Good morning and welcome to our Madison Church online audience. Things going as smooth as ever at Madison Church. And this morning, I want to point out something that I think is true for all of us. Divine healing, whether we're talking about it practically or in abstract, as like a theological concept or whatever, it's it's complicated. Some of us have prayed and we've seen God move. And it's amazing. And it feels great, it's awesome. We post about it, we celebrate, we share with our friends. And on the flip side of that, others of us have prayed the same way, with the same faith, and nothing happened. And as great as the one feels, the other feels just as terrible and empty. Now, chances are you've been on both sides of this. Probably more on the side of which things didn't happen than the side of things that did when it did happen, but you've been on both sides of that. And that's why I think it's safe to say that divine healing is complicated. It stirs up complicated emotions. It's not just black and white. We have to hold space for a lot of different feelings and experiences. It's those experiences that I think shape the way we read a New Testament book like Acts. We hear a lot. Luke highlights healing all the time and prayers being answered. And so we can kind of walk into it and say, yeah, that's great. And I hope for that. But maybe throughout this series, and as we've been reading through Luke and Acts, you're kind of like, well, what about me? I'm not asking to be raised from the dead. I would just like a new job. You know, I would just like things to go better in my life. But Luke, who writes both his gospel and Acts, is trying to teach us that healing isn't just physical. I think that when we read through Acts, we see healing occurring in a lot of different ways. It's just for us as humans, physical beings, it's the physical healings and miracles that we're naturally drawn to ourselves. What Luke is trying to teach us, a theology of divine healing, also includes restoration, community, wholeness, God bringing life into places that were once dead. And so here's a big idea for us today. God's healing presence moves through ordinary people. As we talk about Aeneas and Tabitha, I want you to remember that these weren't famous people in the New Testament. They were everyday ordinary people in which God's healing worked. We ended the last series in Acts when Kyle was talking about Stephen, who was preaching, and then he turned around and he gets murdered. We began this series by talking about what happened after Stephen's murder, and that was that everyone fleed. They were scared of persecution, so they all left. And what looked like a disruption or setback actually leads a man named Philip to Samaria. For a Jewish man, going to Samaria was unthinkable. They weren't considered like fully human to the Jewish people, but that's where Philip went. And that's where Philip begins to see a revival. And just as things are heating up for Philip, he's led out. He leaves behind the crowds and has a conversation with someone else. And from that, Peter and John are sent from Jerusalem to check in on what's going on in Samaria and with Philip. Remember, the early church is very young, it's very new, and they just want to make sure that what's happening is part of the Jesus movement and not some sort of like perversion of it, not some sort of getting off-track way. So they go there, and that's where we left Peter two weeks ago. We left Peter in Samaria. When Luke takes us on a detour and says, by the way, while all of this is happening, that the early church is scattering and Philip is doing these crazy things over in Samaria, and Peter's checking it out. Saul, if you remember him, helped Stephen get killed, has his own kind of conversion moment. And then Luke says, okay, now you got to hold that. We're going back to Peter. I don't want you to lose the ark. Something is happening beyond the scope of every individual story that we see. God is going somewhere. What seems like disruption is Philip to the Samaritans and Peter checking that out, and Saul converting to Christianity and where we are today, which is that God is opening the door for the Gentiles, everyone who isn't a Jew, to experience him in fullness. It wasn't a wham, bam, here it is moment, but little stories along the way of obedience, little disruptions, everyone playing their ordinary part for extraordinary purposes. And so today we're going to Acts 9, beginning with verse 32. If you'd like to follow along, we're going to see that Peter takes some small but significant steps that will open the door for the gospel expanding like never before. And as Kyle mentioned in his opening bit, these aren't loud moments. There aren't not these huge crowds that we've come accustomed to. There's no sermons, there's just rooms with people experiencing pain and loss. As we read, I'm going to kind of maybe point out some things that are occurring in the story that I think should inform our view of healing as we understand it as followers of Jesus, which we don't assume everyone is, but as a follower of Jesus, how do we understand healing? We're going to extract some things that I think Luke is trying to communicate to us. The first one is that prayer will lead us to greater dependence on God. Luke was going to draw our attention to something easily missed. When Peter arrives to Tabitha, before he says a word or does anything, Luke writes, Peter knelt down and he prayed. Peter doesn't rush in with the plan. Although Peter's healed many people before, he knows that's quite in the realm of possibilities. He still walks into this room and he kneels and he prays. He doesn't rely on his experience, his education, his gifting. He doesn't perform. Peter simply kneels and he prays. It's not flashy, it's not dramatic, it's just surrender. Eugene Peterson says this about prayer and this type of prayer. He says, prayer is never the first word. It is always the second. God has the first word. And so when Peter walks into the room with grieving people, before he says, Well, God must want this person healed, or I must do this, or I must do that, Peter stops and says, God, what is it, in fact, that you want me to do here? What is it that we ought to do? You see, because prayer isn't convincing God to act. Prayer is us waking up to what God is already doing, discerning it, finding clarity. And that brings us to the truth that healing is God's work, not our own. We don't do it by our power. We don't manufacture healing. We cannot force healing on another. But rather, healing begins in listening, it begins in surrender, just as Peter shows us. When Peter kneels and he prays, he's saying, This is your work, Jesus, not mine. He knows the power doesn't come from within himself. The next thing we see is that through signs and wonders, mercy is made visible. That God's love is made so you can see it. Aeneas walking again, he was a man who couldn't walk again, he can walk again. And Tabitha rising from the dead, they sound like headline miracles, and they certainly would be today. But Luke wants us to see the mercy beneath the miracles. These wonders weren't for performance to go around and tell everyone how awesome Peter is. Rather, they were acts of mercy that pointed to the one true resurrected and living God who was healing what was broken and pulling people back into community and life as he intended. Nowhere is that clearer, I think, than Tabitha. Tabitha wasn't known for a platform or preaching. As a matter of fact, this is the first and last time you're going to hear about her. What does Luke tell us about her? She's a woman known in her community, her little neighborhood, for her compassion, her presence, her simple, faithful acts of love, especially towards the widows in her neighborhood. Richard Foster captures her life in his take on serving. Foster says, Service is not a list of things we do. Rather, serving is a way of living that finds its meaning in the mundane. Tabitha's everyday mercy had been healing her city long before Peter arrives. Tabitha was healing her city long before Peter arrived. And when she dies, the community gathers and they're holding garments that she made, and they're telling stories about Tabitha and her generosity, and they are heartbroken. She's gone. And the truth for us today is that healing is broader than physical. Yes, Aeneas walks and Tabitha rises, but what we see in the story is that those grieving widows were also healed. Healed of the hopelessness, healed of their grief, healed of the isolation. Because healing in scripture isn't just about bodies being made whole. It's about belonging, it's about being restored. And let me say this clearly, as I've done frequently throughout our series in Luke and Acts, disability isn't a brokenness that needs fixing. Disability is a part of the diversity of God's creation. And true biblical divine healing doesn't erase our differences. Rather, it restores our dignity. And that's precisely what God is doing here. Throughout all of this, our the Holy Spirit is working. We've seen throughout Luke and Acts this emphasis. And in this story, we see that the Holy Spirit doesn't always come down with fire and speaking in tongues. Sometimes it's quiet, or he's quiet and guiding through power. The Holy Spirit is not named in this particular passage, but their presence is everywhere. It's the same Spirit who sends Philip to the desert. It's the same spirit who meets Saul on the road to Damascus. It's the same spirit who now leads Peter into a room full of grief. Leads Peter to pray, leads to mercy and miracles. Not with wind, not with fire, but with presence and prompting and compassion. This is the spirit forming Peter into someone who can carry the gospel into places he can't even imagine yet. Peter has seen people raised from the dead, and yet he cannot yet imagine what God is about to do in the world. Something that we have to hold today is that healing happens in community, not just individually. Tabitha's life had already been healing her city. Her mercy had been stitching people together. And when she rises, the whole community around her, that neighborhood experiences restoration also. Healing and acts can happen to us, it can happen among us, and often it happens through us, a plurality of us. The spirit heals bodies at a time, but they also heal communities. The spirit heals relationships, and the spirit restores our sense of belonging. What Luke also goes to show us is that evangelism is what happens when mercy moves outward. There's one more theme that Luke shows us that mercy moves the message of God outward. We read in verse 35 that after Aeneas is healed, all those who live there turn to the Lord. We read with Tabbitha that many believed in the Lord. What we see are not just isolated incidences of healing, but when this occurs, people believe. Not a sermon that's recorded, not preaching, not the this huge revival. There's no stage, there's no microphones. Rather, what people do, the reason that they turn to God in this moment is because they witness a restoration that they desire. And in that mercy becomes mission and the gospel spreads, not through intelligent explanation, but through restoration and not through volume, but rather through individual presence, not through a polished speech, but through the healing work of God in ordinary, everyday people. This is Luke's rhythm throughout Acts. Prayer births mercy. It begins with prayer, surrendering to God. But it's that mercy that reveals the spirit who is always at work in and around and through us. And then that spirit propels the gospel, this message of Jesus outward. And that's still how people come to Jesus today. Not necessarily something we say, not necessarily something we post or something we argue. But what will turn hearts and minds to Jesus is our compassion. It's our mercy. When we share one another's burdens, when we share in each other's grief, and start to wonder about the God behind that community. So how do we join God in this? I mean, what would it look like today for us to take this Acts 9 and live it out in our everyday lives? I think the first thing is that we have to be interruptible. And I know not many of us are. I know I'm not. Peter was traveling, he already had an itinerary, he had travel plans, he was going somewhere, he had goals. Aeneas and Tabitha were not on the schedule. God's spirit rarely fits into your calendar. If you are not seeing God work in your life, perhaps I might suggest you are not leaving room for him to work in your life. The spirit may nudge you towards someone this week through a text, a visit, or a conversation you didn't plan for. Pause. Be open to that. Maybe God is at work. Mercy begins with being interruptible. Well, the second thing is after we've been interrupted, let's be present. It's easy for me, and if you're like me, when you're interrupted, to be thinking about the thing that you have to work on, that you want to work on, that you've been leaning toward working on. When Peter arrives at Tabitha's home, he enters the grief in the room. He kneels, he prays, he is present before he is active. And in a world that wants quick fixes, sometimes the most Christ-like thing you can do is to simply be there. To simply give someone your undivided attention. Healing begins with presence, not proclamation. And the third thing we can do, interrupt, be interruptible, be present, but be faithful. We don't do this on our own. Tabitha didn't change her city by preaching a sermon. She changed it with a needle and a thread. Small acts of mercy offered with great love. It was a quiet service that stitched people together. Her faithfulness carried heaven's weights. These little things that went unseen by many were powerful. You don't need a stage to change a life. You don't need to be an Instagram influencer to change a life. You just gotta be faithful. Ordinary mercy, ordinary mercy is never just ordinary to God. So show up for someone who is hurting this week. And not to offer to fix what you perceive as broken, but to simply be there and to sit in grief and to carry one another's burdens as a quiet presence. Make the phone call, send the handwritten note, buy them the drink, offer to pray. These are small acts of mercy like Tabitha that can change Madison. Now, Luke ends the passage by saying Peter stayed in Joppa with a tanner named Simon. I love this point because it seems like who cares where Peter stays. But if you'll remember, Luke is an investigative journalist. And he's saying to anyone who in the first century is reading this letter, if you don't believe me, there's a tanner named Simon in Joppa. Go ask him. He'll verify everything I have said. Because Luke doesn't expect you to just take everything he writes and believe it. That's actually not what we see in the early church. That faith is just believing whatever I'm told. What we see in the early church in the Christians are that we can hear things and say, wait, can I can I trust that? Does that hold up? It doesn't show a lack of faith. Oftentimes it shows the opposite. It shows a faith that is thinking and working through. And Luke doesn't rebuke that. He puts it in the scripture. That's passed on to you and me today. And you and I cannot go to Joppa and find a tanner named Simon today. Which means we have to take the principle of the text. And what is the principle? It's okay to kick the tires, it's okay to take the test drive. Luke gives names, jobs, locations his way of saying, if you don't believe me, see what they say. An interesting detail is that a tanner was ritually unclean to Jewish people, such as Peter. It's another boundary line moving as God is opening the door to the gospel reaching the Gentile community. This is the doorway to Acts 10 and what we're going to talk about next week when Peter encounters Cornelius. Mercy is preparing Peter for what's next. The story we're watching in Acts isn't really just about Peter, Aeneas, or Tabbitha. It's about the risen Jesus continuing his ministry through his people as he still does today. And just as he worked through Tabbitha, Aeneas and Peter, he can work through you. And he works through me, and he works through us. So at Madison Church, let us be a people who are shaped first and foremost by prayer. A people who enter into rooms of pain, who carry mercy, not answers. And a people through whom Jesus still brings healing, sometimes miraculous, other times quiet. Because mercy isn't always dramatic. It's hardly ever loud. Mercy won't go viral, but mercy is where Jesus loves to do his best work.