Bible Guys Classics: Acts 9 Part 3

Well, hey, today we're going to be talking about a really cool story, you big dorcas. Well, So there's a lady that we're going to be talking about and she has a very unfortunate name. Yeah. So he's Chris and I'm Jeff, and we're the Bible guys. All right. So the segment that was handed to us is we're supposed to draft. Yeah, I'm excited about the top. Five fast food restaurants. We're supposed to do rock paper scissors to figure out who gets the first draft? So, so who? They just looked at it and went, oh, they know some fast food restaurant. I guess so is that? Is that how it worked? So it turns out because they requested five that apparently one of us will have three on our team and the other two. Yeah. Yeah right, so I guess. Maybe we can do a bonus pick. So it's three into three? Yeah, sure, why not? Okay, let's do We're terrible at this, by the way. Yes, one, two, three? Shoot, oh I get the first all right, so I'm gonna go with Oh, so I have a question. Actually, so does five guys, burgers and fries count as fast food? Do they hand it out the window to you dread. Okay, so well then no. It has to be in a bag. Okay, hand it out a window. Okay, all right, bag window, got it? Okay, Well then I I'm gonna go with Taco Bell. Taco Bell is your number one draft choice. Yes, wow, this is going to be easy for me to win. Then okay, here we go, ready, ready, we got it? Right? That was it just for first pick? Oh oh oh I had to go Okay, okay, in an out burger. Oh wow, yeah, I'm pretty that's that's a no brainer. I'm pretty dumb. Yeah. Well, no, you enjoy your Taco Bell. I would definitely trade Taco Bell for innut burger. Yeah times ten. Oh, I know in an outburger is amazing. But we don't have them here, so it escaped my mind. Yeah yeah, okay, all right, in an outburger by far the best. Yeah. So gosh, these are hard. This is hard. Yeah. My daughter and I took her to La and like at eleven o'clock at night, she goes, Dad, I got the munchies, So oh, let's go to in an outburger. So we pull in Hollywood and we order and then she's like, oh my gosh, and every day, if there was a time way there, we kept stopping it in an outburger. Yeah. I probably put on ten pounds that week. But it was amazing. Yeah, it was amazing. You got to die from something, right, she was in an out burger. Right, So I'm going to go with Kentucky Fried Chicken. Kentucky Fried Chicken. Yeah, really really, yeah, our family loves it. Okay, Well I'm going with Chick fil A. Okay, I stink of this game. Yeah, I know you come on, man, come on. Your picks are supremely better than mine. I know. So I'm all right. It may be because I'm a Kinnoisewer. Yeah, I mean, because they're just not on my mind. Yeah, I just assumed. I mean, you were in Atlanta for a while, you were in the town, true Kathy's went to church, Yes, and you didn't think of Chick fil A. Hey, by the way, that's Jesus chicken. By Your suggestion was to write them all down first, uh, And I said, let's do it off the top of her head. Yes, have we written them down? Yeah? Those would have been their own bad choices. Yeah. All right, Well, then, since I have such a terrible list. Anyway, I'll just go with Wendy's. Wendy's so I like Wendy's. Wendy's is good. Yeah, okay, I'm going to say checkers. All right, forget there you go. I'm going to get up and leave. Yes, am I right, you're right? I know. Okay, your list is supreme. All I have to say is follow the big guided lunch. That's that's all. You always follow the big guy lunch. Don't ever trust the skinny chef, and don't ask skinny people where should we eat? Did you see that meme the other day and it was like a news article and it said one hundred and three year old vegetarian said it wasn't worth it? Was it worth it? It wasn't worth it. It wasn't worth it. That's funny. Okay, hey, I liked that one. So you know my team would win this, yes, yes, okay. Hey so sure. So we are reading from the Chronological Life Application Study Bible, and the chronological word there is because this particular Bible is placing, for instance, all the all of Paul's doings and all of his writings, and they're sort of, you know, weaving it in the Book of Acts as the Book of Acts as we're reading it, so we can make references to what is happening, for instance, like yesterday we made reference to Glatians chapter one, because that's what it does. So if you're kind of new to Bible reading, sometimes it can be a surprise. You just you know, you pick up a Bible and you start reading it like a regular book, a normal book, and that is you just start at the beginning and you're planning to read to the end, and you're looking at it and going, wow, there's thousands of baities here, but I'm going to read. And so then you read through the Book of Genesis and it just kind of goes in order. It makes sense, and then Exodus it makes sense. And then after that it starts getting a little kind of odd, and then you start having a sense that you're not really reading things in order. And then by the time you get into maybe King David's life or Saul's life in the Old Testament, you start to realize there's multiple books that are telling similar or same stories and it's not in order. And then you get in all these poetic books and these prophets, and what's the context with them, and they're from different times. And then you get into the Gospels and there's four different eyewitnesses telling some of the same stories and some different stories, and how does all that work together. Then you finally get in the Book of Acts. Then there's this whole group of writings of Paul that are just kind of floating out there without any context of when or why they were written. And then finally you get to the end those final books. Finally you finish up with with John writing the book Revelation. And it's not in the same it doesn't flow in the way that we're accustomed to reading Western books. And it's because the books in the Bible sixty six books are clumped together by ideas or by the style of the writing. Right, So like the poetic books Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastics, they're poetic, and they're kind of clumped together, not in order, just these are the or the Gospels are here, or Paul's letters are all here. They group them together that way instead of giving them in context in order. So a chronological Bible is not superior to the others, but it's useful, especially when you're reading through the Gospels. For instance, in this one. I love it because it'll put all three. You know, maybe if you're reading a story and it's in Luke and John, but it's not in Matthew Mark, well it'll put those two together in the right order at the right spot. So it kind of gives you some flow to the storyline a little bit better. So we love it. But it has all the notes here of the Life Application Study Bible, which is what we love because you don't want to just read the Bible and then go well, I'm glad I read those words. You want to read the Bible and then go away saying so this is what I should do about it. In the Life Application Study Bible will give you more information, but I'll also give you a lot of thoughts about how to apply it to my life. So we love it. I just had a conversation with somebody yesterday in my office. They're kind of re engaging in faith. They've never really read through the Bible, and they told me they just bought one of the Life Application Study Bibles online. So we don't get paid for this. Nobody's promoting it or promoting us to do it. We just think it's a really useful tool. So you should get one. Very cool. Okay. So we are in Acts chapter nine. We're continuing this and we're pivoting off of Saul for a moment, and we're going back to Peter and Peter. But we're not. The Bible is well, the Bible is sure. Thank you for the clarification. Yeah, you're welcome. What we do without you verse thirty two. I don't know what we do without you. We're seven minutes. Quit talking about it. So Acts chapter nine, verse thirty two says, Meanwhile, Peter traveled from place to place, and he came down to visit the believers in the town of Lida. There he met a man named Aeneus, he who had been paralyzed and bedridden for eight years. Peter said to him, Aneus, Jesus Christ heals you. Get up, roll up your sleeping man, and he was healed instantly. Then the whole population, Elida and Sharon saw Aeneas walking around, and they turned to the Lord. There was a believer in Joppa named Tabitha, which in Greek is Dorcas, and she was always doing kind things for others and helping the poor. About this time she became ill and died. Her body was washed for burial and laid in an upstairs room. But the believers had heard that Peter was nearby Atlida, so they sent two men to beg him. Please come as soon as possible. So Peter returned with them, and as soon as he arrived, they took him to the upstairs room. The room was filled with widows who were weeping and showing him the coats and other clothes that Dorcas had made for them. Peter asked them all to leave the room, and then he knelt and prayed. Turning to the body, he said, get up, Tabitha, and she opened her eyes, and when she saw Peter, she sat up. He gave her his hand and helped her up, and then he called in the widows and all the believers, and he presented her to them alive. The news spread through the whole town, and many believed in the Lord, and Peter stayed a long time in Jappa, living with Simon, a tanner of hides. Yeah. So wow, there's I mean, two stories both by Peter. Peter, by the way, who walked with Jesus, saw Jesus perform many miracles, healing people and then rising people from the grave. Right, you know, just raising them up just by speaking. And then Peter, of course, you know, taking his first stab at those things, you know, walking by and saying, hey, I don't have silver and I don't have gold, but rise up and walk. And so Peter is taking a shot at this. Well apparently he's still doing the and uh. But this is the first account where Peter himself raises somebody from the dead, which, by the way, is pretty crazy. I mean, it's just crazy to think that that that God used these people. And by the way, that the New Testament had not been written or completed at this time. Right, So there's the Old Testament, then Jesus who had walked through the you know, walked the earth, and who had left, and then this birth of the Church. And so God uses them in miraculous ways to further the kingdom and uh. And so you know, one of the ways that he does is by giving them the ability to do great miracles. So Peter raises Dorcas. And by the way, I prefer to call her Tabitha, right, so we get yeah, well it's the it's the Arabic name. No, so, so Tabitha is Aramaic and Dorcas's Greek. Dorcas's Greek, Docas Greek. And I knew it was something about something like that. So so anyway, but he says, rise up Tabitha. Yes, yes, yes, so I prefer to Well, he's speaking in Aramaic, which would have been more probably Jesus spoke more in Aramaic and as well. But yeah, so both both names Tabitha and Dorcas both mean in their native languages Aramaic and Greek mean gazelle. Really yeah, so isn't a pretty name? Did not know? That's very pretty? So Dorcas that means gazelle. Oh so when I say you big Dorcas. You're calling somebody a big gazelle. Oh okay, yeah, I think a big gazelle is a kudu, isn't it? What? Right? Right? So that's the biggest of the gazell's. So one of the things I love, So, you know, not to minimize Eneus. I think that his story is really special. He'd been paralyzed for eight years, unable to walk, and that's really incredible, and the people are amazed, and it says that he's he's up and walking around and people turn to the Lord right. The whole population saw this happening, and they turned to the Lord. And that's really significant. Miracles happen. The majority of miracles in the New Testament happened for the purpose of capturing the attention of the community so that people would come to faith in Christ. That's when these miracles are happening. They're not just for their own benefit. They're not just so all good. Finally this guy can walk, Certainly, he benefits, but it's for the benefit of the entire community. God does these miracles because I'm sure there were other people who couldn't walk in the world that Peter did not heal. He healed this guy in this moment, and it was for the sake of getting all the people in the community to be aware of the good news of Gospel Christ. That's great. Hey. By the way, just side note, I was looking at the notes here in this life Application study Bible, and I love how sometimes the Old Testament and the New Testament connect together. Because we see that she lives in the city of Japa, and it says the Djappa was one hundred and twenty five feet above sea level, overlooking the Mediterranean Sea. Joppa was the town with which the cedars of Lebanon had been floated to be shipped to Jerusalem to use in the temple construction way back in second Chronicles. And then of course the prophet Jonah had left port from Joppa on his fated trip when he tried to sail to Tarshis. Yeah, and Jappa still exists today, Yes, in the Palestinian region of Israel. And Japa was also on Clash of the Titans. Remember the movie or share them from Joppa? That's true, Okay, I can always trust you for a movie reference. Definitely, yes. Yeah. So historically it's always been a well known city, and so this will be another reason why this miracle happened here is because if the people of Djappa go, my goodness, did you just see what happened? The word's not just going to stay in this little village. It's going to spread everywhere that commerce goes. You know, you believe what just happened over in Dappa, right, right, So God is very strategic and where these miracles are happening and why they're serving god purposes, not just Eneus's purpose or or hear in just this moment, uh Dorcas's purpose. Right. Yeah. So yeah. And I made a joke earlier about her making draperies. It doesn't actually say draperies, but you assumed that she'd probably made draperies because she made clothes, she was a seamstress. She was obviously loved and known in that town. And uh, you know, for them to go grab Peter also demonstrates their faith. Right. So imagine, you know, somebody dies and they prepare the body, uh you know for the upper you know, they put put place placer and obviously in this room that they referred to like upstairs, and then they have faith and they say, Peter, come as quick as you can. Well, she's already dead, yeah, which means think about that. What were they expecting? Well, I think they were expecting exactly what he did. Peter hadn't raised anybody from the dead yet. Well, yeah, you're probably right, So what were they thinking was going to happen? I think they thought what was going to happen happen? Yeah, yeah, right, And I mean even when Jesus was alive, remember when he raised Lazarus. Does it seemed like they're called that Peter was a little late, right you know, Hey, well she's sick. Maybe while she had that fever. You should have called Peter, right right, right? Well anyway, well do you remember do you remember when Jesus showed up on the scene for Lazarus. Uh, they said, we wish you would have been here. Yeah, yeah, he waited, He waited for three days on purpose. He did. Yeah he did. But they didn't have this type of faith in calling them because they're the ones who said we wish you would have been here, and that was Jesus. I mean, Peter's just the little minion. Yeah, well he's a big dog. But yeah, he's a big dog. Now, yeah he is. He wasn't then, but he is in this story, yeah for sure. So he winds up going and I think this is really a beautiful moment for us if we just pause a little bit, because the story it's astounding. Peter is a big dog. Wow, I don't think I Well, so, I personally have never raised anybody from the dead. Yeah, as far as I know, right, I've prayed over people, I've seen God heal people, certainly, but I've never raised anybody from the dead. So it's astounding. And we can get obsessed with and focused on that part of the story. But the women didn't love Peter. They'd loved Tabitha right right. They were grieving. Peter was a tool for them because they loved Tabitha. And sometimes we overemphasize the dramatic front of house on stage gifts and we just don't think our gift of clothing, the widows caring for people behind the scenes make a big impact. But these women were like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, Peter, it's nice to have you here. We really need her back, right. They're not saying, oh, thank god, Peter's here. Finally we're going to be fulfilled in our Christian walk. They wanted Tabitha back because she's the one that cared for them. She's the one that gave them value. She's the one who poured in their lives. She was the one who loved them and cared for them, and they they desperately wanted her. And so don't minimize your role in the kingdom. Don't minimize the good that you do for those children in that classroom, or for those teenagers that you're in that group with, or don't minimize the care that you give to the hungry people or those that are in prison or whatever. That work has a greater impact on the hearts and the lives of people than just the big miraculous moments that Peter's walking around doing. Not to minimize Peter, but sometimes we overemphasize his kind of gifts and we minimize hers. But here in this moment in the church, they were grieving over her. Now a little foreshadowing, the Bible goes out of its way to say that Peter stayed a long time living in Jappa, living with Simon a tanner of hides. Isn't this cool? Yeah? Because so think about this. So if you're a good Jewish boy and you're raised like Peter, and you know, you'd believe your entire life that God was you know, you were the chosen people, and the God of Israel was for you as a Jewish boy in a Jewish culture, and that was you know that that was the deal. And then all of a sudden, last chapter, God converts Saul into Paul. God meets Paul and basically gives Paul the mission and says, your main job of your entire life is to make certain that anybody who is not Jewish knows that the Gospel is for them too. So Paul's entire mission was very specifically to bring the Gospel to the Gentiles, even though he himself was a Jew, but he was also a Roman citizen, right, so he sort of had one foot in both worlds. So Paul's goal is to bring to the Gentiles. Well, think about this. So Peter, you know, he actually had a hard time, as we're about to see tomorrow, he had a hard time treating the Gentiles Christians with the same respect, treating them with the same manner. Favoritism, jealousy, disrespect, all that stuff comes into play. Paul eventually challenges Peter that we're going to probably read about that too. But anyway, here's the point of the story. The foreshadowing takes place with Peter living with Simon, a tanner of hides, so it says this in the life acculation study Bibble In Djaba, Peter stayed at the home of Simon, a tanner of hides, a leather worker. Leather workers made animal hides into leather. It is significant that Peter was at Simon's house because leather working involved contact with dead animals, and Jewish law considered it an unclean occupation. Peter was already beginning to break down his prejudice against the people who were not of his kind and who had customs that did not adhere to Jewish religious traditions. Now, tomorrow's story is all about that, and Peter is going to learn a very valuable lesson. And I just think it's interesting how Peter is this great person who raises somebody from the dead, and yet he's got a lot to learn too. Oh yeah. And so for those of us who are listening who said, hey, I've been to Christian my whole life, I give a bunch of money, I serve I do this, I do that. You know, if we ever think ourselves highly, more highly of who we are, and we're not taking the posture of a learner and somebody who's ready to receive all of our blind spots in our lives, we have to be in a position to say I always have a lot to learn. Yeah, right, that's great. Yeah, it's just it's a really great foreshadow. Even if you've raised from somebody from the dead, right, right, you still have a little something to learn. Right. You could be the man or the woman, and you could be a Christian giant. And yet and if somebody approaches you and says, hey, I just have something to tell you. I think you're a jerk. Yeah. Well, if Peter hadn't learned this next lesson, it would have greatly handicapped of his ministry. Well, and not only that, but at the furthering of the Gospel to those who are non Jewish. Yes, which means you and I sitting here two thousand years later, right right. Peter's ability to open his heart and open his eyes and be willing to receive, you know, critiques about you know, his shortcomings has a direct connection to you and I sitting here. I used to have a professor that used to say, the greatest ability is teachability. Yeah, that's right, that's what you find in Peter. That's awesome. Well, that's probably a great place to stop. And we will see you tomorrow as we talk about the just the importance of a Roman centurion. Yes, it's gonna be really cool. So we see you then.