02-22-2026 - SILVER AND GOLD - HAVE I NONE -

MESSAGE BY PASTOR ROB INRIG FROM BETHANY BAPTIST IN RICHMOND, BC.

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I invite you to pray together: O Father of mercies and God of all comfort, our only help in time of need: We humbly beseech thee to behold, visit, and relieve thy sick servants for whom our prayers are desired. Look upon them with the eyes of thy mercy ( Vicky O, Nancy R, Tere G, Liz N, Stevie A, Socrates D, Sara's mom H, Margarita G,   Rosy Ch, Patricia L. Lina J.  Magda- Laci M.  Gloria F, Miguel A H. Silvia H, Manuel D, Brianda M, Alejandro M, Natalia M, Oscar ND.   Comfort them with a sense of thy goodness; preserve them from the temptations of the enemy; and give them patience under his affliction. In thy good time, restore them to health, and enable them to lead the residue of their life in thy fear, and to thy glory; and grant that finally they may dwell with thee in life everlasting; And for those who have departed and are in eternal sleep, waiting for you to come, and with joy they will live eternal life with you. 

Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

You can add names from family and friends who need prayer

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It started like any other Sunday. People jostled their way into the parking lot, eager to park close to the church’s main doors. Inside several cars, parents were at their wits' end, managing the playful chaos of kids who moments before were pushing and annoying one another. But that was then; this is now. Now it was time to put on smiles and offer warm greetings to those in the foyer. On the way in, a street person sat in the path that usually led directly to the church.

Most looked the other way as they passed, offering little more than a fleeting glance. A few offered a greeting, but many ignored his requests for money to buy food. After all, the service was starting, and seats needed to be found.

Surprisingly, the man entered the sanctuary and took a seat at the front of the church. However, that location was short-lived as an usher redirected him to the back. From there, he listened to the announcements and welcomed visitors. He noticed how people looked his way, their eyes filled with suspicion and unwelcoming glances.

But those looks shifted when the leaders approached the podium to announce their excitement about introducing the new pastor. With applause echoing in the room, the homeless man began to walk down the aisle. Suddenly, the clapping stopped, and the church fell silent. All eyes were on him as he approached the stage.

He stood for a moment and then began to speak, “Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty, and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger, and you invited me in, I needed clothes, and you clothed me, I was sick, and you looked after me, I was in prison, and you came to visit me.’“

Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you as a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’

The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for the least of my brothers and sisters, you did for me.’

After reciting this, he introduced himself as their new pastor and shared his experience that morning. Many in the congregation began to cry. He continued, “The world has enough people who look the other way. What the world needs are disciples of Jesus who will follow His teaching and live as He did.” With that, the service was dismissed; his sermon had been delivered.

The Story of the Overlooked

This morning, I want to introduce you to another overlooked man—one who has been ignored for 40 years. We find his story in Acts 3. Now Peter and John were going up to the temple at the ninth hour, (Acts 3:1).

As faithful Jews, Peter and John were heading to the Temple for the ‘hour of prayer.’ This was one of three times they likely prayed during the day, as we learn from Psalms and Daniel. They came to hear the truth of God’s word, their praise and prayers much the same as their fellow Jews. Their beliefs about how to live were similar, and many of their practices mirrored one another.

But one thing was NOT the same, and it changed everything—how they prayed, how they praised, and how they lived.

Gone forever were the yearly sacrifices for the forgiveness of sin. Now, because of Jesus’ shed blood, those past sacrifices were mere symbols of the new covenant to come. “Christ offered for all time a single sacrifice for sin” (Hebrews 10:12).

The disciples were still Jews going to the Temple as was their custom, but here was the problem: those in the Temple were still clinging to their sacrificial symbols, unable to see beyond them. It’s not surprising. What those symbols represented was powerful—a delivering lamb sacrificed, its blood poured out, enabling all who were under its protection to escape captivity and death. That lamb served as a substitutionary atonement—its blood doing what human effort couldn’t do, paying the price for their freedom.

The Symbol vs. The Reality

But what was missed? That blood was a symbol pointing to a far greater deliverance—a substitutionary atonement that was to come. A lamb who would take our sins upon Himself, paying what we cannot, to deliver us once and for all from the power of sin. Jesus, the Lamb of God, whose blood was shed to forgive the sins of all who, in repentance, come to Him.

The problem arose when people committed themselves to the symbol as the endpoint rather than to where the symbol pointed. When what is pointed to is ignored or redefined, the stage is set for people to submit the symbol they think should be accepted. If the life lived is, according to the standard they want, good, then God should be satisfied. If enough wrongs are avoided, if enough good acts are done, if our scale of good far outweighs the small that’s bad, then all is well. The Jews clung to their symbol, believing all was well.

So when Peter, John, and the others said, “Your belief in the symbols is not enough because the One it pointed to has come and you rejected Him,” the Jews grasped their symbols more tightly. They declared these teachers of the new way to be dangerous, unworthy of calling themselves Jews.

As I began, I mentioned that Peter and John were going to the Temple, continuing as was their custom. Yet, custom is a misleading word. Nothing about their lives had been customary these last few weeks—far from it. If the three years prior hadn’t been overwhelmingly different than how they’d once lived, nothing could compare to what they had experienced in the last weeks. Just a short while ago, Jesus had been violently rejected and killed—sinking the disciples to their lowest point. Then, when they had no hope, they experienced the euphoric reality of Jesus alive, beyond comprehension.

Even with all that experience, something in these last days felt different. Before, when they had been with Jesus, they had watched—time and again, they were observers of the incomprehensible. But in the days just past, they were not merely looking on; they were recipients of the miraculous. The Holy Spirit had spectacularly come upon them—empowering them, tongues of fire descending upon them, and God’s power deposited in them.

The Lame Man at the Beautiful Gate

Now we enter the scene with Peter and John. They were coming to the Temple, not much different than what they were used to—the same people coming and going, the same ones sitting nearby, watching them approach. Among them was a man who had occupied the same space for 40 years, carried there every day since he was young.

“And a man who had been lame from his mother’s womb was being carried along, whom they used to set down every day at the gate of the temple which is called Beautiful, to beg alms of those who were entering the temple. When he saw Peter and John about to go into the temple, he began asking to receive alms.” (Acts 3:2-3).

This man obviously had people committed to him—every day they carried him to this place. Positioning him at the gate of the temple called Beautiful was both spiritual and strategic. Spiritually, there were few places closer to God than near the Temple. Strategically, those coming to meet with God would be the most likely to show compassion, as God instructed. Proximity to the Temple was likely to be quieter than other places in the city, increasing the chances that his cries for help would be heard instead of drowned out by the noise of marketplace business.

Josephus tells us the Beautiful Gate was 75 feet high and made of Corinthian brass, with large double doors far more beautiful than those covered with silver and gold. This passageway later became known as the Eastern or Golden Gate. The location of this healing is incredibly significant and serves as a symbol of a far greater healing yet to come.

Hundreds of years after this event, the Muslim conqueror Suleiman invaded Jerusalem. In the years that followed, he restored the gates that had been torn down, including the Golden Gate. However, upon hearing that Christians believed Jesus would enter Jerusalem through the Eastern Gate in His second coming, he quickly ordered it to be sealed up tight, which it remains to this day. Not long after, a Muslim graveyard was placed in front of this gate, based on the belief that no Jewish prophet would step onto defiled ground. Little did he know that Jesus isn’t defiled by death; He conquers it. Where He is, death and sin don’t stand a chance. It is through this Eastern Gate, this Beautiful Gate, that Jesus will return as a victorious, conquering King.

In the shadow of this gate, we see a man who has been lame from birth, with no expectation that life could be any different. He made do with the generosity of others, navigating life with small but real needs. The Law of Moses and the teachings of the prophets clearly instructed that the poor and those with disabilities were to be cared for, and some had been faithful to this command. The alms this man sought were consistent with what Jesus said: “Give to the one who begs from you, and do not refuse the one who would borrow from you” (Matthew 5:42). Jesus underscored the importance of caring for the needy in His parable of the Sheep and Goats (Matthew 25:31-46), where He describes the final judgment. He welcomes the “sheep,” the righteous who provided for the hungry, thirsty, stranger, naked, sick, and imprisoned. Acts of service to "the least of these brothers and sisters of mine" are done for Him. So again, strategically being near the Temple was a great place for him to be. Little did he know how great.

The Misunderstanding of Worship

The problem was that the regulars going to the Temple confused going TO worship God with being those who DO worship God in how they live—not people on a destination but ambassadors on a mission. In the true example I began with, people are so focused on what they are going to do that they miss what God has called them to along the way. Just like we often do.

Peter and John could have said the same thing: “We have a God to pray to, a Temple to enter, a people to join.” But they didn’t. They stopped.

“But Peter said, ‘I do not possess silver and gold, but what I do have I give to you: In the name of Jesus Christ the Nazarene—walk!’ And seizing him by the right hand, he raised him; and immediately his feet and his ankles were strengthened. With a leap, he stood upright and began to walk; and he entered the temple with them, walking and leaping and praising God. And all the people saw him walking and praising God; and they were taking note of him as being the one who used to sit at the Beautiful Gate of the temple to beg alms, and they were filled with wonder and amazement at what had happened to him.” (Acts 3:6-10).

Walking, leaping, and praising in the way he was doing was clearly not how people were used to seeing things happen in the Temple. It wasn’t how things were done in a Baptist church, and let’s be honest, it’s not much different in most churches. We are often too orderly for that, too oriented toward the predictable, too comfortable with how we think church should be done. Some take refuge in the Scriptures that suggest we do everything in the church “with decency and order,” while those verses have nothing to do with the exuberant and authentic praise we see here.

Because really, how could he do anything other than leap and praise? This man had always been on the outskirts of the Temple and outside of life. How was he to know that praise in the Temple was to be muted and exuberance contained? Any sense of joy to be toned down, any excitement delayed for a ‘more acceptable time, a more acceptable place?’ Because that’s not how we do it here. Which is exactly how the Pharisees wanted to keep it—containable, explainable, respectable. And in all that, they missed a life-changing, resurrecting God.

This man’s experience couldn’t fit alongside quiet amens and muted hallelujahs. He had met God—rather, God had met him—and life would no longer be the same. The wonder of a transformed life should be expressed with exuberance. I have a feeling that in his joy, he hadn’t noticed others weren’t doing what he was. But why weren’t they? Hadn’t they, the able-bodied, the physically blessed, the relationally blessed, the spiritually blessed, been given the incredible gift of being known by Almighty God? So what was keeping them from letting their praise be known as well? It’s why we need to return to our song of salvation and hear the stories of others. Some of the songs are loudly spectacular—the incapacitated, the lost, the rescued; other stories are more low-key, but the salvation sung just as spectacularly loud in heaven—each celebrated the same—a sinner has come home.

You’ve got to love the next picture we see—this man clinging to Peter and John. He refuses to let go, but I would think his clinging is not just a stationary hold but a pull into his celebrated dance of new life, his dance unconstrained and uncontained. Given what they had done for him—far exceeding any silver or gold—it’s not hard to understand why. But as we will soon see, Peter is emphatic: the miracle that happened had nothing to do with him.

“While he was clinging to Peter and John, all the people ran together to them at the so-called portico of Solomon, full of amazement. But when Peter saw this, he replied to the people, ‘Men of Israel, why are you amazed at this, or why do you gaze at us, as if by our own power or piety we had made him walk?’” (Acts 3:11-12).

Peter and John’s response is quite different from the self-promotion we too often see in some expressions of Christianity today. If this were in today’s world, you can be certain the PR department would have been distributing glossies with QR codes explaining, for a mere registration fee, how they too could experience what he had experienced. Yet here, Peter makes it abundantly clear that what you see is of God, not of us. It is by God’s power, not ours. Peter then took them to see more than the transformation of a man.

Aware of his audience, Peter begins by making an immediate connection using God’s name, familiar to the Jews—Yahweh, “The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of our fathers.” (Acts 3:13).

Though his beginning is short, there are helpful lessons we can learn. First, Peter starts with words that those listening can connect to—the God they worshipped. This God—the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of our fathers—is the One who has glorified Jesus through whom this man has been healed.

But Peter doesn’t stop there. He uses another phrase to connect with his listeners. The phrasing, “His servant Jesus,” is not insignificant nor accidental.

The first reference anchors them to who God is—Yahweh, God of our fathers. The second reference connects them to who Jesus is in a way different than they were likely expecting. “His servant Jesus” is a title that would connect them to Isaiah’s prophecies of the coming Messiah in what were known as the four servant songs—Isaiah 42, 49, the end of 50, and all of 53. This servant IS the promised Messiah.

These connections made, his next words were direct and accusatory. “The one whom you delivered and disowned in the presence of Pilate, when he had decided to release Him. But you disowned the Holy and Righteous One and asked for a murderer to be granted to you, but put to death the Prince of life.” (Acts 3:13-15).

It’s easy to read these words while forgetting to whom they are listening. This is Peter, who, only a short while ago, was in fear, denying even knowing Jesus. Now, here he is unapologetically leveling strong declarations that they killed God’s promised One. “You delivered, you disowned, you put to death.” This wasn’t Pilate’s doing; you want to point the finger there. Pilate would have released Jesus as one wrongly accused—you demanded otherwise. Pilate offered the undeniably guilty in exchange for the release of the obviously innocent. So make no mistake, the guilt is yours. You put to death “the Archegos—the author of life.”

I would guess, and later we confirmed this, that on normal occasions, accusations like this would not have gone down well. The truth is, they, no different than us, don’t like to be held accountable if we can find a way to deny or minimize any wrongs we have done. When Stephen, whom we see later in Acts, says similar things to Peter, the crowd rose up in anger to stone him to death. How dare he represent Jesus for who he said He was? How dare they be accused of opposing God with any actions they had done?

Two audiences, two very different responses. The message was given more or less the same. Words of conviction delivered. For a lame man who knew he was a beggar in need of life, this Jesus was God’s promised, life-giving Messiah, whom you put to death. But “the One whom God raised from the dead, a fact to which we are witnesses.” (Acts 3:15). The Resurrection of Jesus is the cornerstone of our faith, mentioned at least 104 times in the New Testament. “Based on faith in His name, it is the name of Jesus which has strengthened this man whom you see and know; and the faith which comes through Him has given him this perfect health in the presence of you all.” (Acts 3:16).

In light of what Peter has put before them, his challenge, their choice. Our choice as well:

“Repent therefore and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, BUT Every soul who will not hear that Prophet shall be utterly destroyed from among the people (Acts 3:19, 23).*

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