[0:00] In your Bibles, turn to the New Testament, to the book of Acts, Acts chapter 3, and we're going to look at the first 10 verses of Acts chapter 3. Acts 3, verse 1 to 10. Luke writes the book of Acts for us and he says this.
[0:25] One day, Peter and John were going up to the temple at the time of prayer at three in the afternoon. Now a man who was lame from birth was being carried to the temple gate called Beautiful, where he was put every day to beg from those going into the temple courts.
[0:44] When he saw Peter and John about to enter, he asked them for money. Peter looked straight at him, as did John. And then Peter said, look at us. So the man gave them his attention, expecting to get something from them.
[0:59] Then Peter said, silver or gold I do not have. But what I do have I give you. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, walk. And taking him by the right hand, he helped him up and instantly the man's feet and ankles became strong.
[1:15] He jumped to his feet and began to walk. And then he went with them into the temple courts, walking and jumping and praising God. When all the people saw him walking and praising God, they recognized him as the same man who used to sit begging at the temple gate called Beautiful.
[1:31] And they were filled with wonder and amazement at what had happened to him. This is the word of the Lord. Let's pray. Let's ask for God's help as we study together this morning.
[1:43] Father God, we thank you for your word. We thank you for the truth of your word. We thank you that it is trustworthy. We thank you that we can build our lives upon it. We thank you for the privilege that we have every Sunday of sitting under your word, Lord.
[1:59] And we ask that you would grant us the great mercy of being able to hear very clearly what is in the pages of Scripture. That we might know you, we might love you, and we might be changed by the glorious gospel message that we see contained here.
[2:13] Father, let your spirit be at work, changing us, making us like your son. We ask for Christ's sake and we ask for his help in this process.
[2:24] Amen. So we're back in our series. Well, not back. We were there last week. So we continue in our series in the book of Acts. Acts chapter 3. We're making progress.
[2:35] We're out of chapter 2. We're into chapter 3. So for those of you who are going like, this sermon series is never, ever, ever, ever going to end. We are moving from chapter to chapter. So there is progress here. We've got a snapshot, as I alluded to earlier, a snapshot of the early church.
[2:49] Acts chapter 2. You get this picture. Like, this is what the very, very, very first Christians were like. I love that sort of stuff. I love all, like, old photos of the city of Cape Town. Like, areas where I live.
[3:00] Where you can see, like, what it looked like before. Like, all the development. And so I always like to know, what is stuff really, really like right at the back of the beginning? And that's what we're getting in Acts. This is what it was like really, really right back in the beginning.
[3:13] And we saw that snapshot of the early church. The sort of things they were doing together. Now we start to see the mission of the church. What they're actually doing or trying to achieve together in relation to the people around them.
[3:25] We saw inside their church. Now we're seeing what happens to them when they relate to the people outside of them. I'm not sure what comes to your mind when I say that word mission. Maybe you think of Tom Cruise when I say that word mission.
[3:38] If you're more sanctified, maybe you think of missionaries. Going to foreign lands. Preaching the gospel like William Carey or David Livingston. By the way, if you did not know that, that desk over there used to belong to David Livingston.
[3:50] The actual David Livingston. Which is kind of a cool thing that we have here. I grew up in a church that would often have different missionaries come and visit on Sunday mornings to share about the work that they were doing in different nations.
[4:03] Different cultures. Things they were engaged in. And I remember always thinking. And this is not a diss or a comment on any of our wonderful missionaries who work with us in this church.
[4:14] Or related to our church. But as a young kid, I can always remember thinking this. That missionaries always dressed badly. Always dressed badly. Like I could tell that there was a visiting missionary coming to share their testimony by the way they were dressed in the congregation that morning.
[4:28] At least back in like the 80s and 90s. That was it. Now that might actually be in part because churches were not always that thoughtful back then. In how they supported foreign missions.
[4:40] So they'd give money to missionaries. But they'd also do other things like give old clothes. I was once told by a missionary that he received a package of used clothing from a very well-meaning family in the sending church.
[4:54] I was sending him out as a missionary. When he opened inside, what he found was a box of what we might call previously loved underwear. So maybe the blame for badly dressed missionaries back in the 80s and the 90s shouldn't go to the missionaries themselves.
[5:10] Maybe it should go elsewhere. But as a youngster in my mind, if you see the word mission, that's what came to my mind. Missionaries. But what is the actual mission of the church?
[5:21] If I had to say, what is the mission of the church? Is it just to send out foreign missionaries away to foreign lands? What is it? In the book aptly titled The Mission of the Church, two authors, Greg Gilbert and Kevin DeYoung, they summarize the mission of the church this way.
[5:37] They say, The mission of the church is to go into the world and make disciples by declaring the gospel of Jesus Christ in the power of the spirit and gathering these disciples into churches that they might worship the Lord and obey his commands now and in eternity to the glory of God the Father.
[5:54] Now that going into the world, that can be going to kind of northern Mongolia or it can be going to Kluge Street, Cape Town. The key is not how far you're going.
[6:07] The key is what you're going to do. Make disciples through the declaring of the gospel. That's the mission of the church. And so in Acts now, we start to see the beginnings of that in this New Testament church.
[6:19] We see the disciples, the apostles, empowered by the Holy Spirit, starting to branch out. One way, as we specifically look at this passage this morning, one way to think about the mission of the church, it's not the only way, but one way to think about the mission of the church is that the church, the mission of the church is the church helping the world to see what they truly need.
[6:42] The church helping the world to see what they truly need. And the way that happens here in this passage is through a miracle, a healing miracle. Now a little quick word on miracles, and this is probably not going to satisfy you, and it needs a whole sermon, and so I might just irritate some of you by saying this, but let me say it anyway.
[6:58] You'll remember in the previous passage that wonders and signs were being performed by the apostles. So in chapter 2, verse 42, we're told the apostles were performing wonders and signs. These were the miraculous supernatural signs prophesied in the Old Testament.
[7:13] You remember Peter quotes all these things that are coming from the Old Testament, that we were told would accompany the pouring out of God's Holy Spirit. Because of that, I am not persuaded that the sort of miracles that we see here in the book of Acts are normative for the church in all times and all places.
[7:33] In fact, they're not even, if you think about it, if you look in the book of Acts, they're not even consistently performed in the book of Acts itself, as if the apostles had this kind of power to indiscriminately heal and perform miracles at will, as they want.
[7:46] So just to give you an example of this, in Acts chapter 9, later on in the book, Peter will raise a woman named Tabitha from the dead. Very similar to one of Jesus' earlier miracles. He'll raise Tabitha from the dead.
[7:57] But then just a few chapters later, chapter 12, James, one of the apostles, really important guy, dies, and Peter doesn't raise him from the dead. So straight away, that tells us, I think, that the miracles we're seeing in the book of Acts are pointers and signs to something else.
[8:17] They're not supposed to be taken as, well, this is just normative patterns for how everything should happen in the church all the time. And what they do in Acts, and there's a lot of writing on this, but what they do is they authenticate this gospel message being preached by the apostles.
[8:29] They serve to underline the fact that this new era of the spirit and the gospel is underway. That there is a specific era of redemptive history in the end. And you think it makes sense that you would see all these miracles clustered around the time of the apostles.
[8:44] Because you've got to have them carry on the message of Jesus and have people watching them come along believe that this is actually being carried on by Jesus. And so they get the same authenticating signs that Jesus had in his ministry to prove this is the actual gospel message that they're bringing.
[9:01] It's the same message Jesus preached. They authenticate the gospel message. Now that's not to say that God does not miraculously heal today. I believe he does miraculously heal today.
[9:11] But the healing miracles we see in Acts play a very specific role in the narrative. Authenticating that gospel message that's being preached by the apostles. So with that kind of little quick aside on miracles let's see then how the mission of the church is played out here helping the world see what they really need to see.
[9:34] You'll notice Peter as he speaks to this beggar that we meet in the story he basically tells the beggar that he doesn't have something and that he actually does have something. He doesn't have something and he actually does have something.
[9:46] So those are our two points. What doesn't Peter have? And what does Peter have? What doesn't he have and what does he have? Here's the first thing. What he doesn't have. Look at verse 1.
[9:57] One day Peter and John were going up to the temple at the time of prayer at three in the afternoon. Now a man who was lame from birth was being carried to the temple gate called Beautiful where he was put every day to beg from those going into the temple courts.
[10:15] When he saw Peter and John about to enter he asked them for money. And Peter looked straight at him as did John and then Peter said look at us. And so the man gave his attention expecting to get something from them.
[10:28] And Peter said silver or gold I do not have but what I do have I give you. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth walk. So the fairly straightforward answer to the question what doesn't Peter have is silver and gold.
[10:48] In Cape Town if you get in your car and you drive particularly close to where this church building is but you can't really drive for more than 500 meters before a person is going to stand in front of you and ask you for money at any of your traffic lights.
[11:01] That's one of the unique realities of our city of the current socioeconomic climate in our country right now. And so the idea of a beggar asking for money is not an idea that's foreign to your average South African.
[11:16] My personal policy and this is not to put this on you and say well this is what the Bible says and you've got to do exactly what the pastor says on this but this is my personal policy policy is I generally don't give anything in those sorts of encounters.
[11:32] Rather I tend to give through our diaconal work here at the church and then to reputable NGOs who work in some of those areas. That's my sort of general rule of thumb. There are exceptions to that on some occasions but that's the kind of general rule of thumb.
[11:46] That's what I do. So the traffic light what will happen is someone will come up and I'll be sitting there in my car and they'll come up and ask for money and I'll sort of just, normally the windows up, I'll raise my hand and sort of mouth the words sorry I can't help you.
[12:00] It's interesting to me though to sit in a car and watch other people around me and to watch and see how they respond to people asking for money. Some people shake their head, that's all they do.
[12:12] Some people will scratch around for coins furiously until the light changes and then speed off quickly. Some people ignore altogether. And then some people make a gesture that looks like they're saying, I don't have anything.
[12:29] As if to kind of say, if I did have something I would give to you but I don't actually have anything. Now it can sound like Peter's saying that here. I don't have anything. If I had something I'd give to you but I don't actually have anything.
[12:41] But several readers and commentators in the book of Acts have looked at Peter's words and they thought, well you know what? It's not true. Peter does have silver and gold.
[12:53] The previous passage suggests that he has access to silver and gold to help the poor. This is straight after the end of Acts chapter 2 verse 45. The believers sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need.
[13:06] Straight after that. The assumption is that Peter had the means to give to the beggar. To use kind of an older language he had to give alms to the poor.
[13:18] Which suggests that he's not just making like a casual comment. You're oh I don't have any cash. He's making a theological statement. That tells us something about the mission of the church.
[13:31] And what's he saying? Think about it this way. So this man is lame from birth. Crippled from birth. We know he's around about 40 years old now.
[13:41] Just over 40 years old. We know that from later on in the next chapter. So his life has been totally and utterly consumed by his ailment. To use more sort of contemporary language we might use today.
[13:56] You might say that his identity has been inseparably tied up with this particular ailment. It's dominated every single feature of his being.
[14:07] As long as he can remember. He has to be carried by other people just to get to the temple to be able to beg for silver and gold. That was his life. And so he asks Peter and John.
[14:23] He asks them for money. What he's doing is he's asking them for lifeblood. He's asking them for his daily bread. In a full sense of what that means. And Peter leans in.
[14:36] Peter focuses in on him. The text is actually quite deliberate there. He focuses in on him in verse 4. Peter who has the means to give him silver and gold, remember. And then Peter says, look at us.
[14:48] Look at me and John. There's something really important I'm about to tell you. And so the man gives him his full attention. Expecting to get something. Expecting to get his daily bread.
[15:00] Expecting to get that lifeblood from them. Expecting silver and gold. Which is what we would have expected. From the previous chapter. And Peter says, silver and gold have I none.
[15:12] I don't have what you think is your daily bread. I don't have that thing that you think is the most important thing to you. That thing that you think that you need more than anything else.
[15:26] In fact, I think Peter is really by implication saying silver and gold is not actually your life. Silver and gold is not your life. There's a line in Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice.
[15:39] Never read it. Hate Shakespeare. But this line is good. There's a line that goes, all that glitters is not gold. It's an aphorism.
[15:51] It's actually much older than Shakespeare. But the most popular form comes to us from Shakespeare. All that glitters is not gold. The basic idea is that just because it looks shiny. Just because you desire it.
[16:04] Just because you think you need it. You must have it. Doesn't mean it's actually of enduring worth to you. I think Peter is ultimately saying that to this beggar at the gate.
[16:16] And there are actually clues in the text that back up this. So Luke gives us details in the story that on the first reading seem somewhat inconsequential. But when you see them, when you really see them, they add weight to this idea that he is exposing the shiny, really.
[16:32] He is exposing those things that are alluring to us. So besides obviously telling us this particular story straight after telling us about how the disciples sold all their possessions and shared with everyone who had need, there's this intriguing mention of a gate where the beggar is laid down.
[16:55] A gate to the temple called Beautiful. And several scholars and archaeologists have tried to figure out where exactly is this gate in the old first century temple complex. The temple that Herod built.
[17:06] Beautiful, beautiful big structure. Which of the gates, we knew there were different gates going from the different courts. Which of the gates is this gate beautiful? And the general consensus is that this is the gate that the Jewish historian, Josephus, very famous Jewish historian from the late first century, wrote in the late first century.
[17:22] This is the gate that he wrote about. Now Josephus, if you go back and you read his writings, he said this gate was truly, truly beautiful in a way that set it apart from all the other gates into the temple.
[17:33] And he mentions that this gate had this Corinthian bronze over it that came from the city of Corinth and made it really, really stand out. And then interestingly, he said that this gate, and I quote, This gate far exceeded in value those gates that were plated with silver and set in gold.
[17:54] Now isn't that fascinating? A Jewish historian, writing around about the same time that the New Testament is being written, and he describes this gate as being more glorious than the other gates plated in silver and gold.
[18:10] The very thing that Peter, staying in front of this gate, says, I don't have. I don't have for you. The very thing Peter is implying that this beggar doesn't actually ultimately need.
[18:24] So I think our attention is being drawn to the silver and gold and to Peter's refusal to give it. Refusal to give it to this man, even though to this man, silver and gold is life itself.
[18:38] It's the most important thing. It seems to me that Peter must be saying, you need something more than this. You need something more than silver and gold.
[18:50] You think that's what you need more than anything else, but it's not. You need something more than this. You see, the mission of the church, friends, is to explain, to proclaim Christ. And part of proclaiming Christ to this world is saying, you're running after everything that glitters.
[19:10] You're running after everything that is shiny, and you're saying to yourself, I must have that thing, and if I don't have that thing, I won't be complete. But the Christian message is, all that glitters is not gold. And it's particularly pertinent with this beggar.
[19:26] Because of all the people in the world, you might look at him and think, well, actually, he really does need silver and gold more than anything else.
[19:38] And yet the Bible would come to us and say, no, you're wrong if you think that. You're wrong if you think that. This healing miracle is actually very, very similar to Jesus' healing of the paralytic in Mark chapter 2.
[19:51] The paralytic in Mark's gospel also needs to be carried around. The paralytic is also dominated by this ailment. And the paralytic also gets a surprising response. Instead of Jesus saying to this man, stand up and walk, let me give you the one thing that you believe you need more than anything else, and Jesus has the power to do it, instead he says, instead of saying, stand up and walk, he says to this man, son, your sins are forgiven.
[20:18] That's in the same ballpark as saying, silver and gold have I none. Like Jesus before in Peter is saying, you think your ailment is the most pressing thing in your life.
[20:31] It's not. It's not. And I think both Peter and Jesus would say the same thing to each of us this morning. You think job security is the most pressing thing in your life right now.
[20:46] It's not. You think getting married and romance, finding that person you want to spend the rest of your life with right now is the most pressing thing in your life right now. It's not. You think getting approval and acclaim and status from your peers or from your colleagues or from your family is the most pressing and important thing in your life right now.
[21:03] Now it's not. If you came to Peter and you said, hey Peter, what I really need is to make it in my career. That's what I need.
[21:14] If I could do that, if I could just make it in my career, then I'd have worth, I'd feel like I've achieved something with my life. Peter's going to say to you, silver and gold have I none. You come in and say, hey Peter, what I really, really need is to be rid of this debilitating illness that I have.
[21:28] If I could just be rid of this debilitating illness that has dogged my life for so long, then I'd be able to flourish, I'd really be able to make something of my life. And Peter says, silver and gold have I none. There is no part of your life, bar one, and we'll come to that in a second, but there's no part of your life that you can bring to Peter and say, surely this glitters.
[21:52] Surely this is the most important thing. Surely this is the gold. Surely this is the one thing that I need more than anything else. There is no part of your life that you can take and you can bring to Peter as your ultimate need, where he is not going to respond to you with, silver and gold have I none.
[22:09] And so friends, I want to say to you, you will never ever understand the gospel and the true worship of God if you don't first understand that. If you're not crystal clear on that, first of all.
[22:21] It's in the first commandment. Ten commandments. You shall have no other gods before me. It's the same thing. Many of us, I think, believe that at a conceptual level.
[22:34] Like there's no objection. There's no one sticking up their hands saying, Stephen, I disagree with the first commandment. But we spend our lives chasing all their glitters. How do you know this?
[22:46] Well, we put our very best of effort, the very best of our time, the very best of our resources into chasing the shiny. I would ask you to do just a mental exercise right now as you sit in this pew.
[22:59] Look at your lives right now and look at how you allocate your very best effort, your very best time, and your very best resources. When you look at that very carefully, what does it communicate about your life right now?
[23:11] And where you believe true silver and gold is found. Now, I know some of you will say, well, hang on, Stephen.
[23:23] There are so many things that demand my time. Things I don't have control over. They demand my time. They demand my energy in so many ways. And so the things of God get crowded out.
[23:33] Like regular Sunday worship, personal devotion, prayer. There are so many pressures on me. The state of our economy, overbearing bosses, expectations from my family, illness I'm struggling with, the concern of being left out or being left behind.
[23:48] So many different pressures on me that I have to give my best effort, my best energy to these other things. I know that, friends. I know those pressures are there. I have those same pressures.
[24:01] Many of them feel like insurmountable pressures to me. And it's actually because of those pressures, because of the very existence of those pressures that I know are there and I know are real, that this passage is actually such a stinging rebuke.
[24:15] Because here is a man who is weighed down by all of the worst that life can throw at somebody. All he can do is he can lie in a heap by a gate and lift up his hand and hope that somebody has mercy on him and put some silver or gold in it.
[24:39] And when he looks into Peter's eyes, expecting to get that, basically to say, I really, really need that silver and gold. You don't understand my circumstances, Peter.
[24:52] You don't understand how difficult my life is, Peter. I need that silver and gold. Even in the face of that, Peter still says to him, silver and gold have I none.
[25:07] Talk about Christians being insensitive. It's a hard word. It's a really hard word. So if we don't ultimately need silver and gold, what do we need?
[25:26] What do we truly need? Where's the true silver? Where's the true gold? Here's the second point. What does Peter have? Look down at verse 6. Then Peter said, silver or gold I do not have, but what I do have I give you.
[25:43] In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, walk. Taking him by the right hand, he helped him up, and instantly the man's feet and ankles became strong. He jumped to his feet and began to walk.
[25:55] And then he went with them into the temple courts, walking and jumping and praising God. When all the people saw him walking and praising God, they recognized him as the same man who used to sit begging at the temple gate, called Beautiful.
[26:07] And they were filled with wonder and amazement at what had happened to him. Peter goes right to the root and takes the man's ailment completely away.
[26:20] Now you might look at that and you might say, but after all you've just said, Stephen, isn't that a little bit superficial? I mean, just because he can walk now doesn't mean he's not going to still go on and become a nadoliter who doesn't worship God.
[26:36] Why doesn't Peter go on after the deeper issue, the idols of his heart, like the real, the sin beneath the sin here, the real problem? Well, that's where the nature of the miracles in Acts is really important for us.
[26:50] If all this miracle was doing was restoring this man's legs, well then, sure. But the miracles in Acts do so much more than that.
[27:01] The miracles point to something greater than themselves. Remember the book of Acts opens up with these words right at the beginning. Luke says, In my former book, Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus began to do and teach.
[27:15] So Luke's making pretty clear that what he's telling us now in the book of Acts, through the Acts of the Apostles, is a continuation of the work of Jesus, of what Jesus began to do and teach.
[27:27] That's why so many of the miracles, and you'll see this over and over again, so many of the miracles of the apostles that they perform are so very similar to the miracles that Jesus performed. Their ministry is an extension of the ministry of Jesus.
[27:41] That's why Peter heals in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth. That's not Peter healing this man. It's Jesus healing the man. And as with Jesus' miracles in the Gospels, these miracles in Acts, they all point beyond themselves to the overall redeeming, saving work that Jesus has come to do.
[28:06] Nick Batzig is a Presbyterian pastor in South Carolina, and he writes this, he says, if it were possible for someone to combine all of the maladies of those who experienced the miraculous power of Christ during his earthly ministry into one person, that person would be a fully deformed person.
[28:26] According to Scripture, Jesus healed the blind, the lame, the deaf, the dumb, lepers, epileptics, paralytics, cripples, a woman with a fever, a woman with an unstoppable flow of blood, a man with a withered hand, most astonishingly, Jesus raised the dead.
[28:42] Christ came into the world to reverse the miserable effects of sin brought into this world by Adam. See, that's what all the miracles scream out over and over and against us.
[28:54] Christ came to save from sin and the misery that comes from sin. He came to take all the evil, all the suffering, all the hardship that Adam and we as the sons and daughters of Adam bring into this world to take all of that and to throw it into the deepest, darkest pit in hell.
[29:12] That's what the miracles communicate. You see, deep down, this crippled man, he knew he couldn't actually get the one thing that he needed more than anything else because he sat at that gate every day and he watched people day in, day out, participating in something very special that he probably wanted but could never ever have.
[29:41] What do I mean by that? Well, think about it this way. Unless you are an atheist, every religious person of any kind of religious persuasion, but any religious person must concede that there can be nothing more important in this life than connecting with the divine.
[30:01] If you're religious in any way, you have to believe that because religion itself is premised on the idea that the material world that we all see around us, that we can experience with our senses, is not all there is, but there's a divine being or at least a divine mind behind all that is created.
[30:16] Now, if that is the case, which is what religion suggests, there can be logically nothing more important than communion with that divine being. That just makes sense.
[30:30] Now, this crippled man, he sits in the midst of a very religious culture and at the center of that religious culture, at the center of that religion is communion with God and that communion of God takes place in the temple.
[30:44] Every single day, people go through those gates into the temple to commune with God. But not everybody could go through those gates or at least not quite in the same way.
[30:59] So there was a separate court for women in that first century temple. There was a court further out for Gentiles, non-Jewish people. Those two groups had limited access to the prayers and the sacrifices.
[31:12] And then there was another class of people prohibited from going into the inner courts where the sacrifices were made. The lame, the crippled, and the deformed. So he would have sat there every single day watching people go in to commune with God, to say prayers, to offer sacrifices for sin.
[31:40] But he couldn't go in. He couldn't touch the divine. He couldn't offer sacrifices for sin. And so to him, in his desperate, desperate state, Peter says, in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, walk.
[31:55] And instantly, his ankles and his feet become strong. Suddenly, he's not deformed anymore. Suddenly, he's able to go in and commune with his Lord.
[32:09] And boy, does he go in. Like, he doesn't waste any time jumping and praising God. Did any of you ever learn the Sunday school song? Walking and leaping and praising God.
[32:21] Walking and... Nobody? Anybody know that song? The lame man leaps. The lame man leaps. The deformed man dances. The crippled man cries out in praise to God.
[32:34] You need that. You need that deep communion with God. That's what you need more than anything else. You need to have sin in all of its grotesque deformity stripped away from you through the forgiveness that comes in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth.
[32:53] That's the true gold. That's the true silver. I mentioned Shakespeare's little aphorism, but there's another literary genius who put a different spin on it. I have actually read this one.
[33:06] Instead of all that glitters is not gold, J.R.R. Tolkien wrote, all that is gold does not glitter. The truest gold in life does not always have the obvious shine.
[33:21] Nowhere in life is that truer than with the redeeming, saving work of Jesus Christ that enables this deformed man to commune with his heavenly father.
[33:36] Because it is Christ himself who is hideously disfigured at the cross that brings us into the inner court of God's forgiving love.
[33:48] Isaiah the prophet says his appearance was so disfigured beyond that of any human being. If you were there on that day, if you were at Golgotha outside the city of Jerusalem and you gazed up at the crucifixion, you would know right there in that moment there was nothing shiny.
[34:04] Nothing shiny about the cross. Nothing attractive, nothing beautiful. The only emotion that that moment would elicit from you if you were there would be pity. The same kind of pity you would give to a man crippled from birth sitting, begging, at a temple gate.
[34:19] Christ on the cross does not litter. But Christ on the cross is the purest gold you will ever, ever find. The redemptive power that comes from the name of our crucified Lord is more precious than all of the silver, all of the gold in this world because it brings us into the inner court of God's love and forgiveness.
[34:45] There's nothing in your life that's more important than that. Nothing. How can there be anything in your life that's more important than that? Than that love and it is the mission of the church then to propagate that love through proclaiming this gospel message.
[35:02] There's nothing more important, more meaningful, more ultimately satisfying for you than to order your whole life around the true silver and the true gold.
[35:16] In fact, I would even put it to you that you'll never be able to rightly order all of those other things in your life. So building a career, having a family, loving your neighbor, fulfilling all your duties and your dreams and your hopes.
[35:29] You'll never be able to order all of those other things correctly if you don't have the true silver and the gold right at the very top. It's what St. Augustine taught in the 4th century. It's what's in the Bible here.
[35:41] Also, you will never, and this is for those of you who are struggling, you will never be able to walk through darkness or severe illness or severe loss or severe relational hurt with poise and contentment and hope if you haven't got that true silver and that gold at the very, very top.
[36:06] Friends, I ask you to do that little thought experiment to look at your lives and say, where's your very best energy and your very best efforts going? And I would just plead with you to look at that and to reorder, to reorder and to put the true silver and the true gold right at the very, very top because that's where the true glitter is.
[36:30] That's where what is truly shiny really, really is. Let's pray together.