Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript

The sermon of scripture is found in the book of Acts, the 9th chapter, beginning at verse 31. And I’m going to read through the first verse of chapter 10. So, Acts 9:31-10:1. Please stand for the reading of God’s word.

Then had the churches rest throughout all Judea and Galilee and Samaria, and were edified, and walking in the fear of the Lord, and in the comfort of the Holy Ghost, were multiplied. And it came to pass as Peter passed throughout all quarters, He came down also to the saints which dwell at Lydda.

And there he found a certain man named Aeneas who had kept his bed 8 years and was sick of the palsy. And Peter said unto him, Aeneas, Jesus Christ maketh thee whole. Arise and make thy bed. And he arose immediately. And all that dwelt at Lydda and Sharon saw him and turned to the Lord. Now there was at Joppa a certain disciple named Tabitha, which by interpretation is called Dorcas. This woman was full of good works and alms deeds which she did.

And it came to pass in those days that she was sick and died, whom when they had washed, they laid her in an upper chamber. And for as much as Lydda was nigh to Joppa, and the disciples had heard that Peter was there, they sent unto him two men, desiring him that he would not delay to come to them. Then Peter arose and went with them. When he was come, they brought him into the upper chamber, and all the widows stood by him, weeping, and showing the coats and garments which Dorcas made while she was with them.

But Peter put them all forth and kneel down and prayed and turning him to the body said, “Tabitha, arise.” And she opened her eyes. And when she saw Peter, she sat up. And he gave her his hand and lifted her up. And when he had called the saints and widows, presented her alive. And it was known throughout all Joppa. And many believed in the Lord. And it came to pass that he tarried many days in Joppa with one Simon a tanner.

There was a certain man in Caesarea named Cornelius, a centurion of the band called the Italian band.

Let us pray. Father, we thank you for your word. What an excellent message we see just in the plain reading of it of death to life. We thank you Lord God that you have brought us from death to life through the work of Jesus Christ our savior. We thank you for giving us the Holy Spirit not on the basis of our requests or our needs or our works but rather on the basis of Christ’s work done for us.

We thank you, Lord God, that Holy Spirit promises to take this word and write it upon our hearts. Make it drive it into the very center of our being, slaying us with it, causing us to come to repentance, but then also causing us to rise in newness of life and in a willingness to serve you in obedience to that word. We pray then, Lord God, that your spirit would illuminate our hearts with understanding from this scripture to the end that we may obey you, that we may glorify you forever, and then we might enjoy you all the days of our lives in Christ.

In his name we pray. Amen.

That’s because I want us to understand the context of these stories, these accounts, these historical accounts of events that happened in the first opening years of the church reorganized and given the power of the Holy Spirit to witness to all ends of the earth. But in the context then we look first at the two specific events that happen in this portion of Acts chapter 9. That is of course the healing of Aeneas and then the resurrection, coming back to life, of Tabitha. And I’ve structured the outline in such a way as to point out very clearly that the first story, the healing of Aeneas, is not referred to as a saint or a holy one but as a man. And then secondly, the resurrection of Tabitha is indeed the resurrection of a saint. She is called that in the text before us.

So let us look then at these two stories and as we’ll go through it, we’ll glean principles and then at the end we’ll have some application from these, putting them in their proper context, the verses that I read before and after the text.

So first of all let’s look at an overview of this text that we’ve just read and consider first of all then the healing of Aeneas. Now we read in the scriptures that this all occurred, the healing of Aeneas, that is as Peter passed through all quarters he came down also to the saints which dwelt at Lydda.

Now Peter was apparently no longer constrained to be at Jerusalem. You remember during the persecution that started a few chapters earlier with the martyrdom of Stephen, the apostles dwelt at Jerusalem. The church became scattered. There is now a degree of peace as our verse we just read prior to this text indicates. As a result, Peter had freedom to visit the churches, to go and investigate or to examine and to build up the works that Philip undoubtedly had started through his ministry in this particular area.

So Peter is going about his responsibility as one of the apostles to go through and strengthen the various manifestations of the body of Christ that he finds in these areas. So Peter is going about his work as an apostle and that is the context for him then coming into this particular city Lydda. Now it will be helpful to keep in mind the way this works: Lydda is west from Jerusalem as you head toward the coast and we’ll see that he goes further toward the coast to Joppa in the next account of the raising of Tabitha. But geographically here he is going westward from Jerusalem and the text tells us specifically that he goes down. That is a phrase that’s used frequently in this kind of movement.

It might be interesting for you to know as well that Lydda was a very important city but it was a city that would be destroyed in AD 66 when the Jews and Romans engage in warfare. The Romans will sack this city to the ground. And so that’s the city that he now visits. And in the context of that city, he comes across one Aeneas who was a man who had been paralyzed or had the palsy for 8 years.

In the healing of this man several things are at work. This is a man who was completely unable to fend for himself or to care for himself. He lays on his bed and that’s what he’s been doing apparently for 8 years. People would transfer him from his sleeping place where he slept to this bed where he’d lay in the daytime. But he was almost a picture of the not the walking dead because he’s not walking but the laying dead. A man completely unable, without any strength or power at all in himself.

And of course this is the context in which we can see by way of application all men come to the Lord Jesus Christ when we were without strength. He came to us and strengthened us and healed us and raised us up. And so Aeneas finds himself in that particular position.

Going on from there then we read that this occurred through the ministration of the word of Peter as he speaks to Aeneas. Verse 34: Peter says unto Aeneas, “Jesus Christ maketh thee whole. Arise and make thy bed.” And he arose immediately.

Now the particular construction of these verses is such that the verse indicates the preeminence of Jesus Christ in the healing process. Literally I suppose we could look at the translation as being more like this: let’s see, “Heal thee doth Jesus Christ” would be a more literal translation. So the words are transposed a bit and the great emphasis is placed then upon the Lord Jesus Christ himself. Now that’s important to us because it’s very important to see here that what we do not have is Peter as a healer. What we have here is the ministry of Jesus Christ.

We’ve said that the overall title for this book of Acts is the acts of Jesus Christ through the apostles and through the church and that’s portrayed for us in very strong terms here in the healing of Aeneas. Jesus Christ himself is the one who heals. Peter simply announces the fact that indeed Jesus Christ has worked and has brought this man back to health. The healing takes place when Peter speaks but definitely the operative agent is the Lord Jesus Christ.

This is stressed for us in the text. So it’s very important for us to recognize that and we also must note in passing here, going on to the next story, that there is no indication here that Aeneas is a disciple. We say here that this is the healing of a man because he’s not identified specifically as a saint or as a holy one. And indeed in various accounts that we’ve read up to now that’s the way saints are usually referred to.

And so the omission of that term relative to Aeneas is important for us. I think that what we see here as a result of Aeneas’s healing is conversion of many, a mass conversion in this particular region and indeed also in the surrounding area, the area of Sharon that is spoken of here, shows us that God can elect men to particular things. We don’t know that Aeneas was saved. We don’t know that he had faith in the Lord Jesus Christ even after the healing.

But it doesn’t make any difference. God raises up servants or vessels for his purposes sovereignly and apart from their involvement. In this case his expressed faith. There’s no indication that he exercises faith in this. Rather it is the sovereign and electing work of Jesus Christ and perhaps not an election to salvation but an election to see in Aeneas a miracle that would confirm the word that Jesus Christ is Lord and Savior and has the power to bring men back to wholeness and restore all things. And that word then takes root in the context of the land here and spreads and we see that the text tells us that many in the area, all the way that Luke describes the term, many in this area come to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.

And so we have in the context of this a mass conversion. And so Aeneas is used for that particular purpose. Now we also see in this text that Aeneas is commanded to make his bed himself. And so he has been restored back to a position of wholeness relative to his own ability to care for himself as well. And immediately he then attends himself to that task, to pick up his bed that others would have to pick up for him in the past and to take care of it which he does.

And so in this particular account we see this area seeing the salvation of Jesus Christ pictured in the rising up of one who had no strength and yet was found strength in the Lord Jesus Christ. And so that’s the first story that we have here.

Now the second account is of course the account of the raising of Tabitha. And here we have a remarkable story occurring. We see first of all the introduction of Tabitha to us in the verses that precede Peter’s actually going to her and raising her up.

“Now there was at Joppa a certain disciple named Tabitha which by interpretation is called Dorcas. The woman was full of good works and alms deeds which she did.”

So apart from the plain description of Aeneas as a man, in contra-distinction to that or in distinction from that, we see Tabitha described as a saint, as one who was a woman full of good works and alms deeds which she did, and she is called a disciple in the context of the text for us.

Now again the way this works is that Joppa is even further west from Lydda and then the plain area along that portion of the coast is known as Sharon. So Sharon refers to the whole plain area. By the way, I might just mention that Sharon itself was a land that was extremely fruitful in vegetation and growth. And so it’s pictured for us several times in the scriptures as being a luxurious area. And so in the context of Sharon, this fruitfulness of the man being healed and a saint being resurrected, this is the context in which it happens in that particular area noted for scripture by its blessings from God.

Well, in the context of that then this other town is now referenced and we see in that town a woman named Tabitha. Now the word Tabitha is her Aramaic name. Her Greek name is Dorcas, which is what the text means, or what it says by interpretation. It’s very common in this particular portion of history for people to have two names, a Greek name as well as an Aramaic or Hebrew name. And that is the situation here.

Both names mean the same thing. The name means originally in its root context beauty. And in its more specific context, it refers to a gazelle or an antelope or that sort of animal. And we see here in the context then Tabitha referred to by her name. And that name indicates her beautifulness, her grace. As one commentator said, a gazelle or an antelope is an emblem of grace and of beauty. And Tabitha is that for us, not in her physical appearance—of course, we’re not told anything about that—but rather in the deeds that she does for the saints and for the church that Peter was here to strengthen.

One of those churches was at this particular place at Joppa. And she is beautious in the context of that church.

So we read then of this account of Tabitha. And before we get to the raising up of Tabitha, I want to spend a few minutes here to talk about the importance that the text gives for us of who Tabitha was. And that importance is that she was full of good works and alms deeds which she did. She is a woman filled with charity with love.

And now I want to use Tabitha as an example for us and have her kind of cemented in your mind as an example for us of that particular element of the Christian character that undergirds all other elements. Remember we talked, we’ve been talking for the last few months, relating some of these accounts in the book of Acts to 1 Corinthians 13:13-14. That text reads at the end of a series of doctrinal injunctions.

He then gives them a set of very specific Christian character qualities that they’re to engage themselves in. And that text reads this: “Watch ye. Watchfulness is a characteristic of the Christian. Stand ye fast in the faith. Have resolve or determination. Quit you like men. Have courage. In other words, don’t be fearful but be strengthened. And then he go on to say be strong. And then finally in verse 14, let all your things be done with charity.”

And so in the context of our lives, we need to be watchful, aware of who we are, aware of our proneness to be self-deceived, et cetera. That watchfulness should result, as it did in the case of Saul when he was confronted with the vision of the Lord Jesus Christ on the road to Damascus, with a resolve or determination to do the will of our father in heaven. And so Saul asked Jesus, “What would you have me to do?”

And so we should be asking our Lord on a repetitive basis, “What would he have us to do?” Now, when we are given tasks to do, we must have courage. We’re to quit us like men. We’re not to be fearful. Remember the picture of that for us was Ananias, who was called by Jesus to go and minister to Saul, who was a persecutor of the church. He said, “Well, I don’t know. This fellow kills a lot of Christians. I’m not sure this is a good idea.” Jesus didn’t rebuke him for that.

Rather, he explained to him that Saul had been converted. He strengthened him up, but he gives him courage. And Ananias is a picture of courage as he goes to the persecutor of the church, one of the enemies of the church as far as he knew and goes to minister to him. And they were to be strong, going from strength to strength, maturing in this Christian virtue.

Saul, having been converted, having this resolve, having courage to face the trials that were ahead of him that Jesus told him would certainly come to him—him who had persecuted the church would himself be persecuted. He goes on in that courage and goes from strength to strength. First in Damascus and then in Jerusalem. The account tells us in Acts chapter 9, waging war by preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ and God preserves his physical health.

And then finally, undergirding all these manifestations of Christian character that we’ve talked about over the last couple of months is this characteristic of love. “Let all your things,” and I think we could say that by application that means your watchfulness, your resolve, your courage, your strength, everything that you put your hand to do—these character qualities certainly, and then the specific actions that result from them. “Let all these things be done with charity or with love.”

And so we have here Tabitha as a picture of that. She engages herself in good deeds in charitable acts to the household of God specifically, as we’ll go on to see in a minute.

Many, as Matthew Henry said, are full of good works who are empty and barren. Excuse me. Many are full of good words, but who are empty and barren in good works. Tabitha’s goodness, her charity, her love was a demonstration of what her profession of faith was. Her profession was her whole life lived in love and in charitable deeds to those who had needs, not simply a profession of word alone. And so Jesus Christ calls us to have a profession and acting out of what we believe and what we say in terms of our deeds.

And these deeds are to be deeds the scriptures place of love. Let me just read a quote here from Waldron’s book, again, “Rebuilding the Walls.” This was co-authored by George Grant, and I mentioned that these verses from 1 Corinthians were something that he talked about at a meeting I was at in July last year in Chicago. Grant or Waldron, both of them together, right in this book: “All Christians are called to be long-suffering in love and tender and tenderness. They’re to show love to strangers,” Deuteronomy 10:19, “as well as neighbors,” Leviticus 19:18. “We’re to love enemies,” Matthew 5:44. “We’re to love as well the brethren,” 1 Peter 3:8. “In all things, at all times, we are to be examples of love,” 1 Timothy 4:12. “Abounding in love,” Philippians 1:9. “Walking in love,” Ephesians 5:2. “We are to comfort one another in love according to Colossians 2:2. Greet one another. Even our very greetings are to be done in love,” Titus 3:15. “To provoke one another in love,” Hebrews 10:24. And so very importantly, behind the basis of provoking or admonishing is this basis of love and to labor with one another in love,” 1 Thessalonians 1:3.

Love is the royal law, James 2:8. Love is essentially the motivating force that puts the principles of the law into action. There is no distinction between love and law. Indeed, they work together hand and glove. Law is the direction and how we measure whether we truly love our neighbor as ourselves. Tabitha here was walking in obedience to the command to show kindness and do good things, good deeds as well as giving good words to those who have need. That law that Tabitha had to obey was her profession, that so that her profession of faith in Jesus Christ would be demonstrated to be real. But it wasn’t some kind of slavish obedience that she performed these acts in the context of.

No, her motivating factor was love first for God and then love for the ones that she came into contact with. We’ve said before many times in the Heidelberg Catechism, you know, the three things that you must know to live and die happily in the comfort of the faith. The first: how great your sin and misery is. The second: how you’re redeemed from all your sins and misery. And that correlates well with what Richard said at the beginning of the service. You must know how great a sinner you are. But you also must know how you are redeemed from all your sins and misery.

And then third: how you are to be thankful to God for such redemption. Tabitha knew her sin. She knew it clearly and she knew that she had been saved from that sin. And we know that because she had great love for God. And we know she had great love for God because she exercised love toward the saints, to the ones who are the picture of God himself.

Scripture tells us that if we say we love God and hate our neighbor, we lie. No man can love God whom he has not seen if he doesn’t love his neighbor whom he has seen. Why? Because people are so good. No, because people are the imagebarers of God. And so we were watching I don’t know some show the other night, my wife and I, and I said, “Look what man can do.” I don’t remember what it was. Oh, I know what it was. It was a musician playing music. You think about what man is capable of doing in this world. He can be as base as beasts are, worse much worse than an animal in his depravity. And yet he can soar to heights of musical beauty. Man is a tremendous thing as the Psalmi, read responsibly, speaks of. That is because man is made in the image of God with complexity with dominion. And when he perverts that it’s a terrible thing.

But when he exercises that correctly, it is a wondrous thing to behold. Well, that’s what we’re to see in each other is the image of God. And as a result, our love for God should pour forth in deeds and actions, not simply words, but like Tabitha, pour forth in deeds of love to those around about us.

Let me read a few Puritan quotes. The Puritans were known for men who loved the law and obeyed the law very diligently and sought how to obey it very fully. But let me read some of their quotes about love as well.

Thomas Watson said that love is not only full of benevolence but beneficence. “Love which enlarges the heart never straightens the hand.” Because of Thomas Watson’s comprehension of scripture, he knew that love was not, as so many portray it in our world today, some kind of what Judge Beers used to call “sloppy agape” that found no evidence in one’s hand towards somebody, but simply was lots of hand wringing compassion.

Perhaps certainly we’re to have compassion. We’re to have benevolence toward people, but that which if it is true Christian love will result in beneficence toward people as well.

John Trapp said that “affection without action is like Rachel beautiful but barren.” So again the necessity to engage our love in acts in deeds, alms deeds as Tabitha did. She abounded in good works. She abounded in alms deeds is a specific example of that.

Not alms, not the giving of alms, not just giving money to people who had need of them. She probably had that. When it says that her body was prepared in the upper room, Dr. Leithart well over a hundred years ago said that he thinks that refers to the meeting place of the church in Joppa was probably at her upper room. This was not a poor lady. She could give money. I’m sure she did. But very importantly, she didn’t leave it at that.

She did alms deeds, works toward the poor, not simply giving money to them. Her affection translated into action. So unlike Rachel, she was beautiful, but she was also fruitful and productive and not barren.

Thomas Brooks says specifically—now we’re turning now to the plain teaching of scripture—that our love should abound particularly to those who are the household of faith. Thomas Brooks said that “a greater hell I would not wish any man than to live and not love the beloved of God.”

Understanding the importance of the love that is found in the context of the church, and again if God is beloved by us, as we certainly will love those who are beloved by him in the Lord Jesus Christ.

Again, Thomas Watson: “The saints are the walking pictures of God. If God be our father, we shall love to see his picture of holiness in believers. We shall pity them for their infirmities, but love them for their graces. It may justly be suspected that God is not father of those who love not his children.”

“By this you know, you will demonstrate if you love God, if you love his children, if you love the church. Though they retain the communion of saints in their creed,” Watson wrote, “they banish the communion of saints out of their company. So men who profess a belief in the communion of saints, and yet don’t engage themselves in the context of the church, the local church, the communion of saints, does not exercise deeds of love and compassion to those in the context of the church. Watson says these men really are showing by their profession, by their walk, that their profession of a belief in the communion of the saints is not real.”

Watson also wrote this: “He said that wicked men seem to bear great reverence to the saints departed. They canonize dead saints but persecute living saints. In vain do men stand up at the creed and tell the world they believe in God when they abominate one of the articles of the creed, namely the communion of saints. Surely there is no greater sign of a man ripe for hell than this—not only to lack grace in terms of the communion of the saints but indeed to hate it.”

Well, the scriptures clearly support what these great Puritans of old told us: that love is a cardinal virtue. It is the virtue that undergirds all the other virtues and is a result for understanding our sin, our redemption from sin, loving God and then loving our neighbor. You cannot work up love for your neighbor if you don’t love God. And you cannot love God without an appreciation of your sin and of the forgiveness.

And so it is the cross of Jesus Christ, pictured for us here of course from these healings and his resurrection, that should be the focal point of our meditation as we seek to learn the love that God has shed abroad in our hearts, to learn it, to know it, and to express it abroad in the context of our communities as well.

And so Tabitha is a picture for us of this love. She is, as I said before, her name means a gazelle or a hind. And in the scriptures this specifically is given to us as one of the clean animals of scripture. This particular beast is a clean animal. And you remember the characteristics for the clean animal were those that chew the cud and divide the hoof. And while I know this is a bit of an allegorical approach, I suppose, yet by way of application, of those two things, it can be said of Tabitha that she chewed the cud.

She meditated upon the word of God. That’s what meditate means—to chew over, to ponder, to consider, to mumble to yourself about that word. She meditated upon the goodness of God and showing salvation to her through the Lord Jesus Christ. And as a result of her meditation, she divided the hoof. She walked in obedience to the meditation. She walked in joyful obedience, not a slavish submission to the need to show good deeds to those who were of the faith, but rather a delight in doing it.

These were also—she is a model for us of this need for the Christian virtue of love to undergird all other virtues.

Mueller said that “good works grow from faith and are but the very word of God in its deed and fulfillment which the faith has been implanted in us, which by faith rather has been implanted in us.”

Tabitha is said not only to do alms deeds but the particular tense of the Greek verb there means that she was continually attending to alms deeds. She had a life characterized by acts of kindness, compassion and mercy to those round about her.

Now it is important, as I said before, to understand that this does not somehow—this is not, you know, so much of the church today pits law and love against one another, but that is not the case as I’ve tried to demonstrate here. We have said many times and hopefully you’ve memorized that the three requirements of man according to Micah are to do what: to love mercy. That’s what she’s doing—she’s engaging in acts of mercy and compassion. To do justice, meaning abiding by God’s law and seeing it as the standard for our decision-making. And to walk humbly with God.

It was interesting as I was thinking through this text this week. The national prayer meeting was held at in Washington DC and I’d heard a few press accounts of it. It was actually on C-SPAN. They showed most of it. I watched it. Mother Teresa was there. A woman who certainly has engaged in this kind of deeds of charity that Tabitha has engaged in. Now I know that she’s Roman Catholic and I know that there are many in the Roman Catholic Church who are not elect in the Lord Jesus Christ, who have not been brought to a saving knowledge because they’re dependent upon their works for salvation. I don’t know Mother Teresa’s eternal state. But I know that she is a picture for us of humility before God and as a result working out and loving God, demonstrating that love through love to those people round about her.

But she is also a picture for us and she certainly was at the prayer breakfast of the need to do justice. She spoke very bluntly about abortion. President Clinton sitting just a couple of chairs away from her, the room filled with senators who were pro-abortionists, and she said abortion was simply the murder of children and she said that mothers were murdering their children. This is the worst evil, the worst absence of love in the context of our land today. She said in this nation that has mothers allowed to murder their children, how can it hope to defend anybody else’s lives as well?

She spoke very bluntly about abortion and that’s a picture for us, you see, of this need to see these things in conjunction with each other. We’re to do justice and love mercy, not somehow as opposed to each other, but both humbly before God.

Well, that’s who Tabitha was. She did these things. She was comforted, I’m sure, as Job was comforted. Job said in chapter 30, or chapter 31:20 of the book of Job, he said that while he lived, it was his comfort that the loins of the poor blessed him because they were warmed with the fleece of his sheep. Well, Tabitha finds herself in that very state. She is blessed by God, blessed by those round about her because of her good deeds.

John 15:8 says that “here in is my father glorified that she bear much fruit. So shall you be my disciples.” Disciples bear fruit. Fruit is not an affirmation with your lips as much as it is actions with your hands. And that’s what Tabitha gives us here specifically.

Psalm 41 tells us that “blessed is he that considereth the poor. The Lord will deliver him in time of trouble.”

And then as we’ve said, Galatians 6:10: “As we therefore have opportunity, let us do good unto all men, especially unto them that are the household of faith.”

This is Tabitha, a picture for us of this Christian virtue of love and grace, and particularly in reference to the poor and particularly in reference to the covenant community.

Well, Peter comes to Tabitha at the imploring of two men who were sent to him after she died. The scriptures tell us in verse 37:

“It came to pass in those days that she was sick and she died, whom they had washed, they laid her in an upper chamber. And for as much as Lydda was nigh unto Joppa, and the disciples had heard that Peter was there, they sent unto him two men, desiring him that he would not delay to come to them.”

So they made urgent requests to him. That’s only probably a four or five hour journey from one city to the other. And you know, the bodies weren’t supposed to stay overnight, and so they wanted Peter to come quickly. We don’t know exactly if they expected Peter to raise Tabitha or not. We don’t know that. But we do know that they implored him very urgently to come. The word means there that he would not delay. That delay in the Greek is either to fear or sloth usually. And so they implore him not to have either a fear or sloth, but to come quickly to the dead Tabitha and to the church that was gathered there.

Peter then hears this and arises and goes. He’s on his duties, right? He’s visiting the churches. The church has made requests to see him and He then arises in verse 39 and he goes with them, and when he was come they brought him to the upper chamber and all the widows stood by weeping and showing the coats and garments which Dorcas made while she was with them.

So here we have Tabitha, a loving saint who had died, and she is pictured for us here. These alms deeds are made more specific for us now in verse 39. There are widows gathered about her and they are weeping and they are showing to Peter the coats and garments which she had made them while she was with them.

Now, there’s some discussion over whether these were an order of widows. Not officially yet. The church was not organized to that extent yet, probably. Whether these were widows who assisted Tabitha in ministering to the poor or whether these are the very widows that received the ministrations of Tabitha. Well, I think the latter is the probable case. They apparently—the terminology here of showing the coats and garments—indicate these are the coats and garments they’re not carrying around to show Peter, but that she addressed them in. And so Tabitha is one who had, in the words of James, shown true and undefiled religion to visit the fatherless and the widows in their distress. And Tabitha had visited them with acts of kindness.

Tabitha not only did good deeds and had good words and engaged in alms deeds, but she did that diligently with her hands. She made these garments. Apparently, she was a Proverbs woman. You know, Proverbs tell us about the excellent woman who is that mighty woman of valor. “Who is the mighty woman of a wife of valor. Who can find such a great wife?” One who puts her hand to the spindle. Well, that’s who Tabitha was. She was diligent in her deeds of love and kindness as well as engaging in them regularly. They were diligent deeds putting her hand to the spindle. She was a hard worker.

Well, these women missed her as anybody would miss the saint of God who was departed, who had been so important part of the covenant community there at Joppa. She left a void with her death and these women weep over her. And as Peter comes in, they show him, rather, the evidence of her alms deeds, their own clothing. Again, Tabitha followed the injunctions not to simply tell somebody to go and be warned, but indeed putting her hands to the work that accomplish that.

And so now we have in the context of this the raising back to life. Just as Aeneas was healed—but actually the terminology is he was made whole through the work of Jesus Christ—so it is we’ve talked about the resurrection of a saint, but she is arisen, is what actually happens here.

We read about this in verse 40.

“Peter put them all forth and kneel down and prayed and turned into the body and turning him to the body said Tabitha arise.”

Now this is a very simple and yet pregnant verse with much meaning to it. As she opens her eyes, when she saw Peter, she sat up. There are a couple of things we should point out as we go through this.

Peter put them all forth. He took them all out of the room. We don’t know why exactly. And then he kneels down and prays and he got on his knees to pray. And I would just suggest in passing here that as we try to establish humility before God, doing of just justice and loving mercy in our lives, that praying on our knees is a very good practice to engage in. I’m not suggesting we do it at our monthly prayer meetings with children and wife, etcetera. But at least at our men’s prayer meeting every Wednesday morning, we do pray on our knees and it is a good posture to assume to remind ourselves of the need before God, to be humble before God.

And he then turns to the body as he’s praying, apparently receiving instruction from God somehow, and he tells her simply, “Tabitha arise.”

Now this is a very interesting phrase. The Lord Peter himself was with the Lord when Jesus Christ raised the daughter of Jairus, the ruler in the synagogue, recorded for us in all three of the synoptic gospels. You might remember the story. Jesus is going—actually the ruler of the synagogue sends men to him to tell him that his daughter is dead. Jesus begins to make his way toward the ruler of the synagogue’s house and in that movement a woman comes up who had been unclean by way of an issue of blood for 12 years and touches the hem of his garment and he realizes that power has gone out of him and the woman is healed. And then he continues on to the Jairus’s house and in a similar fashion he excludes everybody from the house except for Peter, James and John and the mother and father of the daughter.

So Peter actually saw the savior himself performing this sort of act of clearing out the room except for a select few. And in this, in Jesus’s case, he was one of the three disciples that was with Jesus as he went to this particular instance. And our savior then told Jairus’s daughter, “Damsel arise,” is how it’s translated in the King James version. Without getting into too much specificity here, it is interesting, very interesting that the two phrases—”damsel arise” and “Tabitha arise”—in the original language differ only by one letter. A tal or something along that line is the word for damsel. And so there is a distinct correlation here in the phraseology. Only one word, one letter separates these two phrases. And so I think that the scriptures very clearly want us to see some sort of correlation to Jesus’s raising of Jairus’s daughter and Peter’s raising of Tabitha here.

It is interesting, by the way, to note that this threesome—Peter, James, and John—were with our savior, as far as I can tell, in the Gospels, on three occasions. You remember what they were? I’ve given you one of them: the raising of Jairus’s daughter. You probably, most of you, will remember that the mount of transfiguration is another. They’re on the mountain where Jesus is transfigured and seen. They see him in his glory. But the third one is in the garden in Gethsemane. And it is interesting that these three disciples, of which we now see one ministering in the same manner as his savior and his lord, that these three disciples were with our savior in the place of death, in the place of his passion, preparation for his death on the cross at Gethsemane. And there with the savior as he resurrects a woman, a young lady back to life, and they’re with the savior in his seeing his glory in the mount of transfiguration: death, the resurrection and glorification, the three pictures there for us.

I don’t know, you know, what the significance of these two accounts is—the raising of Jairus’s daughter and Peter’s raising of Tabitha—but I do think it is interesting as well to meditate upon the fact that in both cases we have, in addition to the central act of the resurrection of first the daughter of a ruler in the synagogue and secondly the woman who engaged in alms deeds in the context of the local church, that’s the context here. In the context of both of theirs there’s a secondary miracle that takes place, as it were. The healing of the woman who had an issue of blood for 12 years and the man who was paralyzed for 8 years. There are correlations there.

Now it’s interesting too that in these three synoptic accounts, following the raising of Jairus’s daughter, it is then in one of the accounts directly followed by the sending forth of the 70 to evangelize. It is followed in another of the synoptic accounts by the rejection of Jesus at Nazareth and he says that, you know, a prophet is without honor in his hometown. And it’s followed in another of the synoptic accounts by two men receiving sight and a dumb man being able to speak again. Sight and speech restored to these men and then the sending forth of the 70. All three have the 70 in very close context.

And here we have Peter on the cusp, as it were, of the expansion of the church now into specific gentile homes. And we have Peter preparing for that mission of evangelization turning now, as it were, by way of picture, away from Jerusalem and toward the Gentiles. As Jesus said that in the prophet honored his hometown, I think there are definite correlations there for us.

But here we have the simple fact recorded that he heals her, holds her by the hand, raises her up. He has the disciples re-enter the room then and he presents them to her.

One commentator said that this is the way with the inspired writers. The most dramatic and stupendous events they record in a few calm words. Always they let the immense facts speak for themselves. And this is an immense fact—this resurrection of this woman. As far as I can tell, this is the first resurrection by the disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ post his glorification, his ascension into heaven.

One would have thought perhaps that it would have been somebody other than this woman. As another commentator wrote, he said: “For the first time since the ascension of Christ, the momentous miracle, we might have expected on behalf of a mighty man of the gospel like Stephen, is touchingly extended to the lowly but diligent seamstress.” That is a nice thing. It is an encouraging thing, I hope, to you and to those in your household, to see that kind of grace extended that Tabitha is the one selected out for us and recorded in Holy Writ as being the recipient of this resurrection.

It’s interesting then that after she is raised, Jesus, as I said, presents her to the saints and the widows alive. He restores her to the community, the visible covenant community here. And it is interesting that Elijah, Elisha, Jesus Christ himself, upon resurrecting people, presented them to their parents—to sons in these cases—and there’s a presentation that goes along with this, and I think that we can see in this the restoration of Tabitha not simply to life but life in the context of the covenant community. And that covenant community grows in life as well through the reception back of this woman who showed in her Christian character this required characteristic of love through her alms deeds. And so there’s this reintegration. Horizontally, having achieved the great reconciliation being demonstrated in her resurrection to God, she is reconciled, as it were, brought back to the context of the convocated host to minister once more.

The end result of this is more mass conversion. The text tells us specifically that it was known throughout all Joppa. Many believed in the Lord, just as in Sharon and in Lydda. So here in this secondary—this double witness to the efficacy, the acts of Jesus Christ in the context of the church even after his removal, his ascension—we see in this double account tremendous conversions occur. The miracles are given to confirm the word and the word is that Jesus Christ is Lord and Savior. And the text tells us that many believed on him. The preposition on. They have a reliance and a dependence upon Jesus Christ for their well-being. And of course that is pictured in the man who was paralyzed for 8 years without strength now relying upon the Lord Jesus Christ, and Tabitha as well being resurrected from total death.

Well, this area then has tremendous conversion and Sharon blossoms, so to speak. That is the area that these towns in the context of the Old Testament this is prophesied. Isaiah 35:2 says:

“It shall blossom abundantly and rejoice even with joy and singing the glory of Lebanon shall be given unto it the excellency of Carmel and Sharon they shall see the glory of the Lord and the excellency of our God.”

Isaiah 65:10:

“Sharon shall be a fold of flocks the valley of Achor a place for the herds to be down in for my people that have sought me.”

Well, here we have those prophecies come to pass. They see the glory of the Lord and this area comes to great fruitfulness. Lydda means birthplace and it was the birthplace of many souls through the work of Peter, the work of the Lord Jesus Christ through the mediating force of Peter. And Joppa means beauty. And this is a beautious thing that has happened in this valley in the plain of Sharon that now blossoms, so to speak, with a new kind of growth and blessing, that blessing being the resurrection of people as they believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and are moved as Tabitha was from death to life. And in that life to have the same characteristics of Christian virtues as she displayed, that primary virtue being of course love that undergirds all other things.

Well, okay, now there’s a context and I read these things specifically, these opening and closing verses of the text. We’re told immediately before this that there is rest in the context of the land. We read that, we talked about that last week, and it’s important for us to remember that this rest was the prelim, the calm before the storm, so to speak. It was the vehicle by which Peter could go forth and now the gospel will turn to a new territory. The summary account of the church’s well-being provides the context for this visitation by Peter fulfilling his responsibilities and as a result then he will now see a great thing happen in this emergence.

Having built up and extended the gospel into Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, we are now on the cusp of the book of Acts where the gospel will go into now the uttermost parts of the earth. Pictured for us symbolically in the gathering of all people at the in Acts chapter 2, all nations being represented. Pictured symbolically with the resurrection of the Ethiopian eunuch and faith in Jesus Christ, his spiritual resurrection. But now we’re going to for the first time in the book of Acts in chapter 10 see the conversion of a Gentile, a family or man and then into the whole area. The gospel will now be taken to the Gentiles.

And so this peace, this summary statement of the state of the church, provides the backdrop for the work that we have just seen Peter doing. These miracles provide the backdrop then for the conversion of the Gentiles.

The after this account we read that Peter—and the end the last verse in chapter 9—that Peter resides in the house of one Simon who was a tanner. Now it is a fact that tanners were not considered clean by the Jews of that day. They were unclean because they were always working with dead bodies in terms of tanning the hides, these dead bodies, and so the Jews wouldn’t reside at Simon’s house. Normally they would avoid that house. It would be seen as unclean. Well, not so Peter. That’s where he chooses to stay in the providence of God. And that is recorded for us in the scriptures. And indeed in that house where dead animals are pictured in these hides that the Lord Jesus will give Peter a vision in chapter 10 of unclean animals coming down and him being told to eat, indicating the inclusion of the Gentiles into the faith. And so it is.