Pastor, author, and Bible teacher, Alan Wright.
Through the eyes of Jesus, you can see miracles in the making. That's Pastor Alan Wright. Welcome to another message of good news that will help you see your life in a whole new light. I'm Daniel Britt, excited for you to hear the teaching today in the series You'll See, as presented at Reynolda Church in North Carolina. If you're not able to stay with us throughout the entire program, I want to make sure you know how to get our special resource right now. It can be yours for your donation this month to Alan Wright Ministries. As you listen to today's message, go deeper as we send you today's special offer. Contact us at PastorAlan.org. That's PastorAlan.org, or call 877-544-4860.
That's 877-544-4860. More on that later in the program. But right now, let's get started with today's teaching.
Here is Alan Wright. Are you ready for some good news? Through the eyes of Jesus, you can see miracles in the making. We are in a series that I've called You'll See.
We've been there a long time, and we're drawing towards the conclusion. And today we go to a story that is, well, it is not only beautiful, it is powerful. It is the first narrative of a miracle recorded in the New Testament church. We are in Acts chapter 3, Acts chapter 3 verse 1.
Acts 3 verse 1. Now Peter and John were going up to the temple at the hour of prayer, the ninth hour, and a man lame from birth was being carried whom they laid daily at the gate of the temple, that is called the beautiful gate, to ask alms of those entering the temple. Seeing Peter and John about to go into the temple, he asked to receive alms, and Peter directed his gaze at him, as did John, and said, look at us.
And he fixed his attention on them, expecting to receive something from them. But Peter said, I have no silver or gold, but what I do have, I give to you. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk. And he took him by the right hand and raised him up, and immediately his feet and ankles were made strong. And leaping up, he stood and began to walk and entered the temple with them, walking and leaping and praising God. And all the people saw him walking and praising God, and recognized him as the one who sat at the beautiful gate of the temple, asking for alms. And they were filled with wonder and amazement at what had happened to him. And while he clung to Peter and John, all the people utterly astounded, ran together to them in the portico called Solomon's. And then at verse 16, and his name, by faith in his name, this is what Peter says to the crowd, by faith in his name, has made this man strong whom you see and know. And the faith that is through Jesus has given the man this perfect health in the presence of you all.
It's a beautiful, beautiful story, powerful story, and it's all about seeing. Notice all the images about seeing that are in this text, starting at verse 3. A man seeing Peter and John about to go into the temple, he asked for alms. And then at verse 4, Peter directed his gaze at him as did John. And then again in verse 4, Peter said to him, look at us. And then the beggar at verse 5 fixed his attention onto them. And then all the people at verse 9 saw him walking and praising God.
And at verse 10, all the people recognized him. It's a story about seeing. It is a miracle that is related to what they see. And our perception is what we've been talking about.
It's a strange thing the way we perceive things. I love these sort of optical illusions, things that you can maybe not see at first, but then you can. Here's one.
It's a relatively famous. Look at the image on the screen. What do you see? Do you see anything?
Do you see a design of any type? Do you see a, well, let me give you a hint. It's an animal.
You still don't got it, right? It's a mammal with four legs. If you're like me, you couldn't see it. So let me give you, let me, help me cheat a little bit here and we'll show you the sign. It's a cow. Here's the face.
That's outlined, the nose, the ear over there, and the eyes. Take a good look at the cow. You see it. Now here's what's interesting about perception is that once you've seen it, when we go back to the original one, you can't not see it. It's like now I can't see anything but a cow. It's amazing how our perception is because when there's something that has been hidden and then it is revealed to you, which means light shines on it, it becomes apparent to you and you can see it.
Once you have, then it's not hard to see it after that. And today we learn about a kind of seeing that is mysterious, mystical. In the end, it is miraculous.
When you look through the eyes of Jesus, you can see miracles in the making. Let's get the setting of our story. It is set at the ninth hour, which is 3 p.m. as the time of one of the two sacrifices they practiced at the temple. This would have actually been, scholars say, the most popular hour of worship when a sacrifice was offered. So lots of people coming to the temple through the temple courts and to worship. And so it's strategic for this disabled man to be at one of the most popular places where people are moving by. He's being strategic. He's asking for alms. It's highlighted in the scripture.
He was lame from the time he was born. He has had a disability of some type that he was unable to get anywhere by himself. So friends, we suppose, would carry him and put him wherever he needed to be. And as people came in to worship, they were perhaps more likely to give alms. The rabbis taught that worshiping God was one form of piety, but a very important form of piety also was the giving of alms, giving to those that are in need. So maybe it's not only a crowded place, the beggar has come, but he knows that people might be a little more predisposed to be generous as they're going in to worship. I hope that we are more generous when we get back to going to restaurants after church. I hope that we're generous because I heard reports my wife when she was young worked at Shoney's and she said that sometimes the worst day was to have the lunch crowd after church and come in there and give you a Christian tract and a quarter. Listen, part of piety is giving alms.
So he's out there and he's saying, alms, alms, alms for the poor, alms, alms. And just hundreds and hundreds of people are walking by. It's a beautiful, beautiful structure. The temple, we have good specifications and recreations of what the temple would look like, absolutely glorious. What Herod had built that is called the second temple because originally it was Solomon's temple that the Babylonians sacked, but Herod had rebuilt and it was beautiful. You could see a large, large courtyard for the Gentiles.
We got a diagram of this that can show you there's a large court called the Court of the Gentiles and then inside the court of women. There were 10 different gates coming into the different courtyards of the temple and people speculate as to what was this gate that was called beautiful. Nine of the 10 gates according to Roman historian Josephus were overlaid with silver or gold, but there was one gate that was pure bronze, Corinthian bronze. And Josephus said that this gate was so massive, the doors were so heavy that it would take 20 men to open them.
Can you imagine such? We're not totally sure where this gate called beautiful, which was all likelihood was these bronze doors. As you can imagine, there's one gate like that is made of bronze. That's probably what was called the beautiful gate.
It could have been even into this area, into one of the court of the women. We're not totally sure, but it was there at that gate, probably that gate, those doors that were made of solid bronze that this beggar was laying and asking for alms. And the story then becomes this mysterious and mystical narrative about seeing. free six-week companion video series from Pastor Alan, along with a study guide and a daily reading plan.
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That's 877-544-4860. Today's teaching now continues. Here once again is Allen Wright. The first thing to say about perception and one of the things I've been learning as I've been preaching the series and studying some about our perceptions is just how surprisingly inattentive we actually are. There is a scholar, Daniel Simons, who studies perception, and I thought it was just a wonderful, wonderful little trick he just played about how inattentive we really are. And he had a little card trick that he would play. Just put on a screen like this six playing cards, and then he had some volunteer, which obviously I can't do this on video because you know I was cheating somehow, but if one of you were to come and select a card, and let's say in this case you came and you selected the five of spades, then the researcher was hiding. He couldn't see which one was taken away, and then he turned back around. He said, okay, I'm going to remove the card that you selected, and up comes the screen, and there it was gone, which is just, you know, wow, how did you do that?
And what nobody realizes is that it's easy to do because all you have to do is come in here and put five brand new cards up here because nobody really can remember what cards were the ones that were up there in the first place. And that's the way it is with perception. Simons and another scholar, Daniel Levine, had another experiment that was fascinating. They would go out onto a sidewalk and would have an experimenter looking at a map as if he were lost who would then stop a pedestrian and ask for directions. And while they were talking to one another, the experimenter and the unsuspecting pedestrian who starts to give him directions, they arranged for other people who were part of the experiment to come walking between them carrying a solid wooden door. They just pass right through with the door for just a moment, just a few seconds like that. But while they passed by, the experimenter who had the map swapped out with another person, a completely different person, not dressed the same, didn't look the same at all.
And there he was with Matt and continued having the conversation asking for directions. And 50 percent of the time, 50 percent of the time, the person who was giving the directions didn't recognize that a whole other human being had just stepped into play. Our perceptions, we are not as attentive as we realize. And what happens when you begin to get more attentive is you see things you didn't see before. But something has happened to Peter and John and these disciples after Pentecost. They have been filled with the Holy Spirit. And when you have the Holy Spirit of the living God in you, it changes things. It changes because you have the Spirit of Jesus within you who can enable you to see what you did not previously see. In other words, what I'm saying is that I think the more we're yielded to God's leadership in our lives, the more He directs our attention. We can't pay attention to everything.
We need God's attention. And so it is that revelation comes as a gift from God that enables you to see something. I think so often we think of the great discoveries of people that are somehow these great inventors. They're so smart. They're so creative. But really, if you go back and look at history, most of the great things that have been discovered is because it's like someone saw something. I like this from Isaac Newton who said, if I ever made any valuable discoveries, it's been owing more to patient attention than to any other talent. Steve Jobs of Apple fame said when you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn't really do it. They just saw something.
I know what he means by that. There's a sense in which you just discover by revelation and you almost can't explain it. You just see something. So what was it that Peter saw? Well, Peter, back to verse 3, Peter and John, they're about to enter the temple and they ask for alms. He must have passed by hundreds of times.
He probably had seen this same disabled man hundreds of times going to the temple. It makes you wonder when you see so much need around you, are we supposed to stop and help all the time? No, we can't. We can't.
Honestly, we can't. I remember years ago I was finishing up seminary, my third year of seminary, and I had a friend, a pastor friend who happened to be in Atlanta where I was at school, and we were in a downtown section, an urban area of Atlanta, and there were just so many people out that day, so many people asking for help, a large homeless population, and we were just walking on the sidewalk. I turned to my pastor friend and I said, how do you deal with it?
There's so much need. And I thought his words were very wise. He said, you must realize there's a big difference between seeing a need and being called to meet the need.
That's wisdom. And I think what happens is the Holy Spirit in Peter somehow began to get his attention. And at verse four, this interesting phrase, Peter directed his gaze at him as did John. And in the Greek language, this reads as if it is a, well, it's sort of like you're walking along and then you do a double take.
You know what I'm saying? This is the way it reads. It's like he's walking and he sees the man and then he stops and does a double take. And then he fixes his gaze upon him. Walking by a common sight, hearing a man saying alms, alms, who he'd seen probably hundreds of times, and all of a sudden he directs his gaze at him. And he gets eye contact with him. He says there at verse four, he says, look at us, look at us.
What's going on here? Someone has said that the eyes are like the windows of the soul. Two day old infants prefer looking at faces where the eyes are looking at them. Three year olds feel so connected by eye contact that they believe and really feels like to them if they cover their own eyes that you disappear. Because so connected are they to you by eye contact. The faces that we see when we have eye contact with them, research shows, we remember much better. Research has shown our feelings, maybe just a little bit, but they get hurt if we're walking and we see the face of a stranger who glances at us but refuses to make any eye contact with us. Interestingly, other studies have shown that when you are making eye contact with someone, it's harder to concentrate on other things. People don't do as well in tests like word association tests and so forth if they have just a video of a face that's making eye contact with them.
Our pupils that dilate and constrict, they have a capacity without us realizing it. When we are making eye contact with someone, they have a capacity to mimic the pupils of the person's eyes that we are engaged with. When you look into someone's eyes for a long time, strong emotions begin to happen and through eye contact, research shows, we can read emotions perhaps better than any other way. Eye contact is complex because not all cultures value the eye contact in the same way. For example, though in Western cultures, when you meet someone and shake their hand, it's considered a sign of confidence to look them in the eye. But in some Eastern cultures, like in Japan, you make a glancing eye contact and then divert your gaze because it's considered rude to look too much and too deeply into someone's eyes.
Perhaps because when you fix your gaze with someone else's gaze, something very intimate is happening, isn't it? Something almost mystical is happening. So Peter is just walking along, sees a man, stops, does a double take, and now he begins to gaze at him and tells the man to look at us. What is happening is a revelation, a revelation from God. He's seeing something. All we can say is that he's seeing it through the eyes of Jesus. He's seeing somehow that God's anointing presence is there, that God is there ready to do something wonderful. This is a revelation.
It's the way he's seeing the man. And what happens is that Peter very simply experiences faith. Alan Wright, today's good news message, divine double take in the series You'll See.
Stick with us. Pastor Alan is back in the studio in just a moment sharing his parting good news thought for the day. Seeing As Jesus Sees, Pastor Alan Wright's newest book just released. When you make a gift to Alan Wright Ministries today, we'll send you Pastor Alan's new beautiful hardcover book. And as an additional thank you for your support, you'll also receive a free six-week companion video series from Pastor Alan, along with a study guide and a daily reading plan.
You'll start Seeing As Jesus Sees, and you're going to love the view. We're happy to share it with you at our cost of only $15. Visit PastorAlan.org to get your Seeing As Jesus Sees product bundle.
When you're there, you'll notice that you can opt to make a donation above the cost of the bundle, and we would sure appreciate your support. Visit PastorAlan.org. That's PastorAlan.org, or call us at 877-544-4860.
That's 877-544-4860. Back here now with Pastor Alan in the studio, for the person listening right now, and they can hardly wait for the conclusion, not only to the series, but even just the part two of this teaching. What takeaways can we all rest on at this moment? You know, I first just want to say this with regard to this whole series, which is a treasure to my heart, a series that was preached part before pandemic, part during pandemic, and I think it was prophetic in that way, to learn a new way of relating to God and others in this world. And that is, instead of saying, what would Jesus do, and then trying moralistically, like trying to keep a law, like trying to measure up to something, instead of trying, therefore, harder just to be more like Jesus, there's a more empowering way, and that is to say, Jesus, how do you see? How do you see this person? How do you see this situation?
How do you see this season? How do you see this time? I found that it just, in that simple prayer, in the challenging moments, and in the moments where things are going well, just ask him, that he'll lend you his perspective by the Spirit.
And what it does is it begins to just change everything. There are so many moments during our days where I think if we were walking with Jesus's vision, we do just what Peter does. It's a divine double take. It's where somebody he's seen over and over and over on the way of the temple, and suddenly this day he sees them differently. And it might be because that moment, Jesus is seeing a miracle that's going to come to pass. So what we need is not greater willpower to try to act like Jesus would act. The question is not, what would Jesus do? The question is, what does Jesus see? Ask him. He'll give you his eyes. Today's Good News message is a listener-supported production of Allen Wright Ministries.
