the widows. Tabitha hadn’t just stopped breathing for a few seconds or minutes—she was dead. But after Peter prayed, now she was alive. We don’t know what she experienced of death, but she was brought back to life even temporarily for a purpose.
The point needs to be made, there are times and there are people obviously who God did not and has not healed, who have not been brought back to life. God works according to his plans, his purposes, and his glory. But Jesus is fully able to give new life to that which is dead and unable to give life to itself. We can have that miraculous hope for our loved ones going through medical crises. But this also speaks to the hope of spiritual new life that he alone is able to provide. The physical bodies of believers are a shadow of who and what we are, what we have been created to be, and what we will one day be redeemed and restored to. If God can occasionally repair and resurrect the shadow—can’t he give new life in full to whoever he pleases?
With that in mind we close with this point: in the new year, place your life, your trust, your hope, your seeking something new in the One who is true. That One is the one true God, the one who came in the flesh as Jesus. Hear the impacts of these two healings one more time. Verse 35, “All those who lived in Lydda and Sharon saw him.” They saw Aeneas, the walking man who hadn’t walked for 8 years. They saw him “and turned to the Lord.” What about Tabitha? It wasn’t just the two men who had gotten Peter, it wasn’t just the widows in that upstairs room, who knew what happened. No, “This became known all over Joppa, and many people believed in the Lord.”
Scripture doesn’t say, “They turned to Aeneas” or “to Peter.” It doesn’t say, “Many people believed in Tabitha” or “in Peter.” No, they turned to and believed in the Lord. What a miraculous sign for all who had witnessed and experienced this, including Peter—another testimony that Jesus really does heal, that he has power over all of creation, even over disability and death. We’re told at least in Lydda, that Peter went there “to visit the saints.” These were places where there were already Christians, but the kingdom of God, Christ’s church, continued to grow there. The only one who deserves credit for more people turning to the Lord is God. The reality of his existence, his mercy in Jesus Christ, his redemption was becoming clear and it was being accepted in faith.
So, I’ll ask this question for us, “Where will God work bringing new life to dead people in 2020?” Where will he tell someone to “Get up!” Whether it is evident in physical healings or even resurrections, whether it’s drawing people close to him who put aside faith earlier in life, whether it’s drawing completely new believers—where will God do this kind of work in the year ahead? The truth and reality are we don’t know for certain. I can’t claim to have had a vision in which God told me where exactly he is planning to do such things.
But would you resolve to pray that he would do it here? Would you pray that God would bring new life to dead people in and through Baldwin Christian Reformed Church and we its members? Would you pray that he would do this in and through the other churches in our area, through Christians and churches and ministries throughout the world? Would you pray that God would equip us by the Holy Spirit to minister faithfully regarding the old news that Jesus alone can save? May God’s will be done on earth as it is in heaven, may it be done here, may it be done through us, and may each of us being able and willing to say, let it be done through me for God’s glory. Amen.