What does First B Jackson teach about acts 3?
Drawn from the messages where it was actually addressed: the words said from the front, the passages taught, and where to hear the whole thing.
At First B Jackson, the teaching on Acts 3 centers on one event and one insistence: the healing of a man lame from birth at the Beautiful Gate was not about Peter and John, it was about Jesus. All three messages in this series made that the unavoidable point. Peter and John were simply on their way to the three o'clock prayer service at the temple, doing what they always did. The man at the gate was doing what he always did. What broke the pattern was that they stopped, looked at him directly, and asked him to look back. Peter told him he had no silver or gold, but gave what he did have: healing in the name of Jesus Christ the Nazarene. The man's feet and ankles were instantly strengthened, and he went into the temple walking and leaping and praising God, which the teaching connected to the forecast in Isaiah 35 that the lame would leap like a deer. The age of grace had begun, and this man was living proof of it.
When the crowd gathered in amazement, Peter refused to let any of the credit settle on himself or John. He pressed the crowd on who Jesus actually is: the same one they had handed over to Pilate, the same one Pilate repeatedly cleared, the same holy and righteous one they had rejected in favor of a murderer. God raised him from the dead, Peter said, and the man standing there whole in front of them was evidence of it. The teaching did not soften Peter's accusation, but it also noted that Peter called what the crowd had done ignorance, not to excuse it but to leave a door open toward repentance.
Peter grounded everything in the Hebrew scriptures, pointing back to Moses in Exodus, who said God would raise up a prophet from among the Israelites and that anyone who refused to listen to him would be cut off from God's people. Every prophet from Samuel forward, Peter said, had been pointing toward this moment. The series placed Acts 3 inside the larger story that began in Acts 1 and 2: the disciples waiting, the Spirit arriving at Pentecost, 3,000 added to the church, and those believers devoting themselves to the apostles' teaching, fellowship, breaking bread, and prayer. The healing at the Beautiful Gate is not a detour from that story. It is the story continuing.
Taught from Acts 3:1-26 · Isaiah 35 · Acts 2:42 · Exodus 18:15-22 · Genesis 12:1-3
The passage taught · Acts 1
1 The first book I wrote, Theophilus, concerned all that Jesus began both to do and to teach,
2 until the day in which he was received up, after he had given commandment through the Holy Spirit to the apostles whom he had chosen.
3 To these he also showed himself alive after he suffered, by many proofs, appearing to them over a period of forty days, and speaking about God’s Kingdom.
4 Being assembled together with them, he commanded them, “Don’t depart from Jerusalem, but wait for the promise of the Father, which you heard from me.
World English Bible
Messages that go deeper
- November 17, 2024 Sunday Nov 17th Sermon from Pastor Ray Peter and John heal a man lame from birth, and Pastor Peter traces what happened, why it mattered, and what it means to receive grace you could never earn.
- November 17, 2024 Silver and Gold Have I None A lame man healed at the temple gate opens a question every believer faces: are we trying to be Peter, or do we need to see ourselves as the one who was lifted up?
- November 17, 2024 Silver and Gold Have None Peter and John stop for a lame beggar at the temple gate. A First Baptist Jackson sermon on Acts 3, seeing people who suffer and giving what you have.