The First Miracle in Lystra – Acts 14:7-10

“Congenital talipes equinovarus” is the medical term for something commonly known as “club foot.”

In about 1 out every 1,000 lives births, a baby comes into this world with one or both feet pointed down and curling in.

About two-thirds of these victims are boys, and about half are affected in both feet.

To this day medical science has not been able to figure out the cause, but it is in some way hereditary.

If this condition isn’t corrected soon after birth, the club foot will become completely rigid, eventually making it impossible for the child to walk.

Surgery is often the only way to treat the problem.

And that means that in the days prior to modern medical technique, talipes equinovarus, almost always made the sufferer crippled all his life.

I can’t tell you from what it was that the man in our scripture suffered.

When Luke, who was a physician by trade, tells us that he was IMPOTENT in his feet,

He might have been saying that the man had some sort of paralysis.

In other words, the man might have been a paraplegic.

But generally speaking paraplegia is caused by a spinal cord injury, usually caused by an accident.

This man was born in such a way that he was never able to walk.

That is, he never walked until the omnipotence and grace of the Lord touched his body.

He MIGHT have suffered from club feet.

Before we come back to this man, let’s digress just a little bit.

I noticed that one of my commentaries mentioned that this was PAUL’S FIFTH MISSIONARY JOURNEY.

Generally, nearly everyone says that he and Barnabas were in the midst of the first missionary journey.

But WILLIAM BURKETT thinks that Salamis, Cyprus was missionary trip number one;

From there the missionary pair traveled to Paphos, so that was their second journey.

Antioch was the third missionary journey, Iconium was the fourth,

And now Lystra and nearby Derby were the fifth.

I guess that it’s just a matter of point of view.

When the Lord was finished with Antioch, the missionaries were EXPELLED out of those coasts.

But when the Lord was finished with Iconium, Paul and Barnabas FLED unto Lystra and Derby.

The enemy had raised a mob with the intention of stoning God’s servants to death.

And under those conditions some people might think that they fled out of cowardice.

But I don’t believe that for a moment.

Paul and Barnabas were behaving exactly as the Lord told His disciples in Matthew 10:

“Ye shall be hated of all men for my name’s sake:

But when they persecute you in this city, flee ye into another:”

The point wasn’t to do anything to SAVE THEIR NECKS, but rather to save their TONGUES.

There were more cities to be evangelized.

Sometimes the death of a Stephen is the best way to publicize the gospel,

But there is still the necessity of HEARING the gospel, before it can be BELIEVED.

And in order to hear there must be an evangelists.

“How shall they hear without a preacher?”

The Lord is never going to save a single soul apart from that person’s faith in Christ.

So Paul and Barnabas moved about 60 miles down the highway from Iconium to a pair of little villages.

Lystra and Derby were not cities as were Antioch and Iconium.

And it doesn’t appear that there was enough of a Jewish presence in these communities to warrant a synagogue.

So this was another new experience for this apostle to the Gentiles:

This was a true gentile community.

It was a community where the chief religion was the stupid worship of the Roman superstitions.

However, there among the heathen Paul and Barnabas preached the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.

“And there sat a certain man at Lystra, impotent in his feet, being a cripple from his mother’s womb, who never had walked: The same heard Paul speak;

Who stedfastly beholding him, and perceiving that he had faith to be healed,

Said with a loud voice, Stand upright on thy feet. And he leaped and walked.”

This morning I’d like you to consider the physical miracle,

And then I’d like us to look at that as an illustration of a much more important spiritual miracle.

We begin with the PHYSICAL HEALING.

The man is said to have been IMPOTENT in his feet.

Of course “impotent” is the complete opposite of “omnipotent.”

It means that he had no potency or strength in his feet.

I’ve always enjoyed the fact that Luke usually goes to extremes when describing people’s physical condition.

In this case he said that the man was “impotent in his feet,”

AND he was “a cripple from his mother’s womb, AND he had“never had walked.”

Luke wanted there to be no mistake about it: this man had a serious physical infirmity.

It was probably worse than club feet, but we don’t know exactly what it was.

It’s also important to see that he lived in a SMALLER COMMUNITY; not a metropolis.

This means that the man was known to absolutely everyone.

There was probably not a person in either town who had not seen him many, many times.

This was a true miracle.

This man was not an actor, planted in the crowd, pretending to be afflicted so that some lying religious fraud might be able to trick a few desperate people out of their life’s savings.

In fact, by the very nature of smaller, close-knit communities, this man was probably so well-known that people didn’t avert their eyes and look away when they walked by him.

They probably knew his name and greeted him even if they weren’t close friends.

And, there is no reference here to him sitting there begging for alms.

These “heathen” may have some sort of social structure for taking care of this man’s needs.

Or it could be that his family had some wealth, which again would have made him better known.

Whatever the details were in his case, Luke wanted us to realize that a notable miracle was coming up.

He also tells us that the man was diligently LISTENING to the preaching of the gospel.

It’s interesting to note that different people listen to my preaching very differently.

There are those who fasten their eyes on me and refuse to let me go until we close in prayer.

But that doesn’t necessarily meant that they are hearing to what I’m saying.

There are those who are constantly, referring to their Bibles as I refer to the Bible.

I know that those folk are listening.

Others constantly stare down, either at their Bibles, or at the chair in front of them.

These people may or may not be hearing what I’m saying.

Sometimes I see expressions which tell me that things are going on inside their heads.

You may not realize it, but I see you when you nod off to sleep; there were two of you last Wednesday.

I see you when you turn to talk to your neighbor about things unrelated to the message.

And I can usually tell when you talk to someone about something that I’ve said.

And if I can see and know, you can be sure that the Lord sees you a lot more clearly than I do.

But the point is people hear in different ways.

And it makes me wonder how it was that this man was listening to Paul that day.

Was he weeping? That is an obvious emotion, but one that we seldom see.

Perhaps he was wearing a huge grin. That can be kind of enigmatic to the preacher.

Was he anxious or excited?

Paul was preaching the gospel; he was declaring the story of the Lord Jesus.

And in this case I’m sure that the message was slightly different from what he would have preached in one of the Jewish synagogues.

Rather than emphasizing Old Testament scriptures, I think that he was probably declaring things that he knew about the life and ministry of the Lord.

The end result would have been the same: that the Son of God died on the cross as the all-sufficient sacrifice for our sins.

But to reach that point Paul may have referred to some of Jesus’ sermons and probably to some of his miracles.

Miracles? That would have caught the ear of this infirm man.

“Miracle? If this Jews named Jesus miraculously healed people in Israel, would He heal me?”

This man who had seen doctors all his life, might have really gotten excited thinking that there might be real hope for him.

Or could it have been that the man was far more interested in life beyond his miserable earthly existence?

Could it be that when Paul started talking about eternal life, as he had in Antioch, this man’s eyes lit up, he sat up and he further focused all his attention on this strange preacher?

“The same heard Paul speak:

Who stedfastly beholding him, and perceiving that he had faith to be healed,

Said with a loud voice, Stand upright on thy feet. And he leaped and walked.”

The scripture says that Paul “steadfastly beheld him.”

Even while he spoke, the preacher studied him.

I don’t know if there is any significance in this, but this is the same Greek word that is used in Acts 13:9:

“But Elymas the sorcerer (for so is his name by interpretation) withstood them, seeking to turn away the deputy from the faith.

Then Saul, (who also is called Paul,) filled with the Holy Ghost, SET HIS EYES ON HIM,

And said, O full of all subtilty and all mischief, thou child of the devil, thou enemy of all righteousness, wilt thou not cease to pervert the right ways of the Lord?”

In chapter 13 this word is closely connected to A SPECIAL GIFT from the Holy Spirit.

Obviously, in this special case, the Lord gave to Paul the gift of spiritual discernment.

Paul stedfastly beheld him, and PERCEIVED that the had faith to be healed.

The Lord willing I will deal this evening with the theology behind this “faith to be healed”.

Suffice it to say at this point, that this remarkable man, believed that Christ could make his lame legs work properly.

I don’t believe that Paul’s message was that if cripples had sufficient faith, Christ would heal them.

Paul was preaching salvation from sins, not deliverance from earthly afflictions.

So where did this man get the idea that he could be healed, and from where did he get this faith?

I believe that these things were gifts of God for the purpose of highlighting the gospel message.

Earlier we read the account of a similar miracle in the healing of the man at the Beautiful Gate of the Temple.

That man had no other expectation or hope than that the Apostles might give him some money.

This man’s expectation and hope was that the would walk for the first time in his life.

And Paul “said with a loud voice, Stand upright on thy feet. And he leaped and walked.”

MATTHEW HENRY said, “God will not disappoint the desires that are of his own kindling, nor the hopes of his own raising.”

The man was healed of his malady.

Did he slowly and fearfully raise himself to a standing position and gingerly begin to walk?

Or did he immediately spring to feet which had never held him up before?

No man can say for sure, although I have my opinion.

And once he was on his feet he began LEAPING around like a young gazelle.

He leaped and WALKED.

I am told that the word “walked” means that he WALKED AROUND and around in circles.

He was doing something which he had only seen in others, and never done himself,

So he took every advantage of it, not to show off, but simply to enjoy.

This is the history of the first miracle in Lystra.

It actually occurred just as truly as the sun arose that morning.

The communities of Lystra and Derby have long since vanished,

But if they were still in existence today, and if there had been a village historian

Then on the vellum scrolled records of Lystra would have been the story of this man’s healing.

His name would have been recorded for us to read 2,000 years later,

And so would the circumstances of the second great miracle which followed.

But alas, no such secular record has been kept.

So let’s move on to the illustration that this miracle gives us:

Let’s think about the Spiritual miracle of personal salvation.

First, let me say that when Paul healed this man he didn’t make him a Christian.

I can’t even tell you with absolute assurance that this man ever became a Christian.

I wish that I could tell you that his name was Timothy and that he became a preacher of the gospel.

That is possible, but the Bible doesn’t say that.

I personally believe that this man was indeed a child of God, but I can’t dogmatically declare that.

Nevertheless, just as we have showed in other miracles of this kind it is an illustration of saving grace.

All of us come into the world spiritually impotent.

We are born dead in sins and without the slightest ability to serve or to please God.

We are worse than Mephibosheth, King David’s friend, who became crippled as a baby;

We were born spiritually crippled, and more precisely spiritually dead.

By nature there is no child of Adam who seeks after the Lord until Holy Spirit gives him a yearning heart.

By nature we are content to sit in the mud, keep ourselves filthy and to sling it at others every now & then.

We can’t rise and stand to look over the hill towards the gate of Heaven; we are cripples.

But every once in a while the Lord will awaken the heart and the ears of one of our crippled cousins.

God will bring a gospel preacher, like Paul, before his face, who will declare the love of God and the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus.

And along with the message the Lord will give a few of us cripples, ears to hear that message.

How many of the people of Lystra and Derby responded to Paul’s preaching that day?

There were probably some, but not everyone, and probably not very many.

That is usually the case.

And how many of the people of that district were healed of blindness, cancer and crippled legs?

We are only told of one.

Again we see the selective hand and handiwork of the Lord.

So where did this man find the faith to believe that Jehovah could heal him?

Was it logical to believe such a thing?

After all the physicians that he had visited through the years, did this give him to faith to believe?

After all the physical therapy or all his attempts to join the other children when he was growing up, did these encourage him to believe this stranger?

Was it something that he read in his horoscope, or in the leaves after his breakfast tea that morning?

Where did this man get faith to believe the Lord?

As is all true faith, it was the gift of God (Ephesians 2:8).

And it came to this man through the ministry of the Word: “Faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the word of God.”

It was a miracle for this man even to believe that Christ could heal him.

But he believed that Christ had the ability, and the will, to heal him.

Unfortunately, that faith is nothing in itself.

Most of Christendom believes that in Christ Jesus is salvation and deliverance from sin.

Literally millions of people believe that Jesus is the Saviour,

And they even believe that Jesus died on the cross in order to save people from their sins.

And yet 90% or more of those same people have not been saved.

Paul raised his voice; he “said with a loud voice, Stand upright on thy feet.”

There are multitudes who say they believe that Jesus is the Saviour, but their faith is not IN CHRIST.

There are millions who say that Jesus is the Saviour, but whose faith is in their BAPTISM.

Others trust WAFERS of bread, and some trust in their CONFESSION of sin.

Millions have put trust in their CHURCH to somehow bus them to Heaven.

Multitudes are waiting, sitting in the mud, for the Lord to come along and pick them up.

Paul “said with a loud voice, Stand upright on thy feet.”

“You have faith to believe, so put that faith into practice:

Trust in the Lord, and lean not unto thy crutch or thy friendly neighborhood priest.”

What came first: this man’s strength to stand or his attempt to stand?

There is no doubt in my mind, but that the Lord willed him the strength, before he actually stood.

We are ALL spiritual cripples; that is the way that we come into this world from our mother’s womb.

We are all in need of the application of the Lord’s omnipotence and grace.

Well, there it is: in the gospel you have heard that Jesus Christ is the Saviour.

It’s up to you to stand;

Will you believe the gospel?

Will you trust the Lord Jesus to save you?

Will you kneel before His cross and trust His grace?

Stand upright; but not upon YOUR feet, trust in the Lord.