Acts 3:1-10: The Lame Man at the Beautiful Gate

INTRODUCTION

The Israelites of old loved their beautiful Temple.

Psalm 122 begins:

I was glad when they said to me,

‘Let us go to the house of the Lord!’

And Psalm 84 begins:

How lovely is thy dwelling place,

O Lord of hosts!

My soul longs, yea, faints

for the courts of the Lord;

my heart and flesh sing for joy to the living God.

Jesus also loved the Temple. The only event mentioned in the gospels about Jesus’s growing up years is the story about how, when he was twelve years old, his parents took him to Jerusalem for a Passover festival. He got so absorbed in the goings-on at the Temple that he got lost from his parents.

And when his mother chided him for staying behind, he said, “Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” (Luke 2:48).

Jesus frequently prayed in the Temple, and he taught in the Temple.

After Jesus’s resurrection and ascension, we read that his disciples “returned to Jerusalem with great joy and were continually in the Temple blessing God” (Luke 24:50).

After Pentecost, the Temple was the main gathering place in Jerusalem for the followers of Jesus to gather for fellowship, prayer, and teaching.

The Temple was a gorgeous building. It was made of limestone, so white that it looked like a snow-capped mountain from a distance.

It was so richly decorated with gold that it was said that one could not look at it in the sunshine, it dazzled the eyes so.

Some of the finely-cut stones of Herod’s temple weighed 400 tons.

It was one of the marvels of the world.

I should mention that “going to the Temple” didn’t mean going into a building.

There was a building, but the building stood in the midst of a courtyard as big as six football fields.

This courtyard was surrounded by colonnaded porches where the people assembled for teaching and where they prayed. The entire complex—the courtyards with their colonnaded porticos and the sanctuary at its center were called “the Temple.”

Not long after Christ’s ascension into heaven and Pentecost—during the first days of excitement of the Jesus movement we read about a significant event:

We read about it in Acts 3:1-10:

Now Peter and John were going up to the temple at the hour of prayer, the ninth hour. And a man lame from birth was being carried, whom they laid daily at that gate of the temple which is called Beautiful to ask alms of those who entered the temple.

Seeing Peter and John about to go into the temple, he asked for alms.

And Peter directed his gaze at him, with John, and said, “Look at us.” And he fixed his attention upon them, expecting to receive something from them.

But Peter said, “I have no silver and gold, but I give you what I have; in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, walk.” And he took him by the right hand and raised him up; and immediately his feet and ankles were made strong.

And leaping up, he stood and walked and entered the temple with them, walking and leaping and praising God. And all the people saw him walking and praising God, and recognized him as the one who sat for alms at the Beautiful Gate of the temple; and they were filed with wonder and amazement at what had happened to him.

I. First, we’ll talk about the lame man.

A. This poor man had been lame from birth, and we learn in the next chapter that he was more than 40 years old.

Every day for years and years friends or family had carried him to the gate of the Temple where he spent his day begging.

This had been his routine dreary year after dreary year, for as long as he could remember.

This gate of the Temple was a good place for begging because when people are going to pray, they might be inclined to be generous. In Judaism, giving alms was a sacred duty. They might have supposed that if they showed mercy to others, God might be more inclined to show mercy to them.

The lame man was a fixture there. People had seen him week after week, month after month, year after year—some of them for all their lives—sitting there, begging. It’s not surprising that they were filled with wonder and amazement when he got up and started walking.

B. Notice that the lame man’s begging station was at the gate called “the Beautiful Gate” of the Temple.

Historians believe that this Beautiful Gate was the gate that led to the Middle Court of the Temple.

The visitor would enter the Temple complex via an underground stairway and find himself in the Outer Court, or Court of the Gentiles. This was where much of the activity took place. Rabbis taught here. People prayed here. It was a busy place.

It was in this big outer court that Jesus made a whip and drove out the sellers of animals and birds and the moneychangers.

Worshipers would go through the Beautiful Gate from this big outer court into a smaller middle court where they could watch the sacrifices being offered and hear the chanting of the Levites and the harps and trumpets.

Only Jews could go into this court to worship.

This lame man was a Jew, but he was excluded because he was a cripple.

The rule was that anyone who was lame, blind, deaf, or who had a mutilated face, or a hunchback or a dwarf could come into that holy courtyard.

Actually that Old Testament law only applied to the priests, but by Jesus’s time it had come to be applied to all who had such disabilities.

The reason for that was that—in spite of the book of Job—people were convinced that disabilities were caused by sin. These people were considered unworthy of worshiping with normal unblemished people.

So although the poor lame man sat year after year at the Beautiful Gate, he could never go inside to see the worship.

II. On this afternoon, Peter and John came to the Temple for evening prayer at the ninth hour—that’s 3 o’clock in the afternoon.

A. When Peter and John came by, the beggar asked them for alms.

Peter and John looked directly at the man, and Peter said, “Look at us: I have no silver or gold, but I give you what I have. In the name of Jesus of Nazareth, walk!” And he took him by the hand and raised him up.

Peter said, “Look at us” because he needed to get the man’s complete attention. Now the man was expecting something—that is the beginning of faith.

Then Peter said, “In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, walk.” And Peter took him by the hand and raised him up.

We see Peter’s faith when he told him to get up and walk.

We see the lame man’s faith when he let Peter take his hand and got up off the ground.

The formerly lame man felt his feet and ankles made strong.

He didn’t stand up gently and trembling, like we would expect of someone who had just recovered from a debilitating condition.

He leaped up, and stood and walked through the gate and entered the courtyard walking and leaping and praising God.

He, who had sat outside the gate for his whole life up to then—thinking he was forever barred from Temple worship—can now take part in the worship of the community of God and thank God for his salvation.

This man had received far more than simply healing in his body.

He had received the gift of eternal life.

We can imagine the stir this miracle caused. Everyone recognized the man they had seen every time they came to Temple worship.

The people were so amazed that they eagerly listened to Peter tell them the way of salvation through Jesus.

And the result of the miracle was that on that day more than 5000 believed in Christ and found salvation.

The enemies of the gospel attempted to silence Peter, but when they saw the healed man standing beside Peter and John, and they had nothing to say in opposition (4:14).

APPLICATION

Each miracle we read of in the New Testament has a deeper meaning for us.

I have two applications for us from this story.

First, the lame man represents every one of us, who from birth are helpless to save ourselves from our sin.

Our sin has crippled us.

Each of us is a spiritual cripple, a beggar before God—in need of the strength of God’s grace to live a life of holiness and blessedness. 

Each of us is “outside the gate.” And then Jesus comes to us and heals us and invites us to come into his Kingdom.

Did you know that “to heal” and “to save” is the same word in Greek? So when Jesus says, in the gospels, “Your faith has healed you,” it could also be translated, “Your faith has saved you.”

Just as Peter took the lame man’s hand and raised him up, so Jesus takes our hand and raises us up to salvation

By “salvation,” I mean the assurance of sins forgiven, friendship with God, and eternal life.

So that is my first lesson from this story—the miracle of salvation.

Jesus died for you and me to bring us to God.

He stands with his arms outstretched to welcome us home when he calls us.

But I see in this story another truth that is especially important to me.

I see in this story a parable of my future.

There will come a time—maybe not far off—all these aches and weaknesses are gone.

Jesus will take our hand and raise us up and lead us through the “Beautiful Gate.”

We will enter the Heavenly Temple and we will leap and walk and praise the Lord.