In this sermon, the speaker emphasizes the importance of measuring oneself by God's perfect standard. He highlights the story of a man who was saved and given power by God, but lacked knowledge of who brought these blessings to him. The speaker then references Acts 3:12, where Peter addresses the people and reminds them of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The speaker suggests that sometimes we underestimate the significance of God's plan of salvation and the transformative power it can have in our lives.

In a series of meetings like this, we frequently have people who just come in for one night and are not aware of what has been going on. For your information, if you're here for the first time this evening, I would say that we've been following a simple series of studies in the book of the Acts. And tonight we reach Acts the third chapter, Acts chapter three. We've been looking particularly at some of the ways in which our Lord Jesus Christ is presented in these chapters in the book of the Acts. We saw him in chapter one as the man who was taken up, the man who was exalted. In chapter two, we saw him as the man who was approved or accredited of God. And tonight we're going to take another look at him in chapter three. And all in connection with a very wonderful event. So in chapter three of the book of the Acts, Now Peter and John went up together into the temple at the hour of prayer, being the ninth hour. And a certain man, lame from his birth, was carried, whom they laid daily at the gate of the temple, which is called Beautiful, to ask alms of them that entered into the temple, who, seeing Peter and John about to go into the temple, asked an alms. And Peter, fastening his eyes upon him with John, said, Look on us. And he gave heed unto them, expecting to receive something of them. Then Peter said, Silver and gold have I none, but such as I have, I give thee, in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk. And he took him by the right hand and lifted him up. And immediately his feet and ankle bones received strength. And he leaping up stood and walked and entered with them into the temple, walking and leaping and praising God. And all the people saw him walking and praising God. And they knew that it was he which sat for alms at the beautiful gate of the temple. And they were filled with wonder and amazement at that which had happened unto him. And as the lame man which was healed held Peter and John, all the people ran together unto them in the porch that is called Solomon's, greatly wondering. And when Peter saw it, he answered unto the people, Ye men of Israel, why marvel ye at this? O why look ye so earnestly on us, as though by our own power or holiness we had made this man to walk? The God of Abraham, and of Isaac, and of Jacob, the God of our fathers, hath glorified his son Jesus, whom ye delivered up and denied him in the presence of Pilate, when he was determined to let him go. But ye denied the Holy One and the just, and desired a murder to be granted unto you, and killed the Prince of life, whom God hath raised from the dead, whereof we are witnesses. And his name, through faith in his name, hath made this man strong, whom ye see and know. Yea, the faith which is by him hath given him this perfect soundness in the presence of you all. Yesterday noon, we had a wonderful gathering in the Palmetto dining room of the Park of the Palms conference. There were 102 of us gathered over there, and judging from the happy looks on the faces of people and judging by the sounds one heard coming from their lips, they were having a good time. It was a birthday party. They were rejoicing in the fact that some of us had reached another milestone in life. It's something that older people, as a rule, do not usually refer to, but they seem to be happy in doing it. As I sat there looking at these people, 101 beside myself, I just wondered how safe it might be to assume that each one of them had had a second birthday, which of course would be far more important than the first one. This is the birthday of which our Lord Jesus was speaking when he had that discussion with Nicodemus. Remember the story in the third chapter of John? Nicodemus came to Jesus by night and said, Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher come from God, for no man could do these miracles that thou doest except God be with him. And you would have thought that, well, now that's a very nice complimentary statement. It would be answered in a sort of a complimentary way. But the Lord Jesus said, except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. Our Lord was emphasizing the fact, then, that people need a second birthday. But he also went on to say that this was rather unpredictable, because he said, The Spirit bloweth where it listeth. Ye hear the sound thereof, but ye cannot tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth. So is every one that is born of the Spirit. It's unpredictable. But in this passage of Scripture which we have just read, we get, first of all, a reference to a man's first birthday, and then we get some evidences of his second birthday. And I want to talk about these things tonight. His first birthday must have been a very sad event, because we read he was a cripple from his birth. And here he was lying at the gate of the temple, the beautiful gate of the temple, begging for a living. You can imagine the misery connected with a life like that. And especially when he couldn't blame himself for it. It was something that he had nothing to do with. He was born this way. And he was left in poverty there to sit at the beautiful gate of the temple. But you know it was a very crucial hour when he was sitting there. Did you notice that as we were reading the Scripture? It tells us in the first verse of the Scripture here that it was the ninth hour. Now when you take this ninth hour back, you don't even have to go back into the Old Testament. Just go back into the four Gospels, and you'll find that this is a crucial hour. And I'd just like you to keep your bookmark here in Acts 3, and turn back for a moment to Matthew chapter 27, to see something about this crucial hour. The time when these men entered the temple, which was going to be the birthday hour, the new birthday hour, of this man who was sitting there at the gate begging for money. You notice it says here in this 27th chapter of the book of Matthew, verse 45. Matthew 27 and verse 45, speaking of the crucifixion of our Lord Jesus, Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land unto the ninth hour. And about the ninth hour, Jesus cried with a loud voice saying, That is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? And some of them that stood there when they heard that said, This man calls for Elias. And straightway one of them ran and took a sponge and filled it with vinegar and put it on a reed and gave him to drink. The rest said, Let be, let us see whether Elias will come to save him. And Jesus, when he had cried again with a loud voice, yielded up the ghost. And, behold, the veil of the temple would rent in twain from the top to the bottom, and the earth did quake, and the rocks rent, and the graves were opened. And many bodies of the saints which slept arose, and came out of the graves after his resurrection, and went into the holy city, and appeared unto many. Now when the centurion and they that were with him, watching Jesus, saw the earthquake, and those things that were done, they feared greatly, saying, Truly, this was the Son of God. This was the man's birthday hour. His spiritual birthday dates from this hour. These are the travail pains necessary to bring him in to this blessed place in which we find ourselves tonight who are born again. Every one of us here tonight is a result of travail pain, even in our physical bodies. Someone suffered pain to bring us into the world. Our blessed Lord suffered untold agony to bring you and me into our position of blessing tonight because the Bible talks about the travail of his soul, and here we get it in this twenty-seventh chapter of Matthew. Crying out in the anguish of his soul, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? And a great earthquake accompanying the whole thing here. This is a crucial hour, and I'm quite sure that Peter and John, as we were reading in our passage of Scripture in the third chapter of the book of the Acts, as they were going up into the temple in the ninth hour, they must have had some memory of this, because you see, that hour also affected something in the temple. In the temple there was a curtain which was known as the veil that shut off the very holiest place of all, and we read just now in Matthew 27 that this veil or this curtain would rent in twain from the top to the bottom as if some unseen hand had taken it and just torn it to pieces, opening the way into that place which had been closed up until then. That was a significant hour, a significant hour. This was the crucial hour, at which time this man that was born a cripple, this man who was born helpless, this man who had nothing in the way of natural resources, absolutely poor, abject poverty, lying there begging, this is his hour. And, beloved, sometimes I wonder if we have not made too little of this when we have talked about God's wonderful plan of salvation. We so easily use the word, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved, and that is the gospel. No question about it. But, oh, how we need to be reminded again and again of the wonderful cost, the wonderful price that the Lord Jesus Christ paid that you and I might have this blessing tonight. Now, this man here never realized what was going to come to him that day. I can almost imagine him leaving his house with his little tin cup, shall we say, in which he expected the passerby to drop a few coins as they put him down at the gate of the temple just to wait to see if some hearts wouldn't be moved. And he sees these two men, Peter and John, coming along. He'd seen many faces before, no doubt. And as he looks into the faces of these two men, he wonders just what kind of a response his pathetic appeal is going to make to them, or they to him. And they come along, and he asks, he begs of them. And Peter and John say to him, Look on us. And he looks at them, expecting to receive something from them, but he didn't realize how much he was going to get. And then Peter says something that his would-be successor in Rome couldn't say tonight, when he says, Silver and gold have I none. The so-called successor to St. Peter is reputed to be, if not the richest man in the world, at least one of the richest. How much bank stock he owns here in the United States of America, that probably will never be known exactly, because these things are never published. But it's pretty good reason to believe that a bank which is very popular out in California, the Bank of America, which used to be the Bank of Italy, was practically owned by His Holiness. So he could never say, silver and gold have I none. Neither could he say what Peter said after that. You know? These two things go together. Peter says, Silver and gold have I none, but such as I have, give I these. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk. But you notice that Peter doesn't let it stay there, stand at that point. He offers assistance. And I'm wondering if we couldn't learn something from this tonight in dealing with souls. So frequently I have younger Christians come to me and say, Mr. Armadine, I'd like to have a little talk with you about doing personal work and some of the methods that we ought to use in doing personal work. I don't know of any better textbook on doing personal work than the Bible and particularly this book of the Acts. Here are ways of doing personal work. Here's Peter and John probably when they left home that morning to go up to the temple at the hour of prayer. They didn't realize what they were going to run into. But one likes to believe that somehow before they left their rooms that day, they said, Oh Lord, put us in touch with somebody today. Do you ever pray that prayer? My Christian friend, do you ever pray that God will put you in touch with some soul that needs the gospel today? I pray this prayer frequently when I'm getting on an airplane. Lord, let me sit alongside of somebody that needs Thee and to whom I can speak about Thee. I did that on my trip coming over here from Dallas as far as Atlanta, at any rate, where I had to change planes. I kept looking at one seat after another in the plane and they all had that little sign in them, Occupied, Occupied, Occupied, Occupied. And finally I found one that was empty and no sign in it. So I said, Sit down here. But there was nobody sitting next to me. There was a fellow sitting by the window. I was sitting by the aisle. Pretty soon a man came and said, Is that seat occupied? I said, No sir, it's yours. Sit down. So in he went, sat down. And he had no sooner seated himself and fastened his seat belt before he pulled out one of these little paper-bound books from Moody Press. I had my man right there. Yes, it was a book by G. Campbell Morgan on how to live. And how, what a wonderful time of fellowship you have with a man like that. When the minute he recognizes that you know the Lord, he reaches out his hand and says, My name is so-and-so. And you say, My name is so-and-so. And the connection is made. But sometimes you run into another kind of a picture altogether, don't you? But I'm just coming back to this point, dear friends. I'm just wondering if Peter and John, before they left home that morning, didn't say, Lord, put us in touch with somebody today. Little dreaming that it would be a helpless beggar at the gate of the temple. But oh, the minute they see this man crying out for something. Silver and gold have I none, but such as I have, give I thee. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk. And then he reaches out his hand and helps him up. Yes, there was assistance there in order to get this man really on his feet. Perhaps his faith wasn't equal to this because he'd never taken a step in his life. He never knew what it meant to have a parent hold out his fingers to him and say, Come, like you and I teach a baby to walk under that. He'd never had any of that. Those legs of his had never stood up straight. But now he was getting the surprise of his life. And you know, dear friends, this is altogether after the manner of God, isn't it? He does exceeding abundantly above all that you ask or think. You know, dear friends, when I come to think about it, when the way of salvation actually became clear to me, although I was born and brought up in a Christian home, I knew the way of salvation so far as knowing the letter is concerned. I could sing the hymns, I could sing the psalms in church and so on. It wasn't until I was a teenager of fifteen years of age before this thing ever gripped me that this meant me. Because I rather thought I was better than the rest of the folks in the street. I was born and brought up in a Christian home. I didn't swear, I didn't do these other things. God had marvelously preserved me, and he did down the years, so that when I came to ask for the hand of a lady who was my dear wife for forty-seven and a half years, I could say to her, I'm bringing as much as I know I'm getting. And that's more than some of these people can say today. With their situational ethics, they can't say it. But we could say it, I'm bringing as much as I know I'm getting. But these things also had a tendency to make me self-righteous. And I had to learn, learn through the faithful preaching of a dear brother, whose method of preaching I didn't like very much. I didn't like the length of his sermons, I didn't like some other things about him. But oh, the faithful message came home to me, and made this self-righteous sinner know that inside of his bosom there was a heart that was no better than anybody else's heart. Nothing more difficult to reach than a self-righteous sinner. It's not hard to convince a drunkard that he's on the wrong road. No, it isn't hard. A man sitting in a prison cell, oh, he may try to justify what he's done, but he's convicted, there he is. There's another thing altogether when you get a hold of a man whose record is clear so far as the outside world is concerned. The only way he'll ever learn what he is, is to measure himself by God's perfect standard, as we have been saying here from night to night. And then the marvelous thing, that he not only saves me, but gives me power to walk to his glory. You know, this is all in this story tonight, isn't it? But you know, if the story stopped there, dear friends, there'd be something sadly missing, because this man doesn't know who it was that brought all these blessings to him. Now that's what we're going to look at in the few minutes that remain of this hour. We want to look at the wonderful person who brought all this within the reach of the faith of this unhappy man. Let's look at it. Verse 12 of our chapter. Acts 3, verse 12, where Peter says, Ye men of Israel, why marvel at this? You know, our ideas of God have gotten so small that when something wonderful happens, we can hardly credit Him with being the doer of it. So he says to these people, Why marvel at this? Why, says the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and of Jacob. And he was talking to people to whom that was a well-known formula. And then to bring it right down to themselves, the God of our fathers has done what? Oh, He's done a wonderful thing for this man. That's true. He's used us in a wonderful way for His blessing. That was true, too. But that isn't what he's emphasizing here. He says, He has glorified His Son, Jesus. And this word translated son here is not the usual word for son. We have at least two words in Greek for son. One is the hwios, and the other is the technos. But it's neither one of these. It's the word pais. And Mr. Darby, in his translation, has translated this, His servant, Jesus. And this is the word which is used in the Greek translation of the Old Testament, where the word servant appears in connection with the Messiah. But there's something more to it than just simply the idea of servitude. There seems to be the idea of a service which is rendered out of love. Oh, if he just wanted to talk about a servant, he would have used the word doulos, for example, a slave. Or perhaps the word for a hired servant. We have, again, several words that we could use for servant in the Greek. La trouo is a good word for service, official service. But it isn't that. It's the kind of service that a loved one gives in a home. Not because they're being dominated by the one whom they serve. Not because there is slaves. But because they love. And this is the kind of service which, thank God, one still sees rendered in Christian homes today. Oh, when we think of the many loving things that are done by hands which are now folded in sleep. I remember talking to my dear mother just a few days before the Lord took her home, suffering with cancer. And in addition to that, she had arthritis. Her hands were badly gnarled. I realized it was the last time I was to have a session with my dear mother. I was leaving for the Pacific Coast. She was dying in New Jersey. As I knelt by that bedside, I took those dear hands in mine and I kissed them again and again. She said, Oh, son, why do you kiss my ugly hands? I said, Mother, I have no way of telling how many lovely things those hands have done for me. That's the kind of service that we're talking about tonight. He hath glorified his servant, Jesus. Yes, that's a wonderful description of Him, isn't it? But that isn't all. You notice it says here that they took this one who offered himself in this loving service to his father. And Peter says he delivered up and denied him in the presence of Pilate when he was determined to let him go. This is certainly a note in favor of old Pilate, isn't it? But he denied the holy and the just. Here's a second description of this one that this man is so indebted to for this birthday present of his. The holy and the just. You get that description of our Lord Jesus? This is really wonderful. You know, this is more than saying he's innocent. You know, innocence is a negative term. It simply means the absence of sin. But holiness is a positive term. It not only means the absence of sin, but positive opposition to it. There's a difference. Here's a babe born in innocence, sinless, but not holy. But our Lord Jesus Christ was said to be holy from the very moment of his conception. That holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God. Oh, never the breath of sin there. We have three negative statements to confirm that. In him is no sin. He did no sin. He knew no sin. This is the holy one of God. But this speaks of his relationship to a holy God. But now we get this word, just. Which I take it may speak of his relationship to mankind as a whole. Who could ever accuse him of injustice? Who could ever say that there was anything wrong or shady about what he did? You know, it's remarkable, isn't it, that when they came to crucify the Lord Jesus Christ, and they had to put an accusation over his head because this was the custom, that when a man was crucified, his accusation was put over his head. If our Lord had been guilty of breaking any one of the Ten Commandments, they would have put it there. They would have put there that he was an idolater or that he was a blasphemer. They accused him of it, but they didn't dare put it over his head as his accusation. They certainly couldn't accuse him of some of the other sins mentioned in the Ten Commandments, such as murder, robbery, adultery, or even covetousness. Oh, it's true, they did refer to him one day in his lifetime as a wine-dibber and a gluttonous man. But when they came to put his accusation over his head, none of this. What did they put over his head? This is Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews. And the Jews tried to have it changed, you remember? They came to Pilate one day and said, write not the King of the Jews. Well, what do you want but write instead? Oh, well, leave it at that, but just put there that he said he was the King of the Jews. Notice they didn't change it. They didn't change it. You know, the remarkable thing is, dear friends, especially in Mark's account of the crucifixion, the royalty of our Lord Jesus Christ is emphasized more in connection with his cross than perhaps any other incident in his life. I think I counted in the 15th chapter of Mark, in Mark's account of the crucifixion, seven references to the royalty of the Lord Jesus. And do you know, as we were reading in Hebrews the second chapter last night, he was crowned with glory and honor that, or as another translation puts it, he was crowned with glory and honor so that he by the grace of God should taste death for every man. That probably was the transfiguration scene where God crowned him with glory and honor in view of the cross, when men were going to put a crown of thorns upon his head. But the centurion who stands by watching not only says this was the Son of God, but he says truly this was a righteous man. That's the kind of a Savior you have. But we come to an even more remarkable statement, dear friends. It sounds almost like a contradiction when you read it, but I want to bring this to you just now in verse 15. And he killed the Prince of Life. If I was going to give a special title to this little talk tonight, I think I would call it The Prince of Life. This to me is a climax. He was the servant of his father. He was the holy and the just one, but he's the Prince of Life. And you say, but this thing is a contradiction in terms. They killed the Prince of Life? Yes, what Peter says. And this word prince really could have been translated the originator of life. The one who brings everything into being. This one in whom was life, and the life was the light of men. This one who could stand up and say, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man cometh unto the Father but by me. And he that hath the Son of God hath life, and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life. Notice how this idea of life is connected with him, and it's certainly not talking about natural life here. This is spiritual life. This is where this man learns the secret of his new birth. He's listening carefully as he hears Peter using these words. Is it possible that the man who won all this for me is a servant of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob? Yes. Is it possible that the man who won all this for me is the holy and the just one who was denied and nailed to a cross for me? Yes. Is it possible that the one through whom I now enjoy this new life is the Prince of Life? Yes. You know, when you talk about a prince, you're talking about the one at the head of the line. That's the primary meaning of the word prince. It's going right up there in the front. In the first chapter of the book of Revelation, our Lord Jesus Christ is said to be the prince of the kings of the earth. You know, I get a thrill out of that. I think the Apostle Paul must have got a thrill out of it, too. You know, in the Epistles to the Ephesians, Paul describes himself in three different ways. In the opening chapter, he describes himself as an apostle. In chapters 3 and 4, he describes himself as a prisoner. The prisoner of Jesus Christ, the prisoner of the Lord. But in the last chapter of Ephesians, he says he's an ambassador in bombs. You know, when a man calls himself an ambassador, he's aware of the fact that he's representing someone else. Oh, this gives a thrill to the man in the ministry today. However, we may be despised and looked down on. You know, people these days, when they think of the various professions that a person might enter, he could be this, he could be an executive in one of the great firms, or he could be an outstanding lawyer, or he could fill some great political position. But in and around among all these people are a little group who are recognized in the high court of heaven as ambassadors of Jesus Christ. And when they get a look at the one whom they serve, it's none other than the King of kings and Lord of lords. You know, dear friends, I'm just sold on being a Christian. I really am. Some people remark sometimes about this. You know, when you talk about it, you get enthusiastic about it. They wonder if it's because of the wonderful salary you get. Hmm. I remember some of our missionaries in the Central American Mission with which I happen to be connected. It was years before some of them knew that the office of the president was purely an honorary position. That is, he never got any remuneration for it. I've served in that humble capacity now for some 15 years, and we're gradually letting the folk know on the mission field we don't get anything. We don't draw anything out of the general fund. Oh, we get a thrill out of this because we realize that we're serving the one who is King of kings and Lord of lords, and the Prince of life. And you know, this involves not only the first initial gift of life, but it involves all the living that goes after that. You know, when you and I get saved, dear friends, that's just the beginning of the story. This Prince of life is not satisfied merely with giving me the gift of eternal life, but he says, I want you to live it. And he himself wants to live it through us. So if the Apostle Paul could say, I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me. This is it. He's the Prince of life. And then one of these days, we're going to enter into life itself. This is all involved in this. And you can imagine the feelings of this cripple on this, his wonderful spiritual birthday, learning who his great benefactor is. And dear friends, I'm hoping, as a result of these simple stories in this book of the Acts, and these different looks at our Lord Jesus Christ, that some of us are going to discover some new beauty in him we've never seen before. You know, this is one of the great joys of life, isn't it? Oh, I know it was in my own case. I'm still having it. But I'm speaking particularly of what I discovered from day to day in the precious gift that God gave to me when he gave me my dear wife. But oh, when I think of the children I have, and the grandchildren, and see how they too are coming to follow in this same path of faith, it's a wonderful thing, a wonderful thing. And I'm glad I still have the sense of wonder. One of our great English authors, G. K. Chesterton, Roman Catholic, but worthy of quoting, he said, This world will never perish for lack of wonders, but it will perish one day for a lack of wonder. You know, even our children teach us this. I thought when I made the journey some time ago from Dallas to Chicago in three hours on an airplane that this was terrific. Now we do it in an hour and 36 minutes in the jets, and of course they're promising us even better than that in the supersonics. But I remember coming home and bragging about the fact that I had made the trip from Dallas to Chicago in three hours. The little fellow, oh, I suppose 12 years old, had been reading some of these science books, you know. He heard me bragging about making the distance from Dallas to Chicago about 700 miles in three hours. He said, I haven't eaten nothing. He says, you ought to see them supersonic planes. Imagine a kid 12 years old talking to me about the supersonic planes. He'd lost his sense of wonder. He'd lost his sense of wonder. He never had it. Oh, friends, don't ever lose it, especially when you're looking at things in this old book. Everything here is wonderful, but oh, the most wonderful of all is the one who bears the name Wonderful. Isn't he wonderful? He is. And the more you and I get to know him, the more we're persuaded of that. But the greatest wonder to my soul is that he was willing for the likes of me to give his life at Calvary. There is a hymn in the Black Hymnal. You'll find this Black Hymnal Hymns of Worship in the slots there before you. And I'd like to sing tonight hymn number 159, I think it is, yes. Hymn number 159. If you don't have a book or can't reach one, raise your hand. Mr. Willie will see that you get a copy. I think there are enough of them to go around. Life, life of love poured out, fragrant and holy. Life, mid-rood thorns of earth, stainless and sweet. Life, whence God's face of love, glorious but lowly, shines forth to bow us, Lord, low at thy feet. Number 159. Life, life's mysterious death, deep meeting deep. What a scene that was at Calvary when they killed the Prince of Life. But, oh God, we thank you that thou didst raise him again from the dead. And because of what he did, thou couldst give perfect soundness to that man who had never known what soundness meant. Our Father, we thank thee for the lesson which we learn from this tonight, that thou didst take those who were helpless, penniless, bankrupt. Thou didst give to us this new life and this power to walk to thy glory. And we pray, O Lord, as we seek to follow in the footsteps of him who loved us and gave himself for us, we shall learn increasingly how indebted to him we are. So accept our thanks, the homage of our hearts tonight, as we bow here in humble worship before thee, giving thee thanks and praise and worship for our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen. You are dismissed.