Acts 3: The Healing of the Lame Man: The Beauty of God's Timing

Day after day some friends carried a lame man to the Temple and set him down next to the Beautiful Gate to ask for money from all the people coming to and fro to worship God. Now Peter and John were going up to the Temple at the hour of prayer and when the lame man saw them, he called out to them hoping to collect some money. Peter fixed his gaze on the man. Look at us, he said, and he commanded the man in the name of Jesus Christ to rise up and walk. And that man, who had never walked before a day in his life, walked, and jumped, and danced, and kicked his feet in the air with joy and exaltation, praising God.

It was an attesting miracle—attesting to the presence of the Resurrected Lord in their midst. The man was a burning bush—an extraordinary showing of the glory of the Risen Lord—a calling out to the people of Israel: I AM.

Jesus had healed the lame before while walking in Judea and Galilee in his humbled state—and now He healed the lame as the Holy and Righteous One they had only just recently denied and delivered up to Pilate to be crucified. Here, the lame man became a living, leaping, laughing proclamation in the Temple of the acceptable year of the Lord (Isaiah 61:2). He had taken captivity captive and set this one lame captive free (Psalm 68:18) in living color for all to see that Jesus was very much alive. What a powerful testimony!

You have all read that God makes all things beautiful in His time. See Ecclesiastes 3:11.

Keep your mental finger on this verse as you consider this: Jesus walked by that lame man many, many times. Do you understand that? He passed that man by, walked right by him, heard him begging alms many times, and never healed him.

It is simply not possible that Jesus failed to see the lame man sitting there when He passed through the Beautiful Gate time and time again—and yet, He never healed him, never acknowledged him as far as we know. How many times have we felt like that: God, you don’t hear me? How long, Lord? How long? Have you forgotten me? Do you see me? Do you care for me, at all? Why are you silent? Lord, you have passed me by.

But look what has happened? Jesus never forgot that man, never walked by him without acknowledging him. He would be healed, and Jesus would heal him—but He would make it beautiful in His time. I wonder if every time Jesus saw that man begging alms, He said to himself, you have no idea what I have prepared for you; you just wait and you shall see the glory of the Lord revealed. (Isaiah 40:5).

If Jesus had healed him during His earthly ministry, the man’s healing would have pointed to Jesus as the Messiah as one additional proof. See Matthew 21:14 (“The blind and the lame came to him at the temple, and he healed them.”). Nothing wrong with that of course. Amazing really. But the lame man at the Beautiful Gate was granted a greater honor, and that was to point to an exalted Christ, and to confirm that Jesus was in fact the Author of Life, not dead anymore, but raised to life sufficient to heal this man who had never walked before.

Jesus had reserved that man, singled him out even, for a greater, fuller, and more lovely testimony to who Christ is—He can still see, and still hear, and still heal even though we cannot see Him, and more emphatically so, now that He has been exalted to the throne of God. Jesus has made all things, where that man was concerned, beautiful in His time at the entrance to the Temple called Beautiful. Coincidence? I think not.

What about you? Do you think Christ has passed you by? Not given you a second thought? Not true, and not possible. He knows, truly knows, that you are powerless to help yourself. He knows where you are and the best timing to lift you up for His glory. Just wait for the beauty of His timing.

He promised that those who would wait for the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint. Isaiah 40:31. That verse in Isaiah found its fulfillment at the Beautiful Gate.

But that fulfillment is not limited to the lame man at the entrance to the temple as Luke reminds us with the healing of Aeneas. That fulfillment is awaiting you. He said, no one has heard, no ear has perceived, nor has entered into the heart of man what God has prepared for those who wait for him, and those who love him. Isaiah 64:4; 1 Corinthians 2:9.

Do not let your hearts be troubled. He will make all things beautiful in His time, for your salvation, and for His glory. Teach us Lord to wait.