Summary
Pastor Safrit walks through Acts 9:32-43, focusing on the transformative power of Christ in the lives of Aeneas and Tabitha. He emphasizes that Jesus brings hope to the hopeless and life to the dead, illustrating how both individuals' stories reflect the impact of faith and service in their community. The sermon encourages listeners to consider their own legacies and the importance of living a life that points others to Christ through acts of kindness and compassion.
Welcome and Church Information
Thank you for listening to Pleasant Grove Baptist Church Sermon Audio. For more information, please visit our website, pgbcronda.com, or visit on all social media platforms. Thank you, young people, for singing and being a blessing.
If you have a young person, first grade and under, wants to go to Children's Church, that's available for you at this time. If you have your Bibles, we're going to be in Acts chapter 9 this morning. Acts chapter 9, we'll finish out this chapter, verses 32 through 43.
As many of you know, I was in a car accident this week. I want to thank you for the calls, the texts, the prayers,
the checking on me. I'm fine. I've just got a little neck pain, a little back pain, and the Lord was gracious to me through that event. And the younger person, he never even put on the brakes, and so hit me going about 35 miles an hour at a stoplight.
And so I'm thankful that the Lord's protection was on us. So if you have your Bibles, we'll turn to Acts chapter 9. And we'll stand in reading of God's Word, and then we'll jump into the message this morning. The Bible says, Verse 36. Verse 36. Verse 36. Verse 34.
and the legacy they leave. And thank you for the time where we get to honor them that we just started to do, the children that we dedicated. I pray that you would have your will and way in the service today. Be with me as I preach, in your name we pray, amen. You may be seated.
I've titled the message today, Two Lives and One Lord.
Two Lives and One Lord. And we're gonna look through these two stories and look at how the Lord worked in a lot of ways. And came across a story that happened in 2006 that I was unfamiliar with.
You may have heard about it. But a nurse named Terry Roberts made headlines, not because of anything she did wrong, but because of how she chose to live after a tragic accident. Tragic event, I should say.
Terry was the mother of a man named Charles Roberts IV. The man was responsible for the 2006 Amish schoolhouse shooting in Nickel Miles, Pennsylvania.
He entered the one-room schoolhouse, he took hostages, and ultimately he killed five young Amish girls before taking his own life. The news devastated the nation.
But I want you to imagine for a moment being the mother of that son. Terry was a quiet woman. She was a nurse. She was a mom. She was a community member. And no one could imagine the weight that she carried the weeks following. The guilt, the shame, the public whispers,
the eyes that were looking at her, and what happened next stunned the world.
Within hours of the tragedy, several Amish families came to her home. Not to protest,
not to shame her, but they came to comfort her. One Amish grandfather held her hand and said, we forgive you.
The families of the victims brought meals, they visited her house, and they included her in the grieving process. Terry responded in a way that only a godly woman could. She began to visit the families regularly.
She cared for one of the girls that was severely wounded in the tax, and weekly began bringing warm smiles and even helped with therapy. In the years followed, Terry was diagnosed with cancer. And the same Amish community surrounded her with love and prayer.
In 2017, she died, and her last statements or words was this, God used a terrible tragedy to show me what grace really looked like. As I was leading through this, and as I was studying through her life,
Terry never preached a message. There's not a book that was wrote that she wrote about the journeys that she went on, and before this accident happened, she never made headlines one time. But through her quiet service, through her suffering and compassion, she began living an example of the love of Christ.
And today, these two stories of these two people that we look at, one was hopeless, one was without any type of hope whatsoever. He had been lame for eight years, and one was completely helpless.
She was dead, and yet Jesus showed up, and one woman who lived a quiet life of faith and service that was so powerful that when she died, the entire community grieved at what was going on.
In Acts chapter nine, today we're gonna see the power of Christ raise brokenness, and we're also gonna see the beauty of godly lives shaping a community in a way that is powerful.
Jesus Transforms Broken Lives
And as we look at this, we see that Jesus transforms broken lives,
but he also serves those who are quiet and those who are just faithful. And so as we begin walking through this this morning, I want us to look at the first one, the power of Christ. The power of Christ starts in verses 32 through 35.
If you have your notes in your bulletin, and Peter makes this statement. He says, Jesus Christ heals you.
Jesus Christ is the one that healed here. And as we have said for many, many times before, this is what is going to go on.
Christ is the one that leads us. Christ is the one that goes before us. And as we looked at in the life of Paul just last week, no one is too far gone for Christ's power to be healed. No one is too far gone for Christ to step into our story,
for Christ to step into our lives and say, this is going to make a difference in your life.
Oftentimes we look at the murderers, and we look at the people who have been just wasted their lives away, and yet Christ comes in and Christ changes their life. The first thing we see of this man is the condition that he was in.
The condition this man was in was unlike many others around him. He was hopeless. Aeneas had been paralyzed for eight years. He had been bedridden.
He had been away from everyone, and he could not take care of himself. In other words, he was helpless in everything that he was doing. No amount of effort, no amount of medicine,
no amount of friends could change the condition that he was in. He was completely helpless,
and his legs no longer walked. I want you to imagine someone who's been in a hospital bed for many years, who has been struggling with bed sores and struggling with even being able to move and function in their life, and the doctor comes in
and says, there's no rehab that you can do. There's no cure that we can give you.
There's no amount of hope that's allowed in your life, and the longer you stay here, the only amount of things that's going to happen is your life is going to decline. Your life is going to get worse, and you can imagine the sorrow and the despair that would happen in that person's life.
And this is exactly the verdict that this man had. His condition was completely without anything. I want to ask us this question. How long have you, or maybe someone you know, been stuck like that?
That's been stuck with the thought of, there's no hope in my spirituality, there's no hope emotionally, there's no hope physically in my life, and I'm just existing, and I'm going through life, and the condition that's weighing on me is so much.
It's so hard. As I mentioned, even in Sunday school this morning, the people that the Lord has allowed me to mentor and talk with over these last couple of months, the situations they're in, oftentimes seem hopeless, and without any type of help in their life. And I remind them often,
listen, dear brother, there is the hope in the Christ that we serve.
There is this hope that we can go forward in your marriage, in your physical life, in your spiritual life, and we must get to the point where we trust in the Lord in our condition. But then we get to verse 34, we get to the command.
Peter comes up to him, and he makes this wonderful command, Jesus Christ heals you. Jesus Christ is the one that saves here.
Peter does not heal him in his own power. Peter does not step up and say, I want everyone to come around and look at how great I am.
He doesn't elevate himself, but he simply sits at this point, and he says, I am going to invoke the only name under heaven that has any authority, invoke the only name under heaven that can heal and can save anyone, and it is Jesus.
I'm so thankful as we think through this that Jesus doesn't come in and allow us to simply cope with what we're going through. Jesus doesn't come in and say,
well, there's a little bit of hope, there's a little bit of help, but you're just going to have to continue to struggle. You're just going to have to continue to go through news. No, Jesus steps in. He raises this man. He gives him life.
He gives him the ability to walk, and he steps up, and he says, this has been done because of the cause of Christ. Imagine a light switch this morning.
Living Connected to the Power Source
I meant to grab one. It was on my desk, and I forgot to grab it. A light switch that isn't connected to anything. There's no power source.
Duke Power is not going to be able to get your bill on this light switch because it's not connected to any type of electricity, and if you were to turn that light switch on, absolutely nothing would happen. No lights would come on.
No power would be able to happen because it was not connected to anything, but the moment you take that electrical cable and you plug it into the back of that switch and you energize that switch and you give
power to that switch and you turn that switch on, now that switch has power because it's connected to the source of power, and this morning as we look through this, we begin to see that this man, for the
first time, was connected to the source of power, and I want to ask us this. How often are we living in our own strength?
Are we living like that switch who has no power connected to it, who has no sense of strength in its own strength because you're connected to nothing, and we try to live our life like that. We try to live our life in our own strength,
and it's only when we step back and we say, Christ, I want to be connected to your power, the greater power that is greater than anything we've ever experienced, the power of Jesus, that's what I want my life to be connected to,
and how often is it that we try to live in our own strength, and we get to the end of our day and we're exhausted and we're wore out and we never thought of Jesus, we never put him
in the forefront of our mind, and we never allowed him to give us the strength that we needed, and Christ is saying, I'm here for you. I'm the power cord that's laying on the ground that's just waiting to be picked up and connected,
and yet we continue to go through day after day trying to live in our own strength, trying to live in our own command and not the command of Christ, but then in verse 35, we see the conversion happen. We see the conversion of this man.
A community in this area would have known that this man was lame and was paralyzed for eight years.
He would have been someone who would have been begging on the street corner, who would have had no way to provide for himself. He could not work a job. He could not do anything, and yet in this moment,
The Impact of Personal Stories
when the Lord came by and the Lord changed his life, one man's life brought revival to two cities. One man's life stepped in and began to change this whole community. Often I think about the power of our own story. I say it often.
The power of a story is so powerful because it can change the lives that are around us.
As Pat gave her story last week and shared, and so many people have reached out to me and said I was so encouraged by Miss Pat's story.
The encouragement that she gave, the hardships that she went through, the difficulties that she went through, but yet the Lord was in her story, and she trusted the Lord even in those moments.
As I was reminded of that, I was reminded of the power of your testimony and the power that we each have here today to where we can share with other people what Christ has done for us.
And when we share with other people the change that has been made in our life, look at what happens when others see Jesus more clearly. Others' lives begin to be changed.
Others' lives begin to ask the question, how can I have the opportunity to live the way Miss Pat lived, to live the way that person lived when life seemed to spare, when they were hooked up to a ventilator,
when they didn't know what to do and they just simply cried out for a Pepsi Cola, right, that's what she said. And all of a sudden, the hope and the encouragement came all because her life and our life allow others to see Jesus more clearly. This is what this conversion did.
Moms, this morning, as we think of Mother's Day, the quiet prayers that you have, the patient love that you have toward others that are around you,
the daily faithfulness that you have that may be the very thing in your life and in other people's lives around you that God uses to stir the faith in other people.
Because of a mom and because of a woman and because of a man in this story that just simply trusted in the Lord. Which leads us to the second story.
The second life that we're going to look at is this life of Dorcas, this life of Tabitha, the portrait of a godly woman. In verse 36 is the statement that we begin to see. It says that she was always doing good works and acts of charity.
I want to pause just for a moment and ask yourself if Luke were writing the story about you and Luke were getting to Clingman or Ronda, wherever you live at, and he were to get to your name in
the story, would he write James always serving himself? Would he write Allison always serving herself?
Or would he write the words that he said here, a woman that was full of good works and acts of charity? You see, because we each are telling a story. We each have our own life.
We each have our own script that we're writing and the actions that we do and the moments that we take through our life are what eventually are going to be said about us. And we have to ask ourselves,
if someone were to write this biography of you, would this be the words that they would be writing down about you? Because ultimately, we see Tabitha here, Dorcas, whichever one I'm going to explain that, the legacy that is left, the legacy is left.
The reason why it's Tabitha and Dorcas is because it's translated in Aramaic and Greek, but both of these names mean this, and this is a wonderful thing.
It means gazelle, okay? Both of these names have a meaning. It means gazelle. This literally translated graceful or beautiful. It's a gazelle that's running through there.
The legacy that it leads is what it's saying is her reputation, her name, is even known for someone who is graceful and kind to others, who is beautiful in the sight of those that are around her. Her reputation was simply known for good works and compassionate giving.
As we begin to even think through this, my mind as we studied this morning in Sunday school and as the ladies studied this past Wednesday night, and I did not know this, as Scotty was telling me this morning,
on Wednesday night they were studying through the Proverbs 31 woman, and the Proverbs 31 woman did not seek recognition, but yet was faithful, and yet she could not be ignored in the community.
I thought that was so powerful as I was reading through that this week, that as you read through the Proverbs 31 woman, she was so faithful, and she didn't seek her own recognition, but yet the community could not ignore who she was and what she was doing
because she was living a life that has just simply been faithful.
This morning, moms and young people and adults in here this morning, what will your legacy be? What will be said of you? What stories will people be told?
When you're gone, what is going to be said and done? I took a screenshot this morning of a book, and it was all of mom's stories.
Someone had put together a book, and you can go and you can translate all the stories, and I sent a screenshot to my brothers and sisters, and I said, if we put this for mom,
it would be 10 stories told 25 times. My mom is really good at telling the same story over and over again when you talk to her, and so I want us to think, what would be the story that people would tell about you? Only my wife thought that was funny.
Everyone, I was actually making a joke. It's okay, you can laugh a little bit.
When we live our life, there's a legacy that's been told. There's a moment in our life where people are going to look back, and they're going to say, what is it that was done or said about this person?
Many of us who are here today are here because of a mother or a grandmother or even a spiritual mother who prayed or served or loved quietly behind the scenes.
Quietly, they served us in a way that we'll never know until we get to heaven.
Living a Lasting Legacy
We'll never know how much a mom or a grandmother or a great-grandmother cared and loved for us.
And this morning, as we begin to think through and we think through our life, how are we living our legacy?
How are we living as a godly man or woman this morning, and what are we doing for the cause of Christ in that? And then we get to verse 37 through 39, and we see the loss that happened in this godly woman's life. Her death left a void.
And I want us to ask ourselves this question. If something were to happen to us, would our life leave a void in someone else's life? Or would life just go on as normal? One of the people, several people texted me and said,
Pastor James, are you okay? He said, you can replace a car, but you cannot replace you.
And I was just overwhelmed with compassion, overwhelmed with humility, because oftentimes we go through life and we don't realize the impact that our life has until that life is no longer there.
Until a mother or father or grandmother or grandmother is away from the scene and we begin to experience the loss of people not being there. When me and my wife got married and I was living in Arkansas for four years, we moved from Arkansas to Idaho, which was like 30-something hours away.
We made this drive, and while we were there for those four years, we were without family. And the burden of wanting to be around family, wanting to be around our loved ones was such a loss for us, and we had to learn how to live life.
And oftentimes when loss comes, when heartaches come, we begin to appreciate other things more.
Look at what the widows did. The widows began to weep, and they were holding the garments, the threads that this woman had made, because she loved her community. And this was a testimony of love.
I know you've been to a funeral before, but if you've ever been to a funeral where maybe a casket was laid out and a quilt that was made was laid on top of that casket because that lady loved to quilt, and all the quilts were laying around.
We had a lady at my last church. She was a great lady, and she had passed away, and her passion was quilts. And she had made so many quilts.
The sanctuary was probably twice this size, and there was a quilt in her casket, and every single pew in the sanctuary had a quilt on it that she had made. I mean, hundreds and hundreds of quilts.
And what they wanted was, when that time was done, if this lady had left an impact on your life, to take one of those quilts home with you. And I thought it was so powerful because it was a way that you would remember what they had done. Maybe it's a recipe card.
Maybe it's something that your mother or grandmother had left to you, and when you see it, you remember those things that tied into the love of that mother and grandmother.
And you remember those things, and it's the loss that brings you to it to understand that this life that was made was so powerful in your life. Sorry about that.
The question I want to ask you this morning is, what physical or spiritual garments are you leaving behind? What is it in your life that when your time comes to an end, they're going to say, this person,
they impacted me in this type of way. They left behind this or that that has propelled me into my life, and your life is making an impact in that person's life.
But ultimately, we get to the end of this passage, verses 40 through 43 that we read, and we see the Lord move in in a miraculous way, in a way that was supernatural. It would be the only word that could see.
Peter, again, acting in the name of the Lord Jesus, not in himself, not to glorify himself, but to glorify God, prays and commands her to rise again.
The Bible says she opened her eyes, that life began to come back into her life, and God used this miracle to reach so many people in this community. He used this miracle of this one person's life, and the Bible says that many believed because of her resurrected testimony.
The Life of Tabitha
Tabitha never preached a sermon. She never got up and preached, as far as we know from her life. She never did anything that would have been in a public form, but her life spoke louder than many pulpits in today's America because her life was a life that was transformed by the gospel, that was transformed by Jesus,
and she wanted her life to count for something. Moms, your ministry may not be public. Your life may not be one that people are going to write books about, that people are going to write documentaries about, but your life is powerful. People this morning,
faithfulness is what God is asking us to do. He's asking us to be faithful at home. He's asking us to be faithful in our kindness to strangers. He's asking us to be faithful in our generosity to those that need God, that those that need to hear the gospel proclaimed in their lives.
And too often, church, we are so wrapped up in our own things, and I know I'm busy, and we're all busy, but oftentimes we're so busy and so narrow-focused that as we talked about this morning in Sunday
school, we forget to open our eyes and see the ones that are around us that need help. We forget to see the ones that are struggling.
We forget to just see the person that just needs someone to hold their hand, that just needs someone to love them more than they've ever been loved before. And this morning, church, we have that opportunity to do that.
As we begin to close, as we begin to think through our closing illustration this morning, I want us to think of a grandmother this morning that was told by a well-known Christian speaker.
This is a woman who, outside of her small town, none of you in here would have ever heard of her name.
She wasn't famous, she never wrote a book, and she never stood behind a pulpit. But her family, she was legendary in her family.
She had worn out her Bible on her kitchen table. She had an apron that always smelled like cornbread and vanilla, and a heart big enough for every neighborhood child to come through the door. You may be thinking of someone right now that is someone for you.
And every morning before the sun came up, she sat with her coffee and her old Bible, and she prayed over children and grandchildren, her church family, anyone that was hurting. She wasn't loud, she wasn't flashy,
she didn't demand attention, but when she passed away, the funeral home overflowed with people that said the same thing. And this is what the family wrote down. She prayed me through.
She showed me Jesus in her life. She was the first one that I went to that ever cared for me.
When they cleaned out her house, they found handwritten prayer lists, tucked into cookbooks, notes of encouragement that had never been sent, and a stack of crocheted baby blankets meant for newborn children that were pregnant in her church that she never got to meet.
The woman was not on church staff, she didn't have a degree, but she left a legacy of love, a testimony of service, and a heartbeat for Jesus and others.
Just like Tabitha in Acts chapter 9, she was a life that was filled with good works and acts of charity. And even after her death, her legacy lived on.
It's a reminder to us, even after we're gone, is there going to be a legacy that lives on? When Tabitha died, the widow stood weeping.
They were holding what she had made. They didn't talk about her wealth. They didn't talk about her status.
They didn't talk about what she had done in life. All they cared about was what she had done and how she had served. If you'll move to the pulpit, Mike, guys. Today, maybe you're a mother or grandmother. Maybe you're a woman of God who feels like your efforts go unseen.
Let us remind you that God sees you. God honors you. And your legacy, just like Tabitha, may be very well outlive you.
If you can simply get to the place where you're going to step out by faith and say, God, I want to trust in you more than myself. Let us live lives that point people to the power of Christ. Leave behind our testimonies.
Leave behind everything that we have and just simply trust in the power of Christ this morning. Because whether it's through prayer, whether it's through a warm meal, whether it's through words of grace,
Trusting in the Lord's Plan
life lived for Jesus will never be wasted. Both Aeneas and Tabitha were helpless and part of Christ. And yet Christ stepped into their story. Christ healed them. Christ raised them.
And their life went on to display the power of Christ. Their life went on to display the pattern of God in us. And this morning, how are we living that life? Maybe this morning you're in Aeneas. Maybe you're powerless, you're helpless.
There's nothing you can do on your own. And you just need Christ to step into your life. You need the healing touch of Christ to raise you up so that you can live a life that is meaningful. Or maybe this morning you're Tabitha. You're called to a quiet life
that is going to simply faithfully serve others and call others to the repentance of Christ. This morning, I think we can all identify with someone in this story.
I think we can all identify with one of these two characters, Aeneas or Tabitha, who just simply needs to trust in the Lord. The Lord is there for us.
The Bible says that the Lord is there for the brokenhearted. The Lord is there for those who are weak and helpless.
And He is there to help lift us up in our deepest times and our deepest struggles.
I want to pray for us and you can respond how you see fit, maybe in your seat or at the altar, however you want to respond to the Lord this morning. Lord, we love you and we thank you for what you've done. God, I thank you for the blessings that you've given us.
Each and every one of us are here because of a mother who cared and loved and took care of us. It may have been in a way that seemed right in her eyes, but we look back and we say, well, maybe that's not how I would do it.
But we're here today because of it. I pray the Lord you'd give us the testimony to step forward and to share Christ with others. Lord, help us to honor you in everything we do. Be with us at this time of invitation. Here we pray. Amen.
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