Acts 3:9

And all the people saw him walking and praising God: AND ALL THE PEOPLE SAW HIM - as they assembled in the temple courts at the hour of prayer, WALKING AND PRAISING GOD - so that the miracle had the utmost publicity, while the man's grateful thanksgivings in the temple would call attention to the divine source of the cure, and to the Christian instrument of it....

9._And all the people saw. _He beginneth now to declare the fruit of the miracle, to wit, that the cripple began to show his thankfulness by praising God, and that all the people were brought into great wondering. And here is a double fruit. For he which was healed doth acknowledge and set forth the benefit of God; on the other side, the people is moved, and the fame is spread abroad, many come to see it. And whereas Luke saith that they were filled with wondering, it doth only declare a preparation, which a more full proceeding (172) (and going forward) did at length follow. For it was necessary that they should go forward, because this their wondering had served to no end of itself, but did rather make them astonied and amazed, than bring them (from their own proceedings) unto God. Therefore it was, as it were, the foundation of the building which was to come, in that the people was to...

1-11 The apostles and the first believers attended the temple worship at the hours of prayer. Peter and John seem to have been led by a Divine direction, to work a miracle on a man above forty years old, who had been a cripple from his birth. Peter, in the name of Jesus of Nazareth, bade him rise up and walk. Thus, if we would attempt to good purpose the healing of men's souls, we must go forth in the name and power of Jesus Christ, calling on helpless sinners to arise and walk in the way of holiness, by faith in Him. How sweet the thought to our souls, that in respect to all the crippled faculties of our fallen nature, the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth can make us whole! With what holy joy and rapture shall we tread the holy courts, when God the Spirit causes us to enter therein by his strength!...

Verse Acts 3:9. _AND ALL THE PEOPLE SAW HIM_] The miracle was wrought in the most _public manner_, and in the most _public place_, and in a place where the best judgment could be formed of it; for, as it was a Divine operation, the _priests_, c., were the most proper persons to judge of it and under their notice it was now wrought....

AND ALL THE PEOPLE ... - The people who had been accustomed to see him sit in a public place. AND THEY KNEW ... - In this they could not be deceived; they had seen him a long time, and now they saw the same man expressing his praise to God for complete recovery. The particulars in this miracle are the following, and they are as far as possible from any appearance of imposture: 1. The man had been afficated from a child. This was known to all the people. At this time he was 40 years of age, Acts 4:22. 2. He was not an impostor. If he had pretended lameness, it is wonderful that he had not been detected before, and not have been suffered to occupy a place thus in the temple. 3. The apostles had no agency in placing him

EXPOSITION ACTS 3:1 _Were going up _for _went up together, _A.V. and T.R. PETER AND JOHN. The close friendship of these two apostles is remarkable. The origin of it appears to have been their partnership in the fishing-boats in which they pursued their trade as fishermen on the Sea of Galilee. For St. Luke tells us that the sons of Zebedee were "partners with Simon," and helped him to take the miraculous draught of fishes (Luke 5:10). We find the two sons of Zebedee associated with Peter in the inner circle of the Lord's apostles, at the Transfiguration, at the raising of Jairus's daughter, and at the agony in the Garden of Gethsemane. But the yet closer friendship of Peter and John first appears in their going together to the palace of Caiaphas on the ni

AND ALL THE PEOPLE,.... That were in the temple, SAW HIM WALKING; who before lay on a couch, or on the ground, and was so lame, that he was obliged to be carried; AND PRAISING GOD; for this miraculous cure. The Arabic version renders it, "saw him walking to praise God": that is, entering into the temple with the apostles, in order to offer up the sacrifice of praise to God there....

Acts 3:1. _Now Peter and John went up together into the temple at the hour of prayer, being the ninth hour._ Peter and John seem to have been linked in closest friendship. Peter had been brought back by John when he was almost despairing after having denied his Master. John lovingly found him out, and made him his associate; and now they «went up together into the temple at the hour of prayer.» Observe, here, how very sweetly the Old Testament dispensation melts into the new. The Temple was no longer what it had been before; the type was of no further use now that the great Antitype of the Temple had come; yet these apostles still went up to it at the hour of prayer. There are some men who are great at destroying. It will be time to destroy the old when the new is quite ready; and even then, it may be very possible to let the darkness gradually melt away into a twilight, and so the day...

CHAPTER 3 _ 1. The Healing of the lame Man (Acts 3:1)._ 2. Peter's address and appeal (Acts 3:12). The lame man, forty years old, at the gate called Beautiful is the type of the moral condition of the nation, like the impotent man whom the Lord healed (John 5:1). Israel with all its beautiful religious ceremonies was helpless, laying outside with no strength to enter in. Peter commands the lame man in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth to rise up and to walk. He is instantly healed. He then walked and leaped and entered through the gate as a worshipper into the temple, praising God. This great miracle was wrought as another evidence to the unbelieving nation that Jesus of Nazareth, whom they had rejected and crucifi

EXAMPLE OF THE WORKS OF THE APOSTLES. The cure of lame persons is frequently spoken of in the Synoptic Gospels, as a mark of the Messianic age; but no such cure is there recorded. Paul deals with a similar case at Lystra (Acts 14:8). The apostles generally, but not invariably, go in pairs, as Luke 10:1 prescribes. So Peter and John here (_cf. Acts 8:14_) go for their devotions to the Temple at 3 P.M., the hour of the evening sacrifice. In the following narrative it is Peter only who acts and speaks. At the gate called Beautiful, possibly the same as Nicanor's gate on the E. side of the Temple, and the favourite entrance, they find a man congenitally lame. He asks alms: they ask his whole attention, which he gives them. Peter cannot give h