Acts chapter 9, starting in verse
36. Going to be looking at the story
of Tabitha. It says, at Joppa there was a
certain disciple named Tabitha, which is translated Dorcas. This woman was full of good works
and charitable deeds, which she did. But it happened in those
days that she became sick and died. When they had washed her,
they laid her in an upper room. And since Lydda was near Joppa,
and the disciples had heard that Peter was there, they sent two
men to him, imploring him not to delay in coming to them. Then
Peter arose and went with them. When he had come, they brought
him to the upper room, And all the widows stood by him weeping,
showing the tunics and garments which Dorcas had made while she
was with them. But Peter put them all out and
knelt down and prayed. And turning to the body, he said,
Tabitha, arise. And she opened her eyes, and
when she saw Peter, she sat up. Then he gave her his hand and
lifted her up. And when he had called the saints
and widows, he presented her alive. And it became known throughout
all Joppa and many believed on the Lord. Now this story is about
a woman named Tabitha who is miraculously raised from the
dead by the disciple Peter using gifts he received from the Holy
Spirit. I've entitled this message Tabitha Arise. Tabitha Arise. And these were the days when
the apostles and the disciples were threatened by the Jews. They were imprisoned,
they were beaten, they were rejected. Jews didn't want any part of
these Christians. The Jews had even recently accused
Stephen of blasphemy and stoned him to death. after he had told
them who it was that they had crucified on the cross at Golgotha. The persecution against the gospel
is so great at this time that the disciples are scattered,
it says, throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria, except
the apostles, except the apostles, they weren't scattered. Now to
the outside observer, this is not a safe time to be a Christian. A lot of people give up on a
philosophy, you know, a closely held one, or a religion when
there's persecution. They'll just say, that's not
worth believing anymore. And that's where we find some
people. But the Christian's message is the gospel, and whoever hears
it will be cut to the heart. Will be. When Peter, having spoken in
tongues for all to hear in their own language, this was back in
a previous chapter of Acts, when he finishes speaking to the Jews
about Christ and has shown that they crucified the Son of God,
it says that they are cut to the heart. And these people that
he was speaking to, that all heard them speaking in tongues,
They humble themselves and say to the apostles, men and brethren,
what shall we do? Now that's one reaction to the
gospel. There's two. Again, it says in Acts 7, this
is after, that after Stephen had finished telling the council
of priests about the truth in the Old Testament, how it pointed
to Christ, who they crucified, and how they are of the same
brood that always resisted the Holy Spirit and persecuted the
prophets, it says of them, they were cut to the heart. And their
reaction to the gospel is to stone Stephen to death. And do you want to know how to
tell when the gospel is preached instead of a false gospel, a
fake one? A heartfelt ministry, you know,
whatever flowery words that people can come up with. You want to
know the difference. When you tell people of the true
gospel, they are cut to the heart. When the arrow of the gospel
is released from the bow, it never misses. It always strikes the heart,
whether it leads to a lost sinner saved or not is according to
God, but that doesn't stop the believer from telling it anyway.
Now to the world, these apostles are rabble-rousers and dangerous
fools because they strike at some people's power. So they're the very type of people
you'd want to run out of town. And so they do, they scatter
them. Anything to make them shut up. Now they don't realize that
their persecution is according to God's plan to spread his message
throughout the land. As it says, then the churches
throughout all Judea and Galilee and Samaria had peace and were
edified. Amidst all this persecution,
they had peace and were edified. The people in these churches
know peace from God, even in the face of persecution and beatings
and stoning and strife. This is how we find Peter. Right
at the beginning, verse 36, this is how we find him. He's traveling
the countryside and he's ending up in a town called Lydda, which
is today called Laud. And it is there that he heals
a man who has been completely bedridden for the past eight
years, just paralyzed. And sometime before that, He
had healed a man who had been lain from his mother's womb.
Have you ever noticed who gets healed in the Bible? I wish someone
had a spreadsheet. But just take a cursory glance. The people who are healed don't
just have a scratch or a cold or whatever. It's the paraplegics. It's the quadriplegics. It's
the deaf. It's the blind. It's the demon-possessed. and the dead. The people who are healed are
the blind Bartimaeuses and the Mephibosheths and the Lazaruses. Those are the ones that receive
the healing. Now these represent the fallen sinner who cannot
come to God to be saved, cannot hear anything until He calls
him, cannot see anything, cannot see Him without His light, and
they won't go to him because of their sinful natures. Those
are the people he heals. They are the cannots of the world.
Can you come in here? I cannot. Can you come and see? I cannot. Well, can you just
come to him? I cannot. But fear not, you who are God's
children, for he comes to you. And as our main story begins,
Peter's not even in Joppa, where Tabitha's sick. Tabitha passes
away while Peter's in Lydda. Now this is similar to the time
when Jesus was absent from Lazarus when he was sick and near death.
And his sisters implored Jesus to come out, but he told them
this sickness is not unto death. but for the glory of God, that
the Son of God may be glorified through it. Now he stayed two
more days, it says, because he loved, even though he loved Martha
and her sister and Lazarus. Now why would Jesus do that?
This waiting, it seems cruel or vile. If Jesus had only been
there, if he'd just been there, Martha's
brother, Whom Jesus loved, it says it. Whom Jesus loved, he
would have been saved. But God's plan wasn't to cure
Lazarus from a sickness. It was to give him life. And
that, for the glory of God. Now the world loves a good miracle. Those miracle stories. They're
everywhere. They're in newspapers, they're
on the internet about heroes showing up at just the nick of
time, you know, out of nowhere. Or car crashes where, you know, despite all
the metal carnage they leave behind, people are walking away
from them without even a bruise or anything. Pets that show up
at the nick of time, you know, warn somebody about a sick owner,
that sort of thing. And I understand the feeling.
I get it. It's better to walk away from
a car crash than to bleed out because of one. But the elect
of God operates within the understanding that God is just as sovereign
over disasters as much as he is sovereign over so-called miraculous
outcomes. He can't be sovereign over one
and not the other. He's sovereign over both. And
each one is to his glory. Lazarus died because God would
glorify his son by it. Now, would we have peace if we
knew that an impending disaster, we could see it coming, an impending
disaster would result in the glorifying of our Lord Jesus
Christ. I can't answer that. I can't
answer that. If we truly believe that, we
would have peace. But if you ask me about it, I
couldn't, I don't know what I'd answer. I know what I should
answer. But before Peter meets Tabitha
here, we are told a little bit about her. She has a Hebrew name
and a Greek name, both of which mean gazelle. Now, I don't know
why her name is given in both languages. Perhaps it's to invoke
the image of speed, as the Bible often likens someone to a gazelle
if they are fleet-footed. Someone who can run fast or is
fast at what they do is like a gazelle. It shows up several
times. It could also be that it is to imply her beauty, as
it does in Song of Solomon, chapter two, when the Shulamite likens
her beloved to a gazelle or a young stag. Now put together, those descriptions
could mean that she's both swift in good works and she is beautiful
to signify the beauty of the heart of the believer. and to
show that God-granted faith does good works. I don't fully know. This is just me speaking. I couldn't
find anybody else who mentioned it. Yet Luke does, so it must
be important. But even though she dies, it
is clear that she is a doer of good works. The elect do not
do good works to stave off death. And here's clear proof it doesn't
work. They do good works to glorify God. We do good work and let it be.
We don't look for congratulations. And so did Tabitha. Now this
town Joppa, it's a coastal town. It's about five to 10 minutes
from Lydda. Close enough to make it there and back in a day on
foot. So after Tabitha passes away, some friends of hers send
a couple of disciples to fetch Peter because they had heard
he was in Lydda. I'm sorry, Joppa's on the coast.
But why Peter? Why Peter? I'm just thinking. You're in a situation someone
dies. What's the next step? You prepare them for burial. After the body passes away, what
can man do? So why Peter? Well, because he, as typifying
Christ, has proven that he has God-given power to heal. Peter is famous as a healer,
so much so that people would bring their sick from all over,
and it says they laid them on beds and couches that at least
the shadow of Peter passing by might fall on some of them. Just
the shadow. That's some name recognition
right there. Now Peter's known as a healer, but up until now,
there's no record of Peter ever reviving a dead person. He can
make a sick person better. He can heal a paralyzed man. He can take what's there already,
but he hasn't given life. Do you think that these friends
of Tabitha had any faith in Peter? Or do you think that they had
faith in God instead? That God could use Peter to save
one of the brethren? I believe the latter. I believe
that. So when Peter arrives at Tabitha's
house, she's in an upper room. Now I don't know why her friends,
these widows, accost him with the fruit of Tabitha's good works.
Just right up in his face is the way I see it. See these clothes,
see these pillows, see these whatever. Perhaps it is in a misguided
attempt to convince him that she's worthy to be saved. Look what Tabitha's done. Peter,
you've got to have pity. Please help her. She's not just some homeless
person. She helped the church. Perhaps it was a misguided attempt. Now, perhaps it isn't. But I
prefer that assumption because it makes what Peter does next
a great illustration of the other lack of value that a person's
works have to gain them salvation. It says that the widow show him
the tunics and garments which Dorcas had made, but Peter put
them all out. Peter put them all out. And the picture here is when
God's salvation comes, your works need to leave the room. A man will trust in the worth
of his works to gain him righteousness, to gain his own righteousness.
But God's will in his salvation is that the only work that counts
is the work of his son. God's plan of salvation benefits
the elect, but it doesn't include them until after the work is
done. So Peter puts all the widows
and the works out of the room. Then he kneels down and prays.
And some might read this and believe that prayer is the key
to power, but that is not true. Just because you have prayed
does not obligate God to grant you the outcome you want. You know why I know that's true? Because I would be richer right
now if I got what I wanted. It does not grant someone supernatural
gifts, despite what those clowns on TV say. If prayer does all
that, why did Jesus pray? Jesus prayed. Prayer is about the heart and
is beneficial for many things. It's not about power, it's about
the heart. Prayer is used to guard the heart from temptation,
as it says in Matthew 26. And in Genesis, if we are in
anguish, we pray to God, who is our shield and exceedingly
great reward. Prayer is the proper method to
approach God. After Moses in anger broke the
two tablets that bore the law, and he did it because of Israel's
sin in crafting a golden calf, he hastened right back up Mount
Sinai and said to God, he said these words, if now I have found
grace in your sight, O Lord, Let my Lord, I pray, I beseech,
I implore, go among us, even though we are stiff-necked
people, and pardon our iniquity and our sin, and take us as your
inheritance. Imagine that coming out of the
mouth of a televangelist. It wouldn't happen. They want to find lost souls
or add to the church or heal some woman's broken hip. They won't ever ask for God to
be among them. and to be their inheritance.
No, their inheritance is made out of stone and wood and gold. But the prayer of the elect is
clothed in humility and reverence to God. And its source is faith
in the promise of God to save to the uttermost those who come
to God through the Lord Jesus Christ, as it says in Hebrews. Now we are not allowed to know
what Peter prays. And when you're not allowed,
it doesn't matter. That's what we need to tell ourselves,
it just doesn't matter. We know that his prayer is meant
to glorify God and we know that God listens to his children and
that's enough. We should leave it there. So then he speaks to Tabitha,
to this dead person. He says, Tabitha, arise. Now how is that not silly? The dead cannot hear nor even
reply. Peter knows this. Peter knows
this. So what can mere words do for
the dead? Imagine what you think if you
visited the doctor with a busted up leg and the doctor says, leg,
mend yourself. That'll be $300 and out you go,
right? Now you'd think she was a lunatic
if she told you that. Yet God, even through the imperfect
tools he calls his children, can not only mend sinew and bone,
he can also grant life. through us. It's a mystery. Don't
try to figure it out. And not just life in the worldly
sense that we can see here. A body is alive or dead. But it typifies how God saves
sinners. And everything about saving sinners
is spiritual. In a spiritual sense, we're all
born dead. Because our Father is Adam, the
original sinner. His children after Him inherited
His traits and also were sinners. And then their children and so
on. There's no life in a dead person. No ear to hear, no eye to see,
no spirit. About 20 years ago, I bought
a .22 rifle and I hunted birds around our property, half because
it was fun and half because my mother hated the ones that nested
up in the eaves and woke her up. I dropped a lot of birds
that year. And I went up to a few that the
cats hadn't taken and I'd move them with my foot. Sure enough,
they were dead. Stone cold dead. I accidentally shot a few birds
that were illegal to shoot. Not because I was malicious,
but because I was ignorant of Iowa's gun laws. But, when I
had learned that much later, that I had killed a bird, I was
not allowed to, do you think I should have tried to go back
and given it back it's little birdie life? I mean, it's such
a small thing, surely I could do that. But as much as I might have wanted
to do that, I could just undo what I did, I could not bring
those birds back to life. It was and still is not within
my power. I'm not Peter, in case you're
wondering. I can't do that. Now likewise, Peter, under his
own power, can do nothing for Tabitha after she died. She is
beyond his means to save. But thanks be to God that it
is not so with him. It says, Peter says, turning
to the body, he said, Tabitha, arise. She opened her eyes. And then it says that Peter,
after calling all the saints, presented her alive. Alive. What we call impossible is if
God has promised, yes, and in Him, amen. That is in Christ
Jesus. Oh, that God would say to you
today, Tabitha, my gazelle, who I love, arise. And like Tabitha, your eyes would
be opened to behold the beauty of our Savior who would present
you alive. And not just alive to himself,
alive to all the saints. what rejoicing there would be.
I'll close with this verse from a hymn. It says, when this poor, lisping,
stammering tongue lies silent in the grave, that in a nobler,
sweeter song, I'll sing thy power to save. Praise God that he has the power
and the will to save those who are dead. Brian, would you close
us please?