Text: Acts 9:32-43 | Listen to Message

Jesus demands the impossible

 

The two miracles in this text are linked by several astonishing similarities that illustrate the amazing, life-changing power of the Gospel.

First, note that the characters in both stories were trapped in hopeless, incurable conditions: Aeneas was paralyzed and Tabitha was dead.

But each story takes a sudden and dramatic turn when something absurd happens: Peter tells both of them to rise. You might as well tell a blind person to look at you; paralyzed and dead people don’t stand to their feet. This is an impossible command…except for one thing.

In that moment when Peter commanded the impossible, the power of Jesus entered into Aeneas and Tabitha, and renewed their strength. The effects of sin were reversed and they experienced a foretaste of the new creation in Christ.

Aeneas and Tabitha are meant to help us see our spiritual condition apart from Jesus: we’re desperately broken and we have no innate ability to heal ourselves. God gives us one simple command, “Repent and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ,” but dead people don’t obey. And that’s the bad news.

But here’s the Good News: what God requires of us, Christ empowers in us. Though we are dead in our sins, God brings us to life through the free grace of Jesus!