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The Acts of the Apostles 3

3 One day Peter and John were going to the temple to pray. It was three o’clock in the afternoon, the time when people prayed there. 2 There was a man there who had not been able to walk from the time he was born. He was sitting by the Beautiful Gate at the entrance to the temple area. People carried him there every day so that he could ask those who were going into the temple area to give him some money.

3 As Peter and John were approaching that gate, he saw them and asked them to give him some money. 4 When they heard the man speak to them, Peter and John looked directly at him, and Peter said to him, “Look at us!” 5 So he looked directly at them, expecting to get some money from them. 6 Then Peter said to him, “I do not have any money, but I will do what I can do for you. I heal you by the power of Jesus the Messiah, that man who came from the city of Nazareth. So get up and walk!” 7 Then Peter grasped the man’s right hand and helped him to stand up. The man realized immediately that his feet and ankles were going to be strong enough to support him. 8 So the man jumped the rest of the way up by himself and started walking! He went into the temple area with Peter and John, leaping for joy and praising God as he walked!

9 All the people who were there saw him walking and heard him praising God. 10 They recognized that he was the man who used to sit at the Beautiful Gate that led into the temple area and ask people for money! So all the people there were greatly amazed that he could now walk. 11 The man would not let go of Peter and John. The three of them were in Solomon’s Porch, a covered walkway within the temple area. As the amazing news of the man’s healing spread through the crowd, more and more people came running over to see them.

12 When Peter saw that a crowd was gathering around them, he said to the people, “You Israelites, it should not surprise you that this man can now walk. But you should not be looking at us as if we were so godly that we made him walk by our own power! 13 Let me tell you what has really happened. God made a covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. We Israelites are descendants of those men, so the covenant includes us. God honored that covenant by sending Jesus to be the Messiah. We told this man that the power of Jesus could heal him, and God has now glorified Jesus by doing this miracle. But when Jesus was living among us, you turned him over to the Romans for trial. Pilate, the Roman governor, knew that Jesus was innocent and wanted to set him free. But you gathered in front of Pilate and shouted that he should not release him. 14 Rather than have Pilate release Jesus to you, even though Jesus was the Messiah, you rejected him and asked Pilate to set free a killer instead! 15 So you are responsible for the death of Jesus, the one who gives people life. But God brought him back to life after he died. We can testify that we saw Jesus many times after he became alive again. 16 You recognize this man whom you see standing here. He is the man who used to beg for alms at the Beautiful Gate. He is now strong enough to stand on his own because he believed in what Jesus could do. Yes, it is because he trusted in Jesus that he is now completely healthy. All of you saw this happen.

17 Now, my countrymen, I know that you and your leaders killed Jesus because you did not know that he was the Messiah. 18 God said through the prophets ahead of time that the Messiah he would send would suffer and die. And now, by what has happened, he has fulfilled what the prophets said. 19 So stop living sinful lives and ask God to help you do what pleases him. Then God will completely forgive you for sinning against him. 20 If you do that, there will be times when you will know that the Lord God is helping you. And some day he will send back to earth the Messiah whom he has given to you. That person is Jesus. 21 Jesus will certainly stay in heaven until the time when God causes all that he created to become new. Long ago God promised to do that, and he chose holy prophets to tell that to people. 22 For example, the prophet Moses said this about the Messiah: ‘The Lord our God will make one of you Israelites a prophet like me. You must do everything he tells you to do. 23 Those who do not do what that prophet tells them will no longer belong to God’s people. God will destroy them.’” 24 Peter continued, “In fact, all the prophets have told about what would happen during the times we are now living in. Those prophets include Samuel and the ones who lived after him, who all spoke about these events before they happened. 25 What the prophets said long ago applies to you today. And the solemn agreement that God made to bless our ancestors also extends to you, their descendants. He said to Abraham about the Messiah, ‘I will bless all the people groups on the earth as a result of what your descendant will do.’ 26 So when God sent Jesus to the earth as the Messiah, he had him come to you Israelites first. God intended for the Messiah to bless you by getting you to stop doing things that were wrong.”

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