Acts 9:32-43 | You Will Do Greater Things Than Theseনমুনা

Let’s zoom out and review for a moment. Scattered outward from Jerusalem by the persecution following Stephen’s martyrdom, the disciples were spreading the gospel throughout Judea and Samaria, just as Jesus had said they would in Acts 1:8. The kingdom of God was growing in these regions.

In this week’s passage from Acts, Peter healed Aeneas in the Samaritan town of Lydda, which was near Joppa on the Mediterranean Sea. The followers of Jesus in Joppa sent for Peter, who then comes to Joppa, and by the Spirit of Jesus, raises Tabitha from the dead. In both cases, people saw and heard what happened, and many of them believed and turned to the Lord Jesus. Led by the Spirit, Peter did the works of Jesus, the same works he had seen his Master doing in towns throughout Galilee and Judea just a few years earlier.

At the end of Acts 9:32-43, we are right on the cusp of a major breakthrough for the gospel. In the story of Tabitha, we start to see hints of the shift. Luke tells us that Tabitha’s name was translated as Dorcas. Tabitha was her name in Aramaic, the main language of Judea and Samaria. Dorcas was her name in Greek, the common language used throughout much of the Mediterranean world. Peter naturally addresses her by her Aramaic name, but Luke also wants us to know the name that those outside the Jewish nation would have used for her.

The final verse of our passage provides another hint. Peter stayed for some time in Joppa with Simon, a leather tanner. Working with dead animal skins would have been considered an unclean occupation by the Jews. Yet Peter, a faithful Jew who knew the Scriptures and the traditions handed down by his forefathers, stayed with him for many days. The boundaries of what was acceptable and unacceptable, clean and unclean, lawful and unlawful, were being stretched for God’s people. A widening of God’s grace and blessing to the nations, promised from the beginning, was now on the horizon. The Spirit of Jesus was on the move, and the customs and traditions of the past could not contain Him. God was doing something new.

How do you need God to challenge and stretch you? In what ways have you settled into assumptions and categorizations that might conflict with what the Spirit of Jesus wants to do in, through, and around you? What thought patterns and habitual actions have you settled into that need to be questioned and reconsidered? Look to the ways of Jesus and his disciples in Acts. Ask God to give you the courage to take an honest look at your life. Then ask God to give you wisdom and grace to see people as God sees them, to perceive what he is up to, and to commit yourself to his mission!

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