Silver & Gold Have I None

SERMON: 2010-01-24--ac1041--silver-gold-have-i-none SOURCE DURATION: 00:40:26.000 PROPOSED CUTS: 1 CONFIDENCE: 0.95 APPROVED: false REASON: Candidates 0, 1, and 2 contain prayer and benediction material, which are considered part of the sermon's closing structure. Candidate 3 marks a clear transition into structured congregational singing (a hymn or call to worship), signaling the end of the spoken sermon content. Acoustic segmentation found sustained music at the end edge and moved the boundary to the adjacent transcript segment. ACOUSTIC EVIDENCE: available ACOUSTIC MUSIC INTERVALS: 00:37:19.020-00:40:24.440 ACOUSTIC SPEECH OVERLAP: yes ACOUSTIC BOUNDARIES APPLIED: end Inline CUT markers identify each proposed audio boundary after the relevant word. --- ORIGINAL TRANSCRIPT WITH PROPOSED CUTS MARKED --- Well, whenever I read this story here in Acts chapter 3, how Peter and John were instrumental in curing the crippled beggar at the temple gate called "Beautiful", I'm reminded of another story. The story is told of Thomas Aquinas, the great medieval theologian, that on his first visit to the Vatican, he was being given a guided tour by the then Pope, Pope Innocent II. And as the tour went on, they looked at all the ornate buildings, they examined the vast art collection at the Vatican and the overflowing treasury, and at one point the Pope leaned over towards Thomas Aquinas, a little bit embarrassed. He said, "I guess we can say with St. Peter, silver or gold have I none." And quick as a whip, Thomas Aquinas responded dryly, he said, "And neither can we say in the name of Jesus of Nazareth, rise up and walk." I love that story. I love that story because it encapsulates an incredibly powerful spiritual lesson. When it comes to dealing with the brokenness in the world, and remember we talked last week about being missional, going out there, making a difference. When it comes to dealing with the brokenness in the world, our resources are not of a worldly nature, they are of a spiritual nature through union with Christ. Listen again to how Peter puts it, he says, "Silver or gold have I none, but what I have I give you in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, walk." And a good many years later, the Apostle Paul put it this way, he said, "For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world, on the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. If we are to make a difference for God in the world, it takes more than human resources, it takes the divine power of God." And that's what this story illustrates, I believe. And as we look at it together this morning, allow me to make a couple of observations. First of all, the man in the story is crippled. Listen again to verse two, "Now a man crippled from birth was being carried to the temple gate called Beautifau." Now to be crippled, as I'm sure you know, is to have lost the full use of your legs, maybe paralyzed, maybe broken. We know this man in this story cannot walk at all because we're told that he needed people to carry him every day to the temple gate where he sat to beg. We don't use the word crippled much in this day and age, it's not politically correct. We talk rather about disability, and disability is a good word because it covers a much broader range of physical or emotional or spiritual problems. But regardless of the word that you use to describe this man's condition, here is a man where a part of his being, in this case his body, or his legs, or his ankles, were not working properly. And therein lies an important lesson, I think, for each one of us. Because we know from scripture that when God created us, he created us body, soul and spirit so that we've been designed to fulfill the purposes of God, diagrammatically we can represent it this way. With our spirits, we are to have communion with God. With our soul, or our mind, or our consciousness, we are to have relationship with each other. And then with our body, we have the skills to interface with the world. And if you look originally at the story of Adam and Eve in their days before the fall, they functioned on all cylinders, everything was working. Enter the fall. And ever since the fall, our wholeness has been compromised. And for some people, like the man in this story, his body was compromised. It didn't work the way that it should work. For some of us, it's our soul that is compromised, our emotions, our intellect. We can't think clearly or we are afraid to give love or to receive love for still other people probably in some significant way for all of us. Spiritually we're compromised. We can't really tune into God by nature apart from Jesus, we tune into the powers of darkness. And we're not always spiritually sensitive to the environment that is around us. We're often deaf, dumb, and blind. And of course for some people, it's worse than for others. They are bogged down bodily and spiritually and also emotionally. In one way or another, if truth be known, outside of Christ as a result of Adam and Eve's sin and our own sin, we're all crippled in some way. I mean look at your own life. Look at the places in your own life where you know you're not living up to your full potential. You're not being what you know in your heart of hearts God has designed for you to be. We're all crippled one way or the other. Now why is that important? Because when you get to the ministry of Jesus in the gospels, and when you get to the ministry of the apostles in the book of Acts, and you see the miracles of healing they accomplish, I don't know if you've ever noticed this, but they're almost all healings of restoration. That is to say the lame walk, the blind see, the deaf hear, the emotionally deprived get their hearts filled with love. Those who are lonely, incapable of living in this world receive the grace to be rooted and anchored in God's love. Hold on to that because faith flows from understanding the heart of God. God weeps over a world that is broken by the power of sin. And as we'll see in a few moments even though in this world not everything can be cured or healed. We need to understand God's heart is looking forward to that day that Steve talked about and prayed about a few moments ago when he said Maranatha in effect come Lord Jesus the day we'll be walking and leaping and praising God. You with me so far? Okay the man is crippled but not only that he is crippled from birth for the scripture says again in verse 2 now a man crippled from birth was being carried to the temple gate called Beautiful. Now you know just as well as I do there are two ways in which you can pick up a disability in life. One is in the course of life and living you experience trauma. Many of you know the story of Johnny Erickson Tada young girl in her teens made the mistake of diving headfirst into a lake that proved to be too shallow broke her neck and from that day to this has been a paraplegic and has been confined to a wheelchair. That is the tragedy of being broken in something that happens in life. I understand from the news or somebody told me that this past week that there are more amputations taking place in Haiti on account of the earthquake than there have been in North America or the Western Hemisphere since the Civil War. But not only can we become crippled by the events of life that happened to us we can also be crippled by being born that way. If we have time at the end of the service I'm going to show you a video clip of a man by the name of Nick Vujicic. How many of you have seen any of his video clips just for curiosity? He was born without arms and without legs back in 1982 to a pastor couple living in Australia. They are Serbian Christians his father was a church planter and as you can imagine an incredible shock for his parents and a huge adjustment and we know of stories like that don't we? I mean we've shared with you our granddaughters story of being born with a cataract in her right eye and her surgery has progressed well she is healing well she's got to be fitted very soon with coke glass eyeglasses if you can picture this and then she's going to have a contact lens inserted in her eye on a regular basis with patches on the good eye back and forth so that both eyes learn to function. I was talking just a week or two ago with a friend of mine out east because she had heard the news through our Christmas newsletter and she shared how two of her grandchildren had been born with a genetic anomaly one was born with virtually no toes on one foot and the other was born without a thyroid gland and you can imagine if that sort of thing isn't caught early the kind of problems that that presents as life goes on I understand now because an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure when babies are first born they are subject to I think something like 27 tests in order to determine if there are problems that can be corrected now rather than later because here's the point of what I'm trying to make whether you become crippled later in life or whether you get crippled early at birth or before it's both equally tragic although tragic in different ways. If you get crippled later on in life then you have to live with the memory of knowing that you've lost something if you're born that way you don't know the difference that you've been born that way but from a healing perspective please understand this from a healing perspective it is harder to be healed of your birth defects so to speak especially if it's not caught early than it is to be healed of crippling that has taken place later in life and I say that because if you've been crippled later in life then at least you know that faculty of your body or soul used to work it doesn't work anymore but maybe its use can be regained if it's never been there then it has to be recreated and developmentally you have to catch up later on when we look at this story you'll see that this man's ankle and his feet were suddenly made strong so that now he could walk again for that reason there are only to the best of my knowledge three recorded instances in the New Testament of people being healed of defects that they've had since birth did you know that the first one is where John chapter 9 the man born blind the second one is this man crippled from birth here in Acts chapter 3 later on we're told he's 40 years old so this guy's been sitting around for a long long time and then later on in Acts when Paul is on his missionary journey he comes to Lystra and there is another man who has been lame since birth a person who has been ill from birth cannot simply be suffering from a psychosomatic illness which you can always blame another healing on and so scripture makes a big deal of the fact that these people were broken from birth because it has to be the power of Jesus not just psychosomatic power of positive thinking no no it's the power of Jesus that brings this person back to life and to wholeness and of course as you know the good news of the gospel is that Jesus has the keys of death and hell and though by no means does he heal everybody in this life for Jesus it really makes not much difference whether you broke your neck diving into a shallow lake as Johnny Erickson did or if like Nick you're born without limbs because Jesus can do whatever he wants hold on to that because faith is an incredibly important thing in order to overcome the liabilities of our lives the places where we have been crippled so this man is crippled not only is he crippled but he's crippled from birth and so third thing to notice about this man then is that because he has been crippled from birth he has learned to work around his disability he has learned to do a work around how does he do it well first of all he has found himself some relatives or some friends who have taken upon themselves the responsibility to bring him to the temple every day so he can sit there and beg this is of course before the day and age of social assistance or a social network that will catch you in your disability I mean you were either left to the mercy of your family or you were left to yourself it was a cruel world and so this man had picked the beautiful gate at the temple as his place for begging I suspect the reason for that was that it was a good place to collect money you would hope at least would you not that worshippers coming or leaving from the temple would be a tad more generous than maybe the average secular man on the street who couldn't give a hoot about where you found yourself so here's this guy he sits at the beautiful gate day by day begging he sees Peter and John coming and what does he do he asks them for money now why would he ask them for money these are emissaries of the Lord Jesus they are fresh out of Pentecost they are overflowing with the anointing and the power of God this man either doesn't know that or if he does he has long since died to the longing that he could ever be whole and so he has learned to settle for begging you see when you've been crippled long enough you lose the hope that anything else could ever make you better and so now you learn to do a work around you learn to appeal to whatever you can appeal to and this man doesn't recognize that rather than needing money which he needs again day after day after day what does the guy really need he needs to be healed of his crippled condition if he is healed of his crippled condition he no longer needs his friends to carry him to the temple he no longer needs to sit there day after day begging no in fact he can go out and work get married perhaps raise a family of his own and stand independently in society and there's an incredibly important lesson here that I really want us to try to understand and that lesson is this sometimes now listen carefully sometimes we become so accustomed to being crippled and the coping mechanisms that we have developed to work around our condition that we forget that maybe just maybe God wants to heal the place where we are broken so that we can truly be alive for him and for others do I need to say it again sometimes sometimes we become so accustomed to being crippled whether physically emotionally or spiritually we become so accustomed to the coping mechanisms that we have developed to work around it that we sometimes forget a Jesus maybe just maybe wants to touch us in the place of brokenness and make us truly alive Peter said silver or gold I do not have but what I have I give you in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth walk it's better to walk than to beg for money and it's better to deal with our brokenness if we can than always to have to work around it this is so important I hope you'll indulge me I want to take a few moments and try to describe for you what this looks like in terms of our everyday living how many of you here have taken the time to read my book blessings and curses can I have a show of hands how many of you were here when we did the original series of messages years back in the orchard drive location you may remember this diagram that is part of that original series of messages and also of the book and without belaboring the point let me take a few moments and walk you through what some of this represents because it will almost immediately clarify for us what it is that I'm talking about in terms of dealing with underlying issues as opposed to doing a work around we're bored as I said earlier spirit soul and body God's intention is that all our faculties should have been set free to praise God that's how Adam and Eve were created we live in a fallen world and in a fallen world bad things happen accidents happen to our bodies sometimes as I said earlier our bodies are born defective but not only physically are there liabilities emotionally psychologically and spiritually things can happen and they could be such things as I'm a middle-aged man and I come home one day and my wife is gone and has left to know to say that she's run off with another man and she's never coming back it's happened to more than one individual in this community it can be a teenage girl I'm 15 or 16 I have given my heart my soul and my body to this young man who promised he would forever love me and now I discovered that he's sleeping around with my best friend and my heart is crushed could be a seven-year-old boy going to school discovering that all the figures dance in front of his eyes and he just cannot do his homework and he cannot get it right could be a three-year-old discovering that she experiences horrid abuse at the hands of some significant adults in her life it can even be as we know an unborn child knowing that she's not wanted knowing that this world is a cruel and a cold place and there's going to be nobody there or here there is no limit to the trauma that happens to people and most of the time for most people under normal circumstances a lot of that you can eventually shrug off and you can keep on going people are amazingly resilient but you know just as well as I do every so often it hits upon a spot in you and you cannot get rid of it and it goes deeply into your soul and it changes you for life the man whose life leaves him wakes up one morning and he says I'll never again trust my heart to another woman the young girl who has whose love has been thrown back in her face hardens her heart by saying I don't ever want to go through that kind of experience again and on and on it goes and so in those places where trauma enters deeply into our soul there is not only a huge degree of pain that we experience but a lot of shame that comes along with it I was reading Nick's biography just this past week and how at the age of eight he wanted to commit suicide and how at the age of eight he was praying to God please let me wake up tomorrow morning with arms and legs so I can be normal only to discover the heavens remain quiet and how badly he was teased by the kids at school and you know the kind of number that does on you and if you've ever really been hurt in the deep places of your heart then you know that it does something to you that blocks the normal growth of your life there is a vow that you make in there that says it's not safe for me to be me here it's not safe for me to live here it's not safe for me to walk and leap and dance because every time I do somebody is going to disapprove and somebody is going to make life hell for me and so what happens then is that we develop coping mechanisms that is to say a work around just like the crippled learned that his physical condition was irreversible as far as he was concerned he did a work around by learning how to beg in the temple and look for money so you and I learn a work around and there were two work arounds that are really important to understand I'm just going to go really fast through that and if you want much more detail on that if you haven't got the book already please get it if you haven't reread these chapters because it is so critical to understanding number one why change in people is so difficult you've noticed that I mean you're good but all the people around you they don't seem to want to dance to your tune why is that it also explains as I'll show you in a moment why sometimes it is so incredibly difficult to get prayers answered have you ever noticed that too you know your marriage is falling apart and you say Lord fix her up or even fix me up and nothing much seems to happen so just like young Nick at the age of eight you lie down and you say this isn't making sense to me I just want to die well the coping mechanisms that we develop are rejection of self rejecting of others and eliciting rejecting from others on the bottom it's our way of killing pain rejecting self means in its simplicity that I deny what I'm feeling how many times haven't you been hurt and somebody says to you that must have really hurt and your first response is to say what didn't bother me bet a liar it bothered you a lot but you see I can't live with those feelings and so I deny them or I take it out on somebody else and so you've got the boss yelling at the father who goes home and he yells at the wife who yells at the kid who kicks the dog and you've got that whole chain of events trying to vent the frustration or you got the kid eliciting self rejection how many of us here have ever known children who were just begging for a royal spanking I know one kid in this congregation who used to get so out of control that periodically he'd say to his mother I think you better just spank me now you know a kid's desperate when he is begging for a spanking why does he beg for a spanking because it helps him get his feelings under control and a lot of grown-ups if they'd had some help getting their feelings under control when they were kids would be a lot more pleasant and easy to get along with as adults now what's the problem with this set of coping mechanisms well you'll notice the circle goes around like this it doesn't get you anywhere why doesn't it get you anywhere because all the numbing in the world doesn't make the original injury go away kicking the dog doesn't make you feel any better about the fact that the boss doesn't like you and getting a spanking from your mom or your dad may fix you for the moment but it doesn't address the underlying issue of trauma and so this cycle goes on and on and on but the human heart is incredibly resourceful and the urge to live is strong besides that even in the most broken of the broken people there is always someplace that is not broken a place where we can dig down find strength and we learn to overcome and so that's what this top mechanism represents rising above the pain if i can't kill the pain if i can't make the pain go away then i will use my coping mechanisms to rise above the pain and so i become a pleaser i will not tell you what i really think because then you might reject me and i've had enough of that in my life i will become a chameleon and i will give you what i think you want because then maybe you love me or if i'm strong or big i'll draw on my strength how many kids aren't there who grow up in very dysfunctional homes and by the time they're 14 or 15 they're bigger than their mom and their dad and they pull themselves up to their full stature and they say listen i'm not going to take it anymore and they grow up in some cases being bullies because they have learned to use their power to protect themselves and then of course you have that whole avoiding technique i hide inside myself i again never really express my opinion i don't allow you to see my true feelings they are hidden perhaps even from myself and let there be no mistake many accomplishments in life and many of the great successes of people are the results not of strength that comes from here becoming what god wants them to be no it is a response to places of brokenness that has said never again will i be put down in the book i mention all kinds of stories of people who have been outspokenly successful in life but they have been successful not because it flowed out of their hearts but because they said i'm going to pull myself up by my bootstraps and i'm going to succeed come hell or high water and you can read biographies of people like hitler or mao in china or stalin or many lesser figures and it's astonishing at how much is accomplished not because it comes from my heart or from my calling but because i have said nobody is going to hurt me again problem is that success always comes at a price those are not if i'm a pleaser what happens there comes a point where i lose my soul the person who intimidates you alienate all kinds of people around you because the rest of the world isn't going to bow to you in the way that you have learned people can bow to you and if you're a hider you discover that people don't know who you are and then you can't understand why nobody ever sees you loves you or invites you to your place and so for all of those reasons and many more as life goes on and the pressure increases because this is not coming from who you really are but from a coping mechanism a fig leaf component of your life what happens is that number one you become very tired and number two in major and significant life changes you're going to crash because you can no longer sustain it see god wants us to live from the inside out that's where his grace is that's where his anointing is he doesn't want us to live from the outside in and in fact will love us enough that when this begins to fall apart we're going to do two things number one we're going to turn to people around us and demand they help me and then when they don't and we have some spiritual orientation will probably turn to god and we say god i need you to help me i can't keep up this pace with my husband or my wife i can't keep up my pace at work i cannot keep up my pace in community i feel like nobody sees me i feel like nobody loves me nobody understands me and then you wonder now listen carefully you wonder why god doesn't answer that prayer well he is answering that prayer but not in a way that you think what did peter say silver or gold have i none but what i have i give you in the name of jesus of nazareth walk instead of helping you cope better and get better fig leaves on which as i always say keep on drying up anyway so you're always busy covering your shame and your nakedness what the lord god wants to do is he wants to take us back to those places of trauma particularly in our context emotional trauma and he wants to touch those places with his grace so that we can walk and we can leap and we can praise god you see that is the ministry of jesus that is the ministry of the church to help the lame to walk the blind to see the deaf to hear and the poor to experience good news and i know what you're gonna say does everybody walk does everybody get better and the answer is no we live in what's known as the already and the not yet but i'll tell you the lord is prepared to do a lot more i have discovered over the years than most of the time we're ready to credit him with and my theology of healing over the years has become very simple god has a plan a destiny and a purpose for each one of his children and whatever it is that gets in the way whether it's trauma experienced in the course of living or trauma experienced before i was even born god's grace in christ will do one of two things it will either heal me so that i can walk and leap and praise god or else he will give me the grace to overcome so that in either case his purposes can be glorified through me in who i am pray with me father we're so grateful for the lord jesus and we confess that so often we are so fixated on what we don't have and the painful things that we have experienced in life and the clever coping mechanisms that we have developed that we don't fully understand that jesus came to give us life and to give it to us abundantly and lord johnny and nick are both people who are extreme examples of how grace abounds in weakness and they both can testify that you've not heard their cry to be healed physically but lord how your glory is made known through their disability and so lord we look at our own lives and we look at those places where we get stuck ourselves we pray that you will give us the courage to be truly honest with you and honest with each other about those places where we sometimes get so desperately stuck and lord when our coping mechanisms begin to fall down and we reach out and there seems to be nobody there who cares and we cry out to you and you don't seem to answer help us in that day to ask you the question lord what are you trying to address at the core of my heart and help us lord in that hour to believe that even though we do not receive the silver and the gold that we're looking for if we can just receive a touch of jesus then we can come fully alive in the places where you're calling us to be alive so that we can truly serve you so pour out your revelation upon us pour out your holy spirit upon us and lord may this be a community if not physically then certainly emotionally and spiritually we can walk and we can leap [PROPOSED CUT 1 START at 00:37:19.020; remove through 00:40:26.000] and we can praise god for the glory of god in jesus name we pray [CUT] amen men of faith rise up and sing of the great and glorious king you are strong when you fill your way in your room and we'll shout to the north and south sing to the east and west jesus is savior who all glory to the king you are strong when you fill your way in your room and we'll shout to the north and south sing to the east and west jesus is savior to all lord of heaven and earth we've been through fire we've been through rain we've been refined by the power of this thing we've fallen deeper in love with you you burn the truth on our land we'll shout to the north and south sing to the east and the west jesus is savior to all lord of heaven and earth rise up church with broken wings fill this place with songs again of our god who reigns on by his grace again we'll shout to the north and south sing to the east and west jesus is savior to all lord of heaven and earth we'll shout to the north and the south sing to the east and the west jesus is savior to all lord of heaven and earth he is lord of heaven and earth he is lord of heaven and earth [CUT] [PROPOSED CUT 1 END at 00:40:26.000; resume after this marked segment]