Please help me understand Acts 3:7-17.
Acts chapter 3 begins with Peter and John healing a lame man in verses 1-11 and then ends with Peter’s great sermon on the person of Christ and the sin and responsibility of Israel in verses 12-26.
We find the lame man sitting outside the Temple under the gate called ‘Beautiful’. He was a beggar who had been lame since his birth. Let’s also read of this man in Acts 4:22, “For the man was above forty years old, on whom this miracle of healing was shewed.” Since he was born, this man now 40 years old had not been able to walk and had turned to a life of a beggar, depending on the goodness and pity of others to supply his needs. He looked up to Peter and John and asked for alms, but received something far greater than he could even think to ask. He was healed! Acts 3:6 tells us, “Then Peter said, Silver and gold have I none; but such as I have give I thee: In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth rise up and walk.” What Peter did not have was money. What he did have was the power of God resting on him. So, invoking the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, he raised this lame man up…making him whole for the first time in his life. As Peter took him by the hand, this man leaped up and ran into the temple. He was walking, leaping, and most importantly, he was PRAISING GOD.
This lame man is a type, or analogy, of the moral condition of the nation of Israel. Israel, with all its continuing religious ceremonies was lame, and helpless to do anything about it. Even as we find this man outside the temple with no strength to enter, even so Israel was ‘outside’ of the mind and will of God. They had rejected the Lord Jesus as their Messiah and were now helpless and hopeless before the Lord. When this man was healed, he was able to walk and leap and he entered the temple as a worshipper of God! This incredible miracle was evidence to the unbelieving nation that Jesus, whom they had rejected and crucified, is truly their Messiah and King. It was a proof that the rejected One, who had died on a cross and had been buried, is now living in Glory as the Lord Himself said in Revelation 1:18, “I am he that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore…”, and that God’s almighty power had been revealed in answer to that name above every name, the Lord Jesus Christ.
The miracle also signified that the promised kingdom was once more offered to the nation. Concerning that kingdom, when it comes, it is written in Isaiah 35:6 that “the lame man shall leap as an hart.” But the lame man, so wonderfully healed, leaping and praising God, is likewise a picture of what the nation will be in a future day, when they will look upon Him whom they have pierced (See Zec 12:10). We also read in Isaiah 35:10 of that future day, “And the ransomed of the LORD shall return, and come to Zion with songs and everlasting joy upon their heads: they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.”
Peter, in the rest of this chapter, uses this miracle to point the nation of Israel to the Lord Jesus, promising them that if they would repent of their rejection and crucifixion of the Lord that He would return and establish His kingdom at that time. Peter says in Acts 3:19-20, “Repent ye therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, when the times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord; And he shall send Jesus Christ, which before was preached unto you.” I encourage you to read this entire chapter. We must understand that Peter’s message was exclusively to the nation of Israel. Sadly enough, they continued to reject the Lord Jesus. The Lord’s promise of a restored Israel will still be fulfilled in a future day, after the ‘times of the Gentiles’ are completed. (196.8)