Acts 3:6-8 “Then Peter said, ‘Silver or gold I do not have, but what I have I give you. 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. Then he went with them into the temple courts, walking and jumping and praising God.”

Jesus’ gifts changed the lame man’s life in two ways. Most obvious is the change to his temporal life, his earthly state. In an instant he goes from being a cripple to a man who can walk and jump. This was no slow process of healing and physical therapy. He didn’t have to suffer through surgery, wait for the cast to come off, spend months doing special exercises. The feet and ankles not only became strong. He instantly knew how to use them, though he had been crippled from birth.

You or I probably aren’t going to receive a miracle on this scale. That doesn’t mean we haven’t been receivers of Jesus’ mercy on our lives or haven’t been blessed as Christians in the way he cares for our physical needs each day. Who knows what tragedies he has kept away? Look at the standard of living the poorest of us enjoy compared to most people through most of time. As believers who know Jesus’ grace and mercy, we have been given tools to cope with the curve balls life does throw at us, faith that can offer us less stress and more contentment right now without changing the externals at all.

And don’t think that Jesus’ gift to the lame man meant only changes that made his life easier. Today his feet and ankles were healed. Tomorrow he had to find a new way to support himself. He couldn’t go on begging. He would have to work, and likely that work would mean sweat and sore muscles. I suspect he was grateful for the opportunity, but being able-bodied comes with its own unpleasant features. Don’t be surprised when God’s material gifts in your life come with their own uncomfortable or unpleasant side effects. Homes and property and vehicles and even healthy bodies have to be maintained, or they aren’t so enjoyable to have and use. That maintenance can be expensive or cost us long hours of hard work. This isn’t heaven yet, no matter how the Lord blesses us here, and it is another gift of his that allows us to recognize that.

The second change Jesus’ gift brought to the lame man’s life was spiritual. It filled his life with faith-born praise. “Then he went with them into the temple courts, walking and jumping and praising God.” Everyone has God’s gifts working in their lives, even all the wicked. “He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous,” Jesus pointed out in the Sermon on the Mount (Mat. 5:45). You know that’s right. My unbelieving neighbors have lawns just as green as mine, and homes as just as comfortable.

But God gives an even greater gift when he gives us the faith to see his gifts. The crippled man, of course, had no doubt where his legs got new strength. This filled his heart and mouth with praise, praise that spilled over into the way he was walking and jumping around the temple.

Do you suppose he felt good about his gift? You know, it is hard to feel sorry for yourself, it is hard to be bitter, it is hard to complain or be depressed when your mouth is full of words and songs of praise for God. It’s not that we lack reason to praise him. It’s that we don’t take time to think about his gifts. It’s that we let our attention drift and lose awareness of his gifts. If we will only remember and consider Jesus’ gifts, then they can change our hearts as well, and we can know something like the praise and joy of the man who received new strength for his legs and feet.

Acts 3:1-5 “One day Peter and John were going up to the temple at the time of prayer–at three in the afternoon. Now a man crippled 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. When he saw Peter and John about to enter, he asked them for money. Peter looked straight at him as did John. Then Peter said, ‘Look at us!’ So the man gave them his attention, expecting to get something from them.”

Go back a couple of months or so, to the first Easter weekend, and Peter and John were timid, cowardly men afraid to venture far from the house where they were hiding. Even after they saw Jesus’ empty tomb they stayed behind locked doors. Even after Jesus appeared to them Easter night, they laid low while they were in Jerusalem. Up until Pentecost day they stayed close to the other disciples in their rented home in Jerusalem.

But things were starting to change. After he rose, Jesus explained to them the meaning of his death on the cross and its necessity. It wasn’t a tragedy. It was the basis for the forgiveness of all sins, the salvation of the world. Their courage grew. Jesus poured the gift of the Holy Spirit out on them on Pentecost Day, ten days after he returned to heaven. Peter and John were bold to preach to the crowd of thousands that gathered to see what all the commotion was about when the Spirit came. Now they were regularly meeting with other Christians in the temple courts, openly practicing their faith perhaps just a couple hundred yards from where Jesus was tried and condemned. They were no longer timid cowards. The gifts of the gospel and the Spirit were turning them into brave soldiers of the cross.

Like Peter and John, we are people Jesus has given his gifts of grace and life so that we, in turn, could be givers. Maybe we have never hidden behind locked doors afraid that people might find out we are Christians. Maybe we don’t share those religious Facebook posts that suggest you aren’t a real Christian, or that you are ashamed of Jesus, or afraid to be identified with Christ if you don’t share it, not because we actually have any fear or embarrassment about our faith, but because we don’t want to encourage that kind of manipulative innuendo.

But maybe when we are face to face with a live human being, and the opportunity presents itself to bring our Savior into the conversation, we are afraid or uncomfortable to go there. Only one thing changes that. Jesus’s gifts make us givers of those same gifts. The more we hear, the more we understand, the more we receive his gifts of forgiveness, his promises of love and life, the less fearful we become, the bolder we are to tell others what we believe, especially when it comes to God’s grace.

Look again at Peter and John here. When the man asks them for money, what do they do? “Peter looked straight at him, as did John. Then Peter said, “Look at us!” Have you ever pulled up to a red light at an intersection where someone was panhandling? What do most drivers do? They try to avoid eye contact, so that they don’t have to engage with the person asking for help. Sitting at our church’s booth at the county fair, I notice a similar thing from the opposite side. I would like to engage people in conversation, but many walk by without looking at me. They avoid eye contact because they don’t want to talk about church or spiritual things.

Peter and John don’t avoid looking at the lame man. They initiate it. They are not afraid to involve themselves in this man’s life. They don’t find it a nuisance or distraction. Jesus’ gifts to spiritual beggars like themselves had changed them. It turned them into givers, men ready to show love and compassion to a crippled man seeking a gift.

Jesus’ gifts turn us into givers, too. That doesn’t mean we become easy marks for every con man who wants to relieve us of a few dollars. The apostles could identify the real disability, and thus the real need, of the man begging in the temple. We can be careful, too. But when we serve a master as generous as Jesus, we don’t have to fear getting involved or being taken advantage of. We can trust him to guide our giving and use it for his good purposes.

Deuteronomy 4:9 “Only be careful, and watch yourselves closely so that you do not forget the things your eyes have seen or let them slip from your heart as long as you live. Teach them to your children and to their children after them.”

God’s commands have value for our future. But you know how easy it is to sort of loosen up and take things less seriously with time. You know how with your first child you try to create an absolutely sterile environment, but by the time you get to your third or fourth you let them eat food off the floor and clean their binky by sticking it in your own mouth? You know how when you first make a recipe you measure everything precisely, but after a while you sort of eye it up and substitute ingredients for something that’s close? I once made macaroni and cheese by substituting ice cream for the milk. Don’t judge me. It worked.

The Lord doesn’t want us to let the same things happen with his commands. “Do not…let them slip from your heart as long as you live,” Moses says. Their value, their impact, their importance doesn’t get old, even if we do.

And don’t neglect to pass them along to the generations to come. “Teach them to your children and to their children after them.” Why mess up their lives? Why hold out on them? With money, Dave Ramsey talks about “changing your family tree” by teaching your children to use it better than you did. But with God’s commands, why “change the family tree” when you can keep a good one going. It doesn’t matter that your children are a new generation. Teach them what’s right. God’s commands will be worth keeping for as far as the future goes.

If you ever visit the state of Arizona, you should know that it is against the law to let your donkey sleep in the bathtub. I wouldn’t want you to get in trouble. That’s been the law of that state since 1924, but my guess is that the reasons for it have come and gone, and you can safely forget that little piece of legal trivia as soon as you leave here today.

God’s laws haven’t lost their value. They are the guide to a life that works, the basis for a good witness to others, an inheritance for our children’s children, and worth putting into practice today.

Deuteronomy 4:6-8 “Observe them carefully, for this will show your wisdom and understanding to the nations, who will hear about all these decrees and say, ‘Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people. What other nation is so great as to have their gods near them the way the Lord our God is near us whenever we pray to him? And what other nation is so great as to have such righteous decrees and laws as this body of laws I am setting before you today?”

The closer a society conforms itself to God’s commands, whether it’s a society of two in a relationship, or several in a family, or tens to hundreds in a church, or more still in a city or country, the better it functions. There are no perfect examples since all sin and fall short of the glory of God. But even in societies dominated by Christians, where there are problems, dysfunction, or just plain evil, that results from a departure from God’s commands, not from obedience to them.

A woman who attended my church noticed something strange after a few weeks. We had all these whole, complete, functioning families in one place. It didn’t look much like the world from which she had come. Statistically, I can tell you there is a reason for that. We often hear that one in two marriages ends in divorce. But a study by Paul and Richard Meier revealed that when the entire family attends church together, that drops to one in 40. And when Bible study and prayer are part of the home life each day, it drops to one in 400.

The point is, there is something appealing about happy functioning families. There is something appealing about people who are polite and courteous and don’t swear like sailors. People are drawn to groups of people that seem genuinely content with life, though they may not be particularly “rich.” This is the kind of lifestyle God’s commandments create if we keep them. More and more people may slander his commandments for being prudish, even an offense to human dignity and freedom. But they are still attracted to the lifestyle it creates. They may even be envious of it, and will try to reproduce it outside of God’s commands. That will always create a kind of mutant, an imperfect counterfeit that cannot function like the original.

Moses’ words served as a kind of prophecy for Israel. The golden years for this nation under Kings David and Solomon were far from perfect. The lives of the kings sometimes read like a soap opera. Yet it was a highpoint in the faith and life of the people. That produced a time of relative peace and prosperity. It was a witness to the nations. It was enough to draw the Queen of Sheba from over a thousand miles away to come and find out what was going on. She left praising Solomon’s wisdom and God’s love for this people.

But note how Moses slips something even more fundamental than commandment keeping into this description of Israel’s witness. “What other nation is so great as to have their gods near them the way the Lord our God is near us when we pray to him?” One of the Lord’s favorite words for Israel in Deuteronomy is “stiff-necked.” At least a half dozen times he picks up the theme of Israel’s rebellion in this book. And iniquities separate us from God.

Yet the defining characteristic of these people is that the Lord is near them. They were a forgiven people. And so are we. Our most important witness to the world around us isn’t found in our love or morality. Every day we fall short on those. But we belong to the God of grace who sent all our sins to the cross with his Son. He does not hold them against us. He does not let them divide us. He is near us. By faith he even lives in us.

A broken world just as sinful and damaged as we are needs this witness most of all, because they need this grace from God most of all. But often it will be the witness of our lives, keeping his commands of love, that will attract their attention first and give us the opportunity to introduce them to the Savior whose blood cleanses their souls.

Deuteronomy 4:1 “Hear now, O Israel, the decrees and laws I am about to teach you. Follow them so that you may live and may go in and take possession of the land that the Lord, the God of your fathers, is giving you. Do not add to what I command you and do not subtract from it, but keep the commands of the Lord your God that I give you.”

Here are the two advantages to keeping God’s commands. First, you get to live. Sometimes the connection between God’s commands and not dying are obvious. “You shall not murder,” he says in the fifth commandment. Obviously, people will live longer if we don’t go around killing each other.

With some commandments, the connection with life may be a little more subtle. I have read news stories about the rise of sexually transmitted diseases that don’t respond well to antibiotics. You can end up blind, maimed, or dead. In my lifetime AIDS has become a big deal. Last year alone nearly a million people died of HIV worldwide. Here’s a novel solution: “You shall not commit adultery,” the sixth commandment. Marry and stick to one sexual partner your whole life, and suddenly the fear of these diseases disappears.

In the fourth commandment, “Honor your father and mother,” God himself promises “that you may live a long life on the earth.” That’s not just because obedience makes your dad less likely to kill you. It’s because people who learn to obey their parents learn to obey their teachers, the police, their employers, and their government. They are far less likely to end up in poverty or a life of crime–both of which can seriously shorten your life. They are far less likely to die of some stupid risky behavior their parents told them not to do.

But bigger than all these specific examples is our general relationship with God. Through the prophet Isaiah the Lord once said to his people, “Your iniquities have separated you from your God; your sins have hidden his face from you so that he will not hear” (59:2). Something like a million and a half of these Israelites died in the desert during their forty years due to their rebellion. You don’t want to face eternity with the Almighty on your bad side.

Second, Moses makes note of the effect of commandment-keeping, not on the length of life, but its quality. “Follow them that you may live and may go in and take possession of the land that the Lord, the God of your fathers, is giving you.” Following God’s commands would allow them to take possession of the land. It would give them success. Each specific commandment, without exception, can be shown to improve the quality of your life. There may be some discipline involved, some apparent “sacrifice.” It’s not a promise that nothing will ever go wrong–no heartache or sadness. But life lived according to God’s commandments is just better, because they guide and direct us the way the world is supposed to work.

You see, the life God gives us comes with some assembly. We spend our lives putting the parts together. You’ve bought a piece of furniture that didn’t come fully assembled before, haven’t you? You can ignore the instructions, and sometimes you will put together something that sort of works. Financial Peace University founder Dave Ramsey talks about the kitchen table he put together when he and his wife were first married. It was functional, but for the first year the table rocked. If he had read and followed all the instructions, he would have discovered that the table had levelers under it. Sometimes ignoring instructions can even leave you with broken parts and a twisted mess.

We live in a world, we are part of a world, that thinks it is smarter than the God of the Bible who designed it. It finds certain commands irrelevant. Sometimes it even accuses them of being repressive (as if we fallen creatures of God could somehow come up with ideas that are more moral than our Creator).

We tend to think of this as a “modern” problem, but it almost as old as time itself. Moses was certainly familiar with the tendency. It’s why he says, “Do not add to what I command you and do not subtract from it, but keep the commands of the Lord your God that I give you.” They serve us only if we keep them. And they are worth keeping for their value to our life.

John 6:67-69 “‘You do not want to leave, too, do you?’ Jesus asked the Twelve. Simon Peter answered him, ‘Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We believe and know that you are the Holy one of God.’”

How does Jesus maintain his hold on the hearts he has won? The same way he won them in the first place. “You have the words of eternal life.” There is one world faith in which living an exemplary life on earth doesn’t get you life in the world to come, not necessarily. It only gets you a chance to compete for that life, a little like a good regular season gets you into the playoffs. Then you have to complete nearly impossible tasks to reach heaven’s door. Islam can’t promise you what Jesus does.

There are a number of world religions in which the grand prize at the end is that everything makes you a unique individual disappears, and your life force gets absorbed into the universe like a drop of water falling into the ocean. There is no self at the end, no you, only a vast emptiness. That’s the good outcome! The religions of the Far East—Buddhism, Hinduism, Confucianism—don’t offer you what Jesus does.

Only one faith has God loving us so passionately that he could not bear to lose us all. So he moved from heaven to earth. He made himself human, so human that even though his conduct was perfect and he performed miracles, most people had trouble detecting any difference. He gave himself no advantages. He put up with all the things we put up with, and more. He gave this body of flesh, and the soul that went with it, for the life of the world. He died to erase every sin, to forgive every fault. He asked nothing in return, no payment for his services.

When he was done he took his life back again, and offered eternal life to all who believed him–real eternal life, in your own perfected body, as the unique person God made you to be, basking in God’s unending love, free from even the slightest discomforts we know now.

That’s the “word” Peter was learning from Jesus, the life he was watching Jesus live, the Holy One of God in whom he was believing. It isn’t just information. It is the word of eternal life. This is still the reason we believe in him today.

John 6:60-65 On hearing it, many of his disciples said, “This is a hard teaching. Who can accept it?” Aware that his disciples were grumbling about this, Jesus said to them, “Does this offend you? What if you see the Son of Man ascend to where he was before! The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you are spirit and the are life. Yet there are some of you who do not believe.” For Jesus had known from the beginning which of them did not believe and who would betray him. He went on to say, “This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless the Father has enabled him.” From this time many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him.”  

The crowd wasn’t complaining about Jesus’ teaching because it was confusing, though they had suffered some confusion along the way. As Mark Twain once quipped, “It’s not the parts of the Bible I don’t understand that bother me. It’s the parts I do.” This was a hard teaching in the sense that it was hard to accept. Jesus’ words were unbending, unyielding, incapable of being bent or twisted into an idea they might find more appealing or sensible.

This is a good place to pause and ask Jesus’ question of ourselves. “Does this offend you?” Constance began crying in my class. It had just dawned on her that Jesus not only died. He died because of us, because of her, for her sins. She didn’t want Jesus to die because of her, to think that somehow she helped kill him. She was objecting to the whole arrangement. She wanted out of it. It offended her.

Peter pulled Jesus aside. Jesus had just revealed for the first time, plainly, that he had come to die. This would be no accident, no mistake. It was his mission, his purpose. Peter pulled Jesus aside and started rebuking him. Jesus’ death would rob him of his dearest friend and destroy his dreams of earthly glory. It offended him.

Jesus offers a bitter pill to swallow. What does his death say about us? How horrible must we be for that to be the solution! At least when I am sick, I take the medicine until I am cured and can stop taking it. Jesus talks about remaining in us and we in him: something all the way to the end and eternal life. We never stop this feeding. We never lose our need.

Author Brennan Manning dedicates his book The Ragamuffin Gospel, “for the inconsistent, unsteady disciples whose cheese is falling off their cracker…for poor, weak, sinful men and women with hereditary faults and limited talents…for the bent and the bruised who feel that their lives are a grave disappointment to God…for smart people who know they are stupid and honest disciples who admit they are scalawags.” And if we take Jesus’ words here seriously, Manning may have even understated our condition. Does this offend you, Jesus’ gift to address such a need?

Do we want to connect ourselves so closely to the one whose gift is his flesh, which he will give for the life of the world? Like Master, like disciple; like teacher, like student. Those who follow the dying Savior will find no earthly glory for themselves. Will we so easily let go of our earthly dreams for him? Does the very thought make us feel a little like George Banks in the movie Mary Poppins, after he is sacked by the bank?

“A man has dreams of walking with giants,
To carve his niche in the edifice of time,
Before the mortar of his zeal,
Has a chance to congeal,
The cup is dashed from his lips,
The flame is snuffed aborning,
He’s brought to rack and ruin in his prime.

My world was calm, well ordered, exemplary,
Then came this person, with chaos in her wake,
And now my life’s ambitions go
with one fell blow,
It’s quite a bitter pill to take.”            

What about this crowd’s problem with Jesus’ call for such utter faith and trust in him–that we take Jesus in whole, not just the parts we like? Following him like that means saying “no” to ourselves over and over again. Following him like that might make us a stranger, an oddball, in our own culture, our own circle of friends, our own family. We should not be surprised that many still won’t accept what he is giving today.

John 6:51-55 “I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.” Then the Jews began to argue sharply among themselves, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” Jesus said to them, “I tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks by blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink.”

Jesus’ true gift is not just his ideas, his teaching. It is himself, his life, and what he did with all of that. You may think you want a teacher. He wants to be your Savior, your Lord, and your God. That’s what he is giving. Jesus illustrates this with the picture of eating his flesh.

Some of the people in the crowd seemed to miss the picture, as though he was advocating cannibalism, and he himself was going to be the main course. The wider context of his teaching here helps us see that this is not what he means. For the moment I think it is clear enough to us that cannibalism has never been an acceptable practice in the Bible faith.

Some people today have seen a reference to communion or the Lord’s Supper in Jesus’ words here. And there are some parallel expressions between John 6 and Jesus’ words with the disciples at the Last Supper that make such an idea understandable. But the Lord’s Supper didn’t exist yet. It was still over a year away. How could anyone be expected to get what he was saying if that is what he meant?

In spite of the potential for misunderstanding his picture, Jesus does not abandon it. He doubles down on it. He drives it home. But as he does, he helps us connect the dots to what he has said earlier, and understand what his picture means.

Refuse to eat Jesus’ flesh and drink his blood, and you have no life in you, not the kind that matters with God. You are a spiritual corpse. Eat Jesus flesh and drink his blood and you will live forever, and Jesus will raise your physical corpse from the grave. At least four times in the earlier part of the conversation, Jesus had told these people that he gives eternal life either to those who “come” to him, or those who “believe” in him. It is clear that the eating he describes here is a picture of that coming, and that believing.            

Again, that is more than believing some random statement of Jesus is true. “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in him.” This is more than sitting in class for a few minutes, or in church, and learning a few tidbits to think about this week. This is an unbroken, unending connection, a mystical union, the combining of two lives, your two beings. It is a relationship you take with you at all times, wherever you go. Jesus doesn’t want to be your acquaintance. He intends to become your life.

John 6:47-51 “I tell you the truth, he who believes has everlasting life. I am the bread of life. Your forefathers ate the manna in the desert, yet they died. But here is the bread that comes down from heaven, which a man may eat and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.”

People who have money live longer, statistically speaking. In the United States, the richest men will outlive the poorest men by 15 years. They eat better food. They get better medicine. They live healthier lives. They live longer. But they don’t live forever. You know that the day is coming, no matter how much money you have, when the doctor can’t put you back together and keep you going, no matter how much you pay him.

The nation of Israel ate manna from heaven in the wilderness every day for forty years. They weren’t malnourished. They ate, perhaps, better than any people in the history of the world. But they all died, every last one of them.

In my ministry as a missionary pastor in a “start-up” congregation, I have made a number of outreach calls at homes where I have heard the rather jarring words. “We don’t go to church. We aren’t religious. We are atheists. We aren’t interested.” These are very nice homes, worth at least twice as much as my own. Luxury cars sit in the driveway. Swimming pools sit in the backyard. It’s a good life, apparently.

But this is the closest thing to heaven any of them are ever going to know. And it is all going to last only a few more years. Then they are going to die, just like me, and for them there is no better life to follow.

“I’ll believe it when I see it,” people often say. But that isn’t always the case, is it. Doting parents are shown undeniable evidence of their favorite son’s wrongdoing, but they just can’t believe it. “He’s such a good boy, you know.” The doctor confronts a patient with test result after test result that says the mysterious lump is cancer. But the patient wants another test, and another opinion. He can’t believe that he is so sick, so close to facing his own mortality.

The people to whom Jesus was speaking in John 6 had every reason to let down their guard, their resistance, and trust him. We still do. So few ever do, and those who do still struggle with their doubts that Jesus is their Maker come to redeem them.

We are here as Jesus’ Church to confront their refusal to believe. It stands in the way of everlasting life. But it doesn’t have to be that way. “I am the living bread that came down from heaven.” Jesus says. “If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.” Jesus gave his life to save ours. This gift is worth everything, but it doesn’t cost a penny. It is free for the believing. It does what no supplements, no diet, no doctor or medicine could ever do. It gives us life forever.