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"Here as in Heaven."
For more information visit : garden.church
You're listening to GARDEN CHURCH Podcast. We're in a series called Church on Fire, a journey through the book of Acts. This is the story of ordinary people filled with the spirit carrying the presence of Jesus into every corner of the world. The same spirit that raised Jesus from the dead is alive and in us today. Join us as we step into the call to be people set on fire for his mission.
Bill Dogterom:Well, good morning. It's good to be with you. I spend most of my life in this room, it feels like, but it's good to be here. I do want though, before we dig into the word, to spend just a moment in praying. Today is Mother's Day and that means all kinds of wonderful things and hard things and challenging things and God is equal for all of those things and because he is equal for all of those things, you will also be equal for all of those things.
Bill Dogterom:So let's pray together if you will please. Lord, we celebrate moms. I just love the fact that when you were incarnate, it was through a normal process of birth that you had a mom who annoyed you at times and whom you annoyed at times. We have scriptural record of your disappointing Mary and of her disappointing you. It is startling that we see early on in the process, eight days in, this announcement of a sword that would pierce her heart and that's motherhood in a nutshell.
Bill Dogterom:Kids that you love sent off, kids that you love going sideways, kids that you love being challenging and difficult along with all of the wonder of seeing them launch and becoming fully themselves and celebrating the accomplishments that they have, there are those in this room who are at this place of celebration. Kids who walked across the platform of commencement, kids who have accomplished a goal, maybe even the very first in your family to graduate college this last weekend and yet there are also those for whom momming is proving challenging. It's really hard, nobody warned me about this and I pray Lord with the sleepless nights, with the terrible twos, with the challenging threes, with the preschool meltdowns, with all of the things that go along with being a mom in this day, along with all of the voices that are telling you how to mom and I pray for courage maybe to just shut off the feed and listen to the father. I pray, oh Lord, that in the middle of that, there would be strength and peace. I recognize as well, Lord, that there are those in the room who would love to have the challenges of a difficult child, but for whom one reason or another, a miscarriage, a dream that never came to fruition, the challenges and this day is just this constant rub and reminder of pain and difficulty, especially those for whom their children died maybe as a result of their own decision in a life that they look back now on with shame.
Bill Dogterom:But you don't look with shame on that life. It is that life that you met them in and I pray oh Lord that you would draw them out of that space and place and even today it would become a day of healing and restoration and encouragement that you never look at them sideways. You only look at them full on with eyes of love, you see them and so comfort them, encourage them, establish them in these challenging places. And I pray Lord for those for whom their relationship with their own mom is pretty challenging and they sit here on Mother's Day and wish they could work up enough enthusiasm to celebrate, but it has been a long and painful leaving of home for good reason. And I pray, oh Lord, for maybe a restoration of relationship.
Bill Dogterom:I pray, oh Lord, for healing, having accepted responsibility for the places of brokenness. Maybe just courage to forgive without the hope of restoration. We pray, oh God, that you would empower that by your spirit. And I do find it in my heart to pray Lord, particularly for those for whom infertility has been a massive struggle for a long time. Yes, God.
Bill Dogterom:That you would just draw near. Thank you, Lord. And maybe even this morning you would heal what is broken. That you Lord would extend your hand and your mercy and see the desires of hearts and that you would smile with kindness on them this morning in Jesus name. And now Lord, as we we look at this passage as Ramin prayed, we want to pay attention to what you are doing in us and through us and ask you Lord to guide us in this process in Jesus name, amen, amen, amen.
Bill Dogterom:So we are, in this conversation, anchored in the book of acts, and pastor Darren has made the case over and over again that the book of acts is not simply so that we know what happened in the early church, but so that we can distill the lessons of the church, not simply for imitation purposes, we wanna do what they did, on the surface, we wanna do what they did underground so that we can do what we're supposed to do on the surface. Yeah? So, we wanna attend to this story and we know already that Luke is a master storyteller, he's a very strict He's a better editor than storyteller in some ways. What Luke doesn't write about, is significant as well as what he does write about. He is very clear when he writes to his friend Theophilus, his sponsor, the guy who's paying for Luke to write this.
Bill Dogterom:He says, I'm telling you this so you know what happened and in an order that makes some sense to you, even while hinting there's a whole boatload of things, that I'm not including in the story. And we know the way that the gospel, excuse me, the way the book of acts is structured, Jesus gives us this outline in acts one eight, where he says, go wait and then out of that waiting Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, right to the edges of the earth. And we've spent some time here a couple of weeks ago on the edges of the earth as Philip met the Ethiopian eunuch and in a sense, we see the fulfillment structurally, the first half of the book of acts is that steady state development of the spread of the gospel throughout all those regions. And then we discover, oh, wait, there's a hint of a change coming, the wind is starting to shift a little bit with the introduction of Saul become Paul in the journey and right away we recognize, oh, wait, something's going on here to set us up for the back half because the last half of the book of acts is gonna be all about Paul and we gotta get him on the scene.
Bill Dogterom:So Luke tells the story of his conversion, it's just a miraculous moment. Yeah. And then you'll notice what happens. Nothing. Because what would we do?
Bill Dogterom:Here we have this notorious enemy of the church miraculously converted. Don't you think he at least deserves a web page and an Instagram account? Don't you think we could leverage that to advantage? Don't you think we should start to platform this guy and get him up on kinda puff him in the And what does the holy spirit do? Oh, dude, you're still wiggly in the middle, we gotta put you back in the oven.
Bill Dogterom:We've gotta let this bake off enough to get solid enough that you can actually be useful. Yeah. Because Paul was ready, put me in coach, I'm ready to go and the rest of the team was saying, if he gets his hand on the ball, I don't want it after him. I don't trust him. And depending on which of the accounts you look at, whether Paul's on his own in Galatians or the one here in Acts, he is on the shelf for three to ten years.
Bill Dogterom:In our culture of instant revival, please notice the Holy Spirit tells time very differently than we do, yeah? So, because he wants that when he starts to move, he knows how to move very, very quickly, but on a foundation that has been solidly established. And that becomes an important dynamic for Paul. And so what do we do now, Luke? What's the next story?
Bill Dogterom:And he says, well, let's be clear, The Holy Spirit isn't waiting for Paul to grow up. He's got stuff going on. Right? And and some of those other guys, I would love to know what happened to Thomas or Nathaniel or some of the other nothing, nothing, nothing. It's annoying, especially Thomas.
Bill Dogterom:I really wanna know what happened to him because he's my guy, but but that's a different different story, but Luke doesn't tell us that story. Instead, he brings Peter back onto the scene who sets the table, we will learn for the continued mission to the Gentiles and to the churches in Samaria. So we have this strange like pastiche of store Oh, that's a good word. Of stories that are woven together here, right? That invite us into the wonder of what's happening next.
Bill Dogterom:And Peter, well, we pick it up here. Here we are at acts chapter nine and picking it up at verse 32, Peter is traveling about the country. He went to visit the Lord's people who lived in Lydda and there he found a man named Danaeus who was paralyzed. He'd been bedridden for eight years. Aeneas, Peter said to him, Jesus Christ heals you.
Bill Dogterom:So get up, roll up your mat and immediately Aeneas got up and all those who lived in Lydda and the Sharon Valley saw him and turned to the Lord. Well, in Joppa, there was a disciple named Tabitha. In Greek, her name is Dorcas. She was always doing good and helping the poor. About that time she became sick and died.
Bill Dogterom:Her body was washed, placed in an upstairs room. Now Lydda was near Joppa. So when the disciples heard that Peter was in Lydda, they sent two men to him and urged him, please come at once. So Peter went with them and when he arrived, he was taken up stairs to the room and all the widows stood around him crying, showing him the robes and other clothing that Dorcas had made while she was still with them. And then Peter sent them all out of the room and got down on his knees and prayed.
Bill Dogterom:Turning finally to the dead woman, he said, Tabitha, get up. And she opened her eyes and seeing Peter, she sat up. He took her by the hand, helped her to her feet and then called for the believers and especially for the widows and presented her to them alive. Well then this became known all over Joppa and many people believed in the Lord and Peter stayed in Joppa for some time with a Tanner named Simon. This is a delightful little story on its own.
Bill Dogterom:Just if we do nothing else, but just look at God, look at what the Lord has done. It's just an astonishing moment in the insight into the early church, right? We just get a snapshot of ordinary life for the folks and if you get nothing out of it, that good on you. It's been a good day. Yeah.
Bill Dogterom:But Luke is inspired by the Holy Spirit and he is a masterful storyteller who is just putting Easter eggs in the thing all the way along and if we'll just slow down a little bit and notice what's going on here, we start to get a sense of the new community that is being formed by the spirit. Because Peter is already There's already a community of believers in Lydda. How did they get there? We don't know. Maybe one of the thousands who came to faith at the day of Pentecost or the in the weeks and years, months and years since then, we don't know.
Bill Dogterom:It's just that they're there. And so Peter is making his rounds. He's just kind of checking out what is happening and when he comes into the space, he discovers there that they have that there's there's somebody named Annette. We know nothing, nothing about this guy. Not a single thing do we know about this guy.
Bill Dogterom:But Peter somewhere along the line has a discernment, has a sense that that something could be done here and so he leans in and says, Jesus Christ heals you. So pick up your mat and walk. And this is really an important dynamic. Remember, the model of the church is not simply you go Peter, but where can I put my feet in Peter's footprints? Where can I be the kind of person who's sensitive enough to the Holy Spirit, who was walking with the spirit can be in a moment aware of what God is doing in his space and step into that without drama?
Bill Dogterom:There's not, okay, everybody, let's sing that the third time around and and amping up. No, no, no. Hey, dude. Jesus has healed you. Let's take advantage of that, shall we?
Bill Dogterom:Get up and walk. Do you see? And no drama. And please notice Peter is not Anybody wanna get a selfie? Anybody?
Bill Dogterom:Nothing. Nothing that magnifies Peter. Jesus Christ heals you. And this then gives us Luke. Did you catch what he's doing here?
Bill Dogterom:Healing is never first of all about the healing. It's about the one to whom the healing points. It's gotta be about Jesus. It's gotta be about the Lord and in fact, is really gonna be really hard for us because we've learned of these of kinds of moments because we will settle for healing. We will settle for the miracle.
Bill Dogterom:We'll take the money and run. We will we will we will we will and we know from the life of Jesus that, okay, if that's all you get out of this, but we also know from Jesus's standpoint that he'd like you to stay to the end of the movie. That's right. That there is a there is a telos, there's an outcome that is is intended in these miraculous moments well beyond the Instagram picking up the bed and walking. That's cool.
Bill Dogterom:That's the headline, right? But what's underneath that is Jesus Christ be praised. Jesus Christ be glorified. Jesus Christ be lifted up. And Peter, remember, has made enough dumb that he's not gonna get in the way of this.
Bill Dogterom:He's not gonna start to claim that he's the healer. Peter knows full well that he's not the healer. But here's the deal guys, the same spirit that was in Peter, the same spirit that raised Jesus from the dead is in you. Peter didn't raise by virtue of his own capacity, he was a partner with the Holy Spirit in that moment. The very same spirit who dwells in you.
Bill Dogterom:Where is healing potentially needed in your world? Don't bring him to church, Be the church and go to them in your place of now here you don't go around randomly praying for everybody who's sick. You wanna be discerning like Peter was. You wanna be in step with the spirit. What's the holy spirit doing?
Bill Dogterom:Because again, live we live in a world that will be very happy to prime time that miraculous moment and distract from that point on from Jesus. So so it it and and or who will be very happy to turn this into some kind of bankable monetization follow me. Right? And my account and Peter, no, no, no. But at the same time, can we choose something in the middle between the extremes of you go Peter and aren't I wonderful?
Bill Dogterom:Can there be a middle of saying, isn't God good? Can we begin to participate in tiny ways because there's all kinds of paralyzed people in our lives who might need somebody who is discerning, oh God is up to something here. I wanna be part of that and step in without fanfare, without notoriety, without all of the fufa and just be the presence of Jesus with the goal being that Jesus is exalted, Jesus is lifted up in the area, in the region, yeah? Well, that's what happened of course and then coincidentally or not, on the coast about 10 miles up the road in Joppa in the Sharon Valley, now Tel Aviv if you're interested in where we are, a widow dies and it makes headlines in the kingdom. They notice.
Bill Dogterom:Did you catch what Luke is doing here? Here we are a few weeks ago with Philip, what did Darren call him? The potluck associate or something like that, right? Here's essentially just as far as we know, a lay person in the community who just steps in and does, right? And here's here's another example.
Bill Dogterom:What is her contribution? What is her identity? Is she a ministry associate? No, she's a widow and remember this is in the first century where women were known exclusively by their relationship to a man. A father, a husband, a son maybe, and the church is comprised in the early days of this posse of women who have no identity left except that Jesus has called them by name and they are a force to be reckoned with.
Bill Dogterom:I mean, you I'm pastored for thirty odd years up in the North San Gabriel Valley and in Edmonton, I gotta tell you, I gotta tell you, you get some women who have lost their primary identity and have founded again in Christ and have begun to serve the larger body of Christ and have, they have a they have a posse, man, I tell you, they've got they've got a crew that work with them and we have we have we have folks like that in in GARDEN. Yeah. Who who's who's you'll never know them, but they are they they are a weather system.
Intro/Outro:They are.
Bill Dogterom:When the wind of the spirit blows, right? And please notice, what is her notoriety? What is she known for? She cares for the poor. Amen.
Bill Dogterom:She I bet you she didn't even have to pray about that. I bet you she just stepped in and said, where am I most likely to encounter Jesus? Oh, I know what the edge is, where everybody else has discounted, everybody else has thrown them off, everybody else has dismissed the wherever the line is drawn between acceptable and unacceptable, Dorcas Tabitha joins Jesus on the other side of that line and cares for the poor. If you ever want, if you're ever wondering what God's will for your life is, start with the poor because that's where you will encounter According to him, that's where he hangs out and what we do to those who are disenfranchised, what we do with those who are marginalized, what we do with the leftovers and the left behinds, we do he says to him. Yeah.
Bill Dogterom:And so here they are, this posse of women and and her skill is is maybe knitting or crocheting or sewing or repairing clothing or whatever, which is maybe maybe it's a thrift store kind of a thing or maybe it's giving clothing to the poor. We don't know how this And please notice, not the poor in the church, but just the
Intro/Outro:poor. Yes.
Bill Dogterom:We don't need to make a distinction, right? Because remember, most of the gifts in this body are not to be used here on Sunday. We need a bunch of gifts used here on Sunday, but we need way more of those gifts to be used in the world as the church on Monday. Yeah. So here she is in her place of employment, her and she's made with her crew of women, she is making a a difference such that her death registers on the Richter scale of this community.
Bill Dogterom:It shakes them up. She is a Psalm one sixteen woman. Psalm one sixteen has this beautiful line, how precious, how costly in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints. It costs the kingdom something when one of the saints dies. You know how long it takes to make a saint?
Bill Dogterom:When when they die, there's a hole, there's a gap. There's a gap if it registers and these women are bereft. This this crew of widows is bereft and so when they hear that Peter is with within hailing distance, they sent 10 miles down the road, get him up here, come quickly. What did they expect to happen? We don't know, we don't know.
Bill Dogterom:We do know that they didn't finalize the preparation of her body for burial. They wash it, place it in the they don't anoint her, they are not wrapping her. So they're kinda Maybe? And so Peter comes and they proceed to make the case why she needs brought back from her blessed reward. Why she needs to look at what she did, look at what she and the weeping, the wailing and whatnot, Peter can barely hear Jesus.
Bill Dogterom:So remember, there's a moment here, you see it, Luke is very deliberate in how he tells this story, echoing an exact moment like this in the life of Jesus involving Peter, James and John. Remember that story? Jairus' daughter, 12 year old girl, right? And the mourners are wailing and they are doing what they are supposed to do. There's nothing necessarily wrong with that, but Jesus can barely hear himself think and besides which they're singing the wrong song.
Bill Dogterom:And they don't know the new song, they don't know the new song. So we have out of the room, out of the room. Peter does the same thing. He has learned from Jesus how to handle moments like this. You've got to get to a place of that is not about distraction.
Bill Dogterom:And I I want you to notice that when he does that, then he goes to prayer. This is a slight sidelight, but I want to underline something. We talk a lot and we should about the private place, the secret place, and we should. There should be a secret place of prayer and so on and so forth. But remember the goal of the secret place is to enter into the lonely place.
Bill Dogterom:The secret place is a doorway to loneliness. It's not religious performance, it's not scripted, it is an entry to loneliness where it's you and God alone and that you'll notice Jesus never went to the secret place, he always went to a lonely place to pray and he invites us into that loneliness where there is no religious observance that's gonna be suitable for our loneliness. Anybody know what that feels like? Just the isolation of the presence of God and it's just we too doing business. Because when Peter is praying, I don't think he's doing his devos.
Bill Dogterom:I don't think he's kinda Okay, it's been a long time, you know, I don't think I've ever raised anybody from the dead. Okay, we better kind of work ourselves up into this. We gotta kind of gin up the spiritual mojo. We gotta come on, come on, come on Peter, you can do this. You can do because Peter knows, dude, I got nothing.
Bill Dogterom:I can't do this. So I think Jesus and Peter were praying in the same kinds of ways. Peter was not praying, don't make me look like a fool. Peter was not praying, God, raise her up, would you please? Peter was saying, father, what are we doing here?
Bill Dogterom:Remember Jesus only healed people that he saw the father healing. He didn't heal everybody who was sick. Isn't that annoying? By the way, because Jesus knows we will get distracted by healing. We will get distracted by the miracle and forget the one to whom the miracle points.
Bill Dogterom:So he's not gonna be wandering around just healing everybody all the time except as a sign of the kingdom coming. Remember that time in John chapter, what it was at five, right? He's he's he comes into the porches of Solomon, five porches filled with sick people. How many does he have the ability to heal? Everybody.
Bill Dogterom:And how many does he heal? One guy. One guy. And when he's pressed, why did you do this on this day? What he says was, only do what I see the father doing.
Bill Dogterom:I only say what I hear the father saying. I'm not You think I'm out here on my own? Oh, no, no, no. And Peter has gotten to the school of Jesus and so when he prays, he's trying to discern, God, what are we up to here? What do you want me to do?
Bill Dogterom:And having discerned that, he takes her by the hand and says, Tabitha rise up. Exactly the language that Jesus has used to raise Talitha, one letter difference in the original Greek. So Peter is learning from his master, not just the how, but the what. And he steps into this moment and raises her up, and I love the delicacy of this scene. In this moment, he takes her by and she wakes up, she opens her eye.
Bill Dogterom:Oh, there's a strange man in my room and she sits up and Peter, gentlemanly helps her to her feet and then presents her to the saints and especially to the widows. This crew who thought enough of her loss to intercede with this result and they received her back and oh, by the way, did you notice what happened? It became known all over Joppa. Many people believed in the Lord and so on. Yeah, that's what that's what's supposed to happen.
Bill Dogterom:Now, now here's here's the deal. Nobody, anybody reckon whose voice is not heard in this story? Anybody like to hear Tabitha? Like, girl, did you wanna come back? I mean, because you think about this.
Bill Dogterom:Right? I'm sure she and Lazarus at some point got together and says like, yeah, it was the suckiest thing I heard in my name. I just nothing. I don't know. Know.
Bill Dogterom:Because what happens when a saint dies? They are in the presence of the Lord. Life begins for them. Here we are on the front side of eternity. If you are a disciple of Jesus, if you have followed you're on the front side of eternity.
Bill Dogterom:But there's a backside that extends out that goes farther in and higher up that is bigger on the inside than is on the outside. And she was there. She was entering into eternal life. She knew and was known by God. Yeah.
Bill Dogterom:And I can just imagine the conversation, darkest. Can you take one for the team girl? Can you can you go back for a while? Just tell people what it's like. Yeah.
Bill Dogterom:And notice Luke does not record her memoirs. He doesn't start a podcast with memories of Tabitha. He just lets her because she's gonna die again. Anais, he's gonna he's gonna get sick again. It's never the point.
Bill Dogterom:Amen. Unless it points to the one from whom all of this comes. Yeah? And then poor Peter. He stays for a while it says at the house of Simon, the Tanner.
Bill Dogterom:Now that doesn't mean anything necessarily to us here in our first century, twenty first century enlightenment, but remember what tanners did. They handled the bodies of dead animals which meant that they and everything they touched were rendered permanently ritually unclean. They couldn't go to temple and Peter has really sunk low. He's staying now because those ways of being unclean before no longer matter. We are cleansed, we have a place to stand.
Bill Dogterom:Let's pray. Oh Lord, as we sit with this beautiful story, we are challenged. I'm challenged by the invitation. I recognize, oh Lord, how readily I settle for the miracle when you want to push me through to Christ likeness. I recognize, oh Lord, how much I make it about generating enough faith to secure an outcome, not realizing that if I have enough faith to ask, I have enough faith to receive because faith stands in the new reality in which I'm not the actor, you are.
Bill Dogterom:So I pray, oh God for courage to discern, courage to listen, courage to pay attention to what it is you are doing in the moment. But then particularly Lord, I just find it in my heart to pray for those who are wondering if their small goodness matters, who if their small faithful kindness and generosity especially to the people who are at the edges matters. And I pray, oh Lord, that you would encourage them in that good work, that you would lift them up, that you would meet them at that place, that they would become the kinds of people who when they die, it will leave a space, a hole in the kingdom of God on earth that is noticeable. We ask all this in Jesus name and set ourselves to seek your face.
Intro/Outro:For more information, visit us at garden.church.