It didn’t take long for the Jewish leadership to take offense at this explosion of faith in Jesus. Diaspora or not, the crowd of Jesus’ disciples was growing, and their presence was strongly felt in the city.
Jesus had said that God really didn’t care about the place people worshiped, but wanted worshipers who had a spiritual nature to meet Him in the Spirit Realm. Yet, instead of moving His followers to abandon the Temple, this breathed fresh life into what was by now empty ritual for most. With the holiday crowds mostly gone, it was very easy to draw attention to oneself in the relative sparsely attended Temple rituals.
Nobody knows where the Beautiful Gate stood, but it was a good place for customary beggars. You would have found as many there along the walls as space permitted, hoping to catch people entering the Temple in a pious mood. To keep the pretense that charitable gifts were given to God, the beggars avoided eye contact and simply called out for alms. It was late in the day. Peter and John, making their way through this gate with the cacophony of beggars calling, sensed the presence of faith in this particular fellow.
Normally, demanding the beggar give them direct attention meant a substantial gift and the recipient had better be ready to give profuse gratitude. However, Peter gave something quite different than money. He grabbed the man and pulled him to his feet, and his lame legs were healed. Being a man of faith, he would much rather have his legs than mere money. In Hebrew culture, manly men were marked by strong legs, not big arms. Peter and John restored this fellow’s manhood, doing so in the name of Jesus.
The man began jumping up and down, shouting praises to God with irrepressible thanksgiving. He clung to Peter and John and celebrated that he was now whole and eligible to enter the Temple (the blind and lame were by tradition not permitted inside the gates of the Temple structure). This was his first time to formally worship the God who had just healed him, whooping and hollering, dancing and leaping during the whole service. It would be impossible to ignore such noisy joy.
As they were leaving following the service, a crowd surrounded them in the Court of Women. The regular worshipers recognized the lame man due to his constant attendance at the gate, and this was a noteworthy miracle. Even the most jaded urbanites were moved.
Peter seized the opportunity to preach. He wondered aloud at the their surprise. Was this not the Temple of the great God of Abraham, having granted so many miracles over the centuries? It was not their own power or moral uprightness that healed the man. Peter never forgot how unworthy he was, having betrayed His Lord; it was miracle enough for the rest of his life to be forgiven.
And he didn’t spare their feelings at all, quickly pointing out how it was the people of this city who had called for Jesus to be crucified, when Pilate was striving to get Him released. The people had insisted on a murderous thug who had preyed on some of them, instead. Peter spoke in unmistakable terms that Jesus was the Messiah, the Holy One of God. He was one of many personal witnesses that God had raised Jesus from death, and it was His name that raised this man from lameness.
Peter of all men was able to testify of God’s mercy and forgiveness. If he could find peace with God, they could, too. He invited them to repent and commit their lives to Him as their feudal Master. Yes, it was tough to serve a Lord they could not see, but He was in Heaven until the Father decided it was time to restore Eden, something promised by the prophets since the beginning of revelation.
Well, Jesus was the prophet of all prophets, and Peter quoted Moses, warning that Israel must submit to Him or perish. The people crowding around him were the heirs of the prophets, standing in the day they had testified would come. The Messiah reigned now; it was the time to declare the New Covenant to His own kin first.
The commotion brought the attention of the attending Sanhedrin and Temple Guard. Any disturbance was risky these days, so they came to see what was happening. As soon as they realized Peter was teaching that the Jesus they had recently seen executed was the Messiah, and that this Jesus had raised from the dead, they had the trio arrested. It being so close to sunset, they placed the men in prison overnight.
Meanwhile, the message brought a harvest of souls; 5000 men joined the disciples that very day. This sect was exploding.
For the Sadducees — the secularized party of priests and Levites — the teaching of rising from the dead was anathema. They insisted there could be no Spirit Realm, and thus, no place where the dead could exist until resurrection of any kind. For the Pharisees, Jesus was the wrong kind of Messiah, whose teaching threatened their wealth and power.
So the next day, the whole council of the ruling class assembled and called for these men to stand before them. They demanded to know what authority these men had to heal this man and stir up so much trouble. The presumption here is that this council, as the hereditary government of Israel, was the official voice of God and His Covenant. These men were obviously working outside the system, so it must be some other god.
Peter was filled with Spirit of their professed God at that moment and didn’t hesitate to reply. It was impossible for anyone to debate the healing itself, a healing the men of this great council either could not or would not do for this poor victim of paralysis. The authority was Jesus of Nazareth, the man they had only recently had crucified, but whom God Himself had raised from the dead. The rulers had rejected His claims, but God was building a whole new covenant with Jesus as the foundation.
Peter had a bumpkin’s accent from Galilee, no rhetorical format, and none of the educated mannerisms of rabbis. Instead, he talked pretty much the way Jesus did. It was quite perplexing to them. Nobody could dispute the miraculous healing, and they could neither produce the body of Jesus, nor even an eyewitness from among the guards keeping watch over that body.
So they had the men escorted outside the chamber while they conferred in executive session. There was nothing they could do. Here was a miracle that could not be covered up. But they could not have these crazy people running around teaching the message of Jesus, so they resolved to censure them officially. The trio were brought back in and warned not to speak in the name of Jesus.
Peter and John both replied that they were unable to obey that order. Should they obey this order, or should they obey the God who drove them to speak this message? They were determined to obey God at any cost. The council threatened again, with more specific demands and warnings, but it was pointless to detain them any further. It would surely cause a riot if they did, so the trio was released.
Luke notes that the healed man was over forty years old, and had been lame his whole life. This was not some hoax, nor simply a novel medical treatment, but a radical restoration of limbs that had never worked properly.
