Tabitha’s Resurrection – Acts 9:36-43

You may not realize it, but I am well aware that I repeat myself – a lot.

After 14 or 15 years in one church it is regrettable but inevitable to some degree.

For example, I know that I’ve used my broken leg as a sermon illustration several times.

And I’ll tell the story with the same excitement, suggesting that I think that you’ve never heard it before.

I apologize for my repetition, and because you love me you put up with me yet again.

But there are other DOCTRINAL things and BIBLICAL things which I repeat over and over, for which I make no apology whatsoever.

Some things are so important, that they need to be said, re-said, reworded and restated again and again.

For example: I believe that I’ve said a time or two:

“Never, never, never build a doctrine on a parable or an illustration, even if it’s a Biblical parable.”

There is nothing wrong with looking at an illustration and recognizing true Biblical doctrine hidden in it,

But that doctrine better be clearly stated in other scriptures before you get too dogmatic.

There are hundreds of heresies being taught today because this rule of hermeneutics has been broken.

The Lord willing we will come back to the person of Tabitha on Sunday,

But tonight I would like to use her allegorically, or as a kind of parable.

About 2,000 years ago there was a lady in Joppa, Judea who died, but who was restored to life.

The human agent in this divine miracle was the apostle Peter.

Tabitha returned to her former life of worshiping of God and serving her neighbors.

It’s a wonderful true story.

But tonight I would like us to briefly think of Tabitha as representative of a much larger group: the saints.

I would like to think that you and I are represented by this Tabitha.

Even using THIS phrase allegorically, Tabitha was a kind of “first fruits,”

Just as we might say of other Biblical resurrections: they are pictures of another resurrection yet to come.

Let’s think about her PROBLEM, the SOLUTION and then the RESULT.

The PROBLEM was that Tabitha, or Dorcus, died.

I’m going to try to leave a lot of the details of this history to Sunday morning.

For example, was this lady young, old, married, single, widowed, rich or poor?

Let’s forget that sort of thing for the time being.

Because for the sake of this message, she was all of those things.

But some things we can’t ignore at this point.

Dorcus was a disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ; she was a Christian.

How she became a child of God is not really important to our topic tonight.

But directly or indirectly it might have been through the evangelist Philip.

Remember that after he baptized the Ethiopian, the Lord moved Philip to Azotus, and then from there he traveled up the Mediterranean coast all the way to Caesarea.

Joppa was the most important sea-port between Gaza and Caesarea.

It is very probable that Philip spent some time there.

And if Philip didn’t actually personally present the Lord Jesus to this lady, then it is quite likely that someone whom he led to the Lord, led her to the Lord.

There is a secondary reason why I mention this:

When I was studying my map, I realized that I gave you some mis-information the other day.

I said that Joppa and Lydda were just to the south and under the shadow of Mt. Carmel.

I don’t know why I thought that, but the truth is that Caesarea is under that shadow – not Joppa.

Unless you want to believe that that shadow stretched for about 40 miles to the south.

So I apologize for my error there.

Joppa was about half way between Gaza and Caesarea.

But Philip probably helped to evangelize Joppa while on his way to Caesarea.

For the sake of this message, Dorcus is representative of all the New Testament saints.

She was one of the disciples of the Lord.

That means that she was a learner, a student of Christ, striving to know as much as she could about Him.

There is something very special about this particular disciple, but I’m not going to tell you about that now.

But at this point, suffice it to say that she was a good Christian woman,

Not in the way that liberal Christendom would say: “She was a good Christian woman, in that she cared for the needs of the poor and afflicted.”

No, Dorcus was a good Christian woman, because she was a Christian by the grace of God, and because she proved it by being good to those around her.

But the fact that she had eternal life in Christ her Lord, that didn’t mean that the physical effects of sin had been eradicated from her body.

“Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned.”

It doesn’t matter whether Dorcus was a young lady or elderly, the deteriorating effect of Adam’s transgression was eating up her body.

And apparently some disease, some germ or virus, got strong enough to stop her heart and kill her.

So, that lady of 2,000 years ago is representative of most of us.

She had been redeemed by the grace of God.

And like us, barring the soon return of our Saviour, she physically died.

And for the sake of argument, she was dead for while.

In her case it was just a little while, but it was a few days.

Her body was prepared for burial, and it seems that she “laid in state” in the auditorium of the First Baptist Church of Joppa.

As far as Tabitha was concerned, her spirit was with the Lord, but her body was awaiting burial.

And as far as her soul and spirit were concerned it wouldn’t have mattered if her body had already been buried for a hundred years.

In fact, it wouldn’t have mattered if her body had been burned in a fire, blown apart in a Palestinian suicide bombing, or been cremated by the mortician,

The SOUL of Tabitha was with the Lord.

If we had your funeral next Monday, how long would your body be in the grave before the resurrection?

Will the body of Olin Smith rise to meet the Lord any more quickly or slowly than Deacon Stephen’s?

Will the Lord have any more TROUBLE resurrecting a cremated body than a buried body?

I don’t think the Lord will have any trouble raising the bodies of any of His people.

He won’t have any problem raising the bodies of the wicked either for that matter.

Dorcus, the Christian, had died, and her friends and the entire church were heart-broken.

This could have been the funeral of any one of us.

In the flesh I would be very, very sad if I had to oversee the funeral of any of you.

And that’s even knowing that you have eternal life.

And it’s even knowing that WE SHALL ALL BE RAISED from the dead.

If I understand the time-table here, Tabitha died and then the church sent word to Peter to hurry up his visit.

“And it came to pass in those days, that she was sick, and died: whom when they had washed, they laid her in an upper chamber.

And forasmuch as Lydda was nigh to Joppa, and the disciples had heard that Peter was there, they sent unto him two men, desiring him that he would not delay to come to them.”

I can’t tell you what was in the mind of the church when they sent this urgent invitation to Peter.

I would hope that there wasn’t any foolish superstition involved, but I can’t be absolutely sure of that.

I am told that it was believed by many Jews that the soul of the dearly departed remained close to the body for 72 hours before actually leaving.

I am told that was one reason why the Lord Jesus waited so long before visiting the grave-site of Lazarus.

I don’t know if these people believed that or not, but I certainly don’t.

The Bible says that to be “absent from the body is to be present with the Lord.”

It would appear that Peter arrived quickly, because the interment usually took place very quickly in that culture.

He was undoubtedly there within three days, and it could have been much sooner.

Joppa and Lydda were less than 10 miles apart; the distance between Post Falls and Coeur d’Alene.

When Peter got to the upper room where the body lay, and heard the people’s expression of love for Tabitha and had seen what a blessing she had been, he ordered everyone to leave.

And then he kneeled down and came boldly into the throne-room of the Lord.

The Holy Spirit has chosen not to tell us exactly what it was that he prayed.

My guess would be that he was seeking the Lord’s will about this matter.

Has Peter ever raised the dead before?

He probably prayed for the Lord’s will to be done, and that Christ Jesus be glorified once again.

How long did he pray?

Notice the language of verse 40: “turning to THE BODY he said, Tabitha, arise.”

What lay behind him as he prayed was just the empty shell that was formerly occupied by Tabitha.

But then he said, “Tabitha, arise.”

Of course, Peter is not, was not, and never will be God.

He was never the “Pontifex Maximus,” “the Pope” or the “Vicar of Christ on Earth.”

But as far as our illustration goes, he pictures the Lord here.

“The Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first:

Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.”

When we are raised from the grave, it will be the Lord Himself Who says “Tabitha, arise.”

This will be something with which He is so personally concerned that it won’t be delegated to anyone else.

I can’t tell you whether or not Peter had any doubts about this resurrection business.

He had seen other dead folk raised, both among the saints and among the lost.

But it had always been at the command of the One who is “the Resurrection and the Life.”

This was new territory for Peter, so he may have been a little apprehensive at first.

But when the Lord returns and orders us to arrive, it will be with all the confidence of the omnipotent God.

The RESULTS of Peter’s command was Tabitha’s resurrection.

“And she opened her eyes: and when she saw Peter, she sat up.

And he gave her his hand, and lifted her up,

And when he had called the saints and widows, presented her alive.”

Permit me to stretch my allegory; I don’t think that it’ll break.

First, she opened her eyes.

When the Lord comes for our bodies, we will not have been sleeping in them until that time.

Our caskets will not be cocoons with us unconsciously metamorphosizing inside until He comes.

When the Lord comes for our bodies, we will come with Him to take possession of those bodies.

But tying these thoughts together, can’t we say that when the Lord awakens us it will be with sight and knowledge which we’ve never possessed before?

When we are taken to Heaven and our bodies are glorified, in some ways it will be as if we were opening our eyes for the first time.

We will see the Lord, Whom we know today only by faith; What a sight that will be

We will see for the first time, the angels who have guarded us, protected us and accompanied us throughout our lives.

We will see a kingdom that the world doesn’t know today.

We will see Biblical characters and loved ones from our families.

Tabitha opened her eyes and she sat up.

There is a wonderful old “Negro spiritual” (can we use the word “Negro” when we couple it to “spiritual”?)

There is a wonderful old “Negro spiritual” called the “Great Gittin’ Up Mornin’”

On the morning of the resurrection we is all gunna git up.

Peter then gave this lady his hand.

It wasn’t that she was too weak or woozy-headed after her long nap.

You know how it is to wake up too quickly from a deep sleep to answer the phone or the door-bell?

You probably know how weak a person can get after a couple days of serious sickness and bed-rest.

Tabitha had a couple days, if not a couple of weeks of serious bed-rest.

But when Peter gave her his hand it wasn’t to help her or steady her.

He was welcoming her back.

That will be somewhat what it will be like when the Saviour calls us.

It will be with open arms and a hearty, “Welcome home.”

And then Peter presented her alive to her friends.

Remember when Joseph revealed himself to his eleven brothers? What an emotional meeting!

And then he presented his brothers to Pharaoh.

A few weeks later he had the privilege of presenting his father to the King as well.

How much like that presentation will ours be?

I’m not sure that we will be presented to the Father per se.

And since most of us will all be gathered together at once, it appears that it should be mass confusion,

But it probably won’t be.

I’m not sure exactly how it will take place, but there might be a ceremony of some sorts.

When Tabitha was raised from the dead, it reminds us of some of the things that will take place at our resurrection.

There was great rejoicing in Joppa.

But there will be even greater rejoicing on the day of our resurrection. Amen?