Atonished

DEVOTION

THE BOOK OF ACTS

ASTONISHED

Acts 3:11-16

11 While the beggar held on to Peter and John, all the people were astonished and came running to them in the place called Solomon's Colonnade. 12 When Peter saw this, he said to them: "Men of Israel, why does this surprise you? Why do you stare at us as if by our own power or godliness we had made this man walk? 13 The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God of our fathers, has glorified his servant Jesus. You handed him over to be killed, and you disowned him before Pilate, though he had decided to let him go. 14 You disowned the Holy and Righteous One and asked that a murderer be released to you. 15 You killed the author of life, but God raised him from the dead. We are witnesses of this. 16 By faith in the name of Jesus, this man whom you see and know was made strong. It is Jesus' name and the faith that comes through him that has given this complete healing to him, as you can all see.

NIV

While this is a rather large section of scripture and a complete statement that Peter made and we cannot really break it up, we will have to camp out in it for a while. The first thing we should look at it is the fact all the people were astonished and came running to them. Certainly we would think that all the things Jesus did, all the healings, the raising of Lazarus from the dead would have made the local news, headlines in the newspaper, even instagrams posted on facebook, but of course none of that was available. Yet it would seem natural that kind of behavior over a three year period would have spread through the area and people would have been aware of it. So then why were all the people astonished? Did they think that once they got rid of Jesus all that would stop? Did they actually think that Jesus was just a man with the power of God in his life, like one of their prophets and once he was gone so was the power? We will see that Peter makes it all very clear, but we should first make an application for our lives about being astonished. Sometimes it seems when something supernatural happens, believers are astonished. Should we not expect the supernatural? Should we not expect to see miracles among the body of Christ? Perhaps we are just content to live in the human condition. Maybe some of us really do not believe in miracles because we have never seen any. Maybe some haven’t seen any because they have a difficult time believing in them. This believer has had so many miracles happen in his life he has a difficult time remembering them all. This believer is never astonished when a miracle occurs, when someone is healed, when God does a supernatural action in our lives. None of us should ever be astonished, amazed or even surprised when God acts in a supernatural way. That kind of response should be reserved for unbelievers, so we might be able to explain to them what is going on as Peter did. People should not have to read some bogus miracle in the tabloids waiting in line at the grocery store, they should see them in our lives, so they can actually be astonished and that would give us the opportunity to explain to them what just happened and by the power of the name of Jesus. We should be living so people are astonished.